He cursed and flung himself down from his horse. A hard slap on its rear sent his stallion running safely away from the flames. He wanted to run toward Roar, but while other members of the team had some experience with torque storms, they were his specialty. Low against his spine, he felt the warmth of the firestorm Stormheart hidden inside the leather of his belt, and he plucked it out to hold in his palm. He drew power from within himself and from the stone, and flung a hand toward the swirling clouds. The air was stiflingly hot around him, and every breath raked down his throat and stung his lungs. The harsh smell singed his nostrils, and sweat slicked over his skin.
He stood outside the range of the falling embers, but he saw them battering at the top of the Rock, leaving black spots before rolling down the frame and landing amid the burning grass with the others. Jinx and Sly stood in the eye where no embers fell. He focused, the magic flying out from his fingers to collide with the storm. It surrounded it, searching out the edges, feeling the mass. There was no heart to this storm that he could sense, which meant it was magicborn.
There was another scream to his right, and the urge to look for Roar burned in his gut as hot as the flames that lay ahead of him. From his hip, he snatched one of the jars that held thunderstorm, pulled the cork, and threw it in the direction he’d seen Roar before. His shoulder protested, but there was no time to feel pain. The jar shattered, followed by a gust of wind and the crack of thunder. He hoped the rain would drown the burning land while he focused on the firestorm.
Once his magic had flowed all the way around it, and he knew its size, he concentrated on the right side of the storm. He raised both hands and, with a growl, used all his strength to yank the right side of the storm down and toward him. This broke up the rotation, and as he’d hoped, the storm crumbled against the resistance he provided. Without a living heart at the center, the storm was no match for his magic. The clouds folded and thinned, and the embers stopped falling, and it only took a few moments more before the dark clouds of the thunderstorm overtook the space where the firestorm had been.
“Jinx!” he yelled into the pouring rain.
He didn’t know exactly where she was, but he heard her yell back, “Got it!”
Jinx was their torrent specialist. She would stoke the thunderstorm until the rain had put out the last of the flames, then do away with it as he had done with the firestorm.
Finally, he gave in to the overwhelming urge to search out Roar, and his stomach dropped when he saw her. She was soaked, and stood still and silent, staring up at the sky as if mesmerized.
The drab traveling cloak she wore had been ripped down the middle, and its torn neck now sat around the curve of her hips. The bottom of it was charred and still smoking lightly, and the white shirt she wore beneath it stuck to her skin in places and had been singed to ash in others.
He trudged through the mud and ash to reach her, but even when he stood directly in front of her, she only had eyes for the storm overhead. And it was then that he realized … she wasn’t screaming. Or attacking anyone. Or unconscious. Whatever had happened when that twister had struck wasn’t a problem now.
*
Large hands grasped Roar’s shoulders, and it was only then she realized how badly she was shaking. Locke peered down at her, his hands squeezing, as if he could make her body still through force alone. Over his shoulder, Roar watched Jinx lift her hands. The witch glanced around one more time, and when she found no lingering flames, she curled her fingers and pulled as though she had a lasso around the middle of the storm. And, sure enough, the center of the storm jerked downward, breaking the mass of dark clouds apart. The outer edges of the storm dissolved like steam, and, after another motion of Jinx’s hands, the core of the storm followed, giving way to a sky that was gray, rather than the blue it had been before. But it was calm. Quiet.
Roar watched, frozen and fascinated, long after it was over. It was the first time she’d gotten to see magic at work. She only snapped to when she felt Locke’s hands dragging unabashedly over her body, over her arms first, then smoothing over her waist and hips, tugging at the cloak that tangled there.
“Excuse me.” She shoved him backward, heat rising into her cheeks. “Perhaps ask before you put your hands all over a person.”
He snapped right back, “I thought you were in shock. Your cloak is scorched, and you wouldn’t answer when I asked if you’d been burned.”
“I’m fine.”
Then, to make sure she wasn’t lying, she took a moment to look over her body. She finished pushing the cloak down over her hips and stepped out of it. It had caught fire when an ember bounced off the Rock and hit the bottom of her cloak, and she felt a pang at the loss of something that belonged to her brother, even if it was plain and ill fitting. She had been struggling to get it off when the skies broke open and it began to rain. The trousers she wore were soaked and burned through at the knee and below. Between what remained of the fabric and her calf-high boots, the skin on her legs was red and raw and stung in the open air.
“Fine, huh?” He grabbed the leather around her neck and pulled up the magical items he’d given her. The crystal had gone hot, but not painfully so as it had with the twister. And the firestorm powder he’d given her remained in the tiny bottle. “You did not take it?” he hissed. “I told you that we take no chances with firestorms.”
Locke’s voice was a fierce, angry growl, and she bowed up, ready to growl right back. She was getting tired of his moods—suffocatingly protective one second and a beast the next. Before she could lay into him, they were interrupted by Ran asking, “Who did these?”
He pointed to a small pile of jars that held still-burning embers. Locke paused long enough in his anger to glance over, and then his brows puckered in confusion.
“Sly?” he called out.
From the other side of the Rock, they heard, “Not mine.”
Locke marched away, heading for the pile.
Roar sucked in a breath and said, “I did it.”
He froze, twisting to look back at her. “You what?”
Her stomach rolled. Had she done it wrong? “I captured the embers. A bag of jars fell off one of the horses’ packs, and I thought I might as well do something useful. I caught the embers as they rolled off the Rock, before they hit the grass.”
He stalked back toward her. “And you did it without taking the powder. Scorch it all, Roar. You could have been hurt. All it would have taken was one ember to bounce off the Rock when you weren’t expecting it and hit your skin directly. Have you seen the kind of burns they can cause?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them. And I’m well aware of the danger I was in. It was the same danger as every other person here, and I saw no one take any powder. So why don’t you yell at someone else!”
The others wandered away out of sight to the other side of the Rock, where most of the damage was, likely saving her the embarrassment of being witnesses once again to Locke lecturing her. With a growl, she spun before he could say anything more and began marching away. He did not get to make her feel bad about this. She had seen a storm and stayed herself. She had done something useful after so long feeling useless. She thought at first that he was going to let her be, but eventually she heard him jogging up behind her.
“Roar, wait.”
“No,” she snapped, picking up her pace.
“Would you listen—”