She blanched and her mouth went dry. Of course, the only reason he would be here, taking care of her, was because he wanted answers. Well, she had none.
She shot up, ignoring the stinging pain in her head, and turned the attention back to him. “What happened to you?” Her voice was a barely there rasp.
Locke answered, “Nothing,” as Ransom said, “The fool got skewered by a tree branch.”
Locke glared at his friend. “I did not get skewered.”
“Pierced, impaled, punctured, spiked, stabbed—should I go on?” Jinx asked.
“Penetrated,” Bait said. “You forgot penetrated.”
They all laughed, and even Locke rolled his eyes. As if there weren’t a hole in the man’s shoulder that was already beginning to bleed through the bandages Duke wound over it.
All the hunters were covered in dirt, and some had darker stains that were likely blood. But everyone was alive and uninjured, at least in comparison to Locke. The land, though … it looked as if it had been gutted and all its entrails poured out.
“How are you all so calm?” Her heart was thundering as hard now as it had been when the twister manifested.
“This is what we do,” Locke answered grimly. “If only one of us gets hurt, it’s a good day.” He lightly touched her forehead. “Though I suppose two of us got hurt today.”
She jerked away, unable to hold back the rush of violent memories any longer. She closed her eyes as she thought about how she’d felt, what she’d done. “What—what happened to me?”
“We need you to explain that to us,” Duke said, his old eyes alight with suspicion that cut like a razor’s edge. She had been so grateful when he kept her Taraanese words secret. If she had known he understood, she never would have been so candid about Locke, about how she was glad he was being so irritable with her because it made it easier to ignore how handsome he was and the way her lungs didn’t seem to work right whenever he drew too near. Now Duke looked at her like she was dangerous, like he regretted having her here.
Roar shrank away, and her eyes found Locke. His hair had been tied back again, safely out of reach of her hands. Bruises littered his chest and shoulders, and she wasn’t sure if they were from the storm or her. She flushed hot with shame and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m not without a temper and my mouth has gotten me into more trouble than I care to admit, but never … I’ve never felt anything like that. Earlier, before we arrived at camp, I had been upset. But then out of nowhere there was so much rage, and it pushed out every other thought and feeling. It was like … I wasn’t me.”
Locke looked up at Duke, then back down at Roar. “And are you you now?”
“I don’t feel … wrong. Not like I did then. Do you think the storm mesmerized me?”
Duke frowned, running a hand down his beard. “I’ve never heard of anybody experiencing added emotions while mesmerized. Usually, it’s the opposite. The storm’s thrall drains away fear and all other emotions. One feels almost blank. But I suppose it’s a possibility this came from the storm’s magic. An evolution of their ability to attack. We likely know more about storms than anyone else in all of Caelira, but even we have barely scratched the surface of all there is to know.”
She thought back to the night Cassius had faced the skyfire storm in Pavan, the only other time she’d been near a storm instead of locked away in the shelters. It hadn’t been as strong then, but she’d felt a surge of emotion then too. Not rage, but … “I might have felt something like this with another storm. I had thought it was just the situation I was in, that my own emotions were high because of stress. But during the skyfire storm that hit Pavan before we left, I felt overcome with jealousy, not quite as all consuming as the twister but … similarly out of control.”
Locke asked Duke, “Is she a sensitive?”
Sensitive was code for those who could feel storms when they approached. Which was every Stormling with abilities, and a few without who had traces of diluted Stormling blood in their ancestry. But most sensitives described the sensation as a tingle of unease or dread. A restlessness that pricked at their sense of self-preservation. This had been far more than a tingle.
Duke shrugged, rubbing at his mustache. “Maybe. But the manifestation is still highly unusual.”
The group fell quiet. Her head felt like it was about to cleave open, but she forced her eyes to meet Locke’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So very sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, princess.”
She would worry about it. Knowing her, she would worry herself sick over it. “I attacked you. Attacked, assaulted, mauled, beat—whatever word you want to use.”
“Mauled,” Bait murmured to Jinx behind them. “Good word choice.”
Roar continued: “If I had had the chance, I think I would have hurt you much worse. Whether I wanted to or not.” She buried her head in her hands.
“But you didn’t hurt me. I’m tough enough to take a little brawling with a girl half my size.”
His hand smoothed over her shoulder, and she recoiled. He was the last person who should be comforting her. The soft, concerned sound of his voice grated over her nerves, and she wished he would yell. That he would be angry and aggressive like always. “I bit you,” she hissed.
Locke held out a hand to Ransom, who helped him to his feet now that Duke had finished binding his wound. He used his uninjured arm to brush off dirt and dust from his bare torso while he casually tossed out, “Not the first time I’ve been bitten by a pretty girl.”
Jinx snorted, and Ransom groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Really?” the big man said. “That’s what you’re going with here?”
Locke bent at the knee, squatting in Roar’s line of vision. “You didn’t hurt me. Besides, you’re in much worse shape than me.”
“You were speared through the shoulder.”
He shrugged, unsettling his bandages for the moment. “I wasn’t the unconscious one.”
“What if it happens again? What if I am filled with rage when you all are sleeping or focused on something else?”
“We’ll be cautious. If you feel any emotion that isn’t your own, let one of us know. And—” He looked at Duke again, frowning. “Perhaps we hunt only smaller storms until we know more.”
“No!” Roar leaped to her feet, head still spinning. “Please. Don’t shut me out. I’m here. I want to do this. I need to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I do. Because I left behind everything to do this, and if I fail … I cannot fail.”
His expression softened, and again she wanted to shake him until he was as angry as he should be. As angry as she was with herself.
“You won’t fail. But hunters who want to stay alive must be as prepared as they can possibly be. And for that, we need time to figure this out.”