You are lightning made flesh. Colder than falling snow. Unstoppable as the desert sands.
She couldn’t say the rest because she was done pretending to be Stormling, but the rest was true. Her blood, like her ancestors’ before her, was filled with the light of skyfire. She knew her heart could freeze out fear and doubt because she had done it all her life. And her will, her desire to obtain storm magic, had pushed her through far worse situations than a tiny drop of blood on an altar.
She kept her eyes on the sky as she said the next two phrases.
“We offer a sacrifice to you…”
She did not flinch as the skyfire above her bounced from cloud to cloud, lighting up the sky from horizon to horizon.
Locke peeled back the fingers of one hand she had been fisting at her side. He smoothed his palm over hers, once and then again, tracing the healed scar from when she had cut her palm to sow the tale of her kidnapping. Then he made the tiniest of pricks on the tip of her index finger. She watched a single drop of blood land, and above her head, the sky exploded with light, so bright that it burned like the sun in her peripheral vision. She snatched her hand to her chest and threw her head back, but the sky was dark and still once more. She spat out quickly, “In hopes you find it worthy and true.”
Then she put several steps between her and the altar, clutching her blood-smeared finger inside her other fist. The minister didn’t approach to touch her, but rather said his blessing from afar, his eyes wide and fearful.
Listen to her roar. Listen to her wail.
Listen to the grief that lives inside the gale.
—“At the Heart,” a Sacred Souls hymn
17
The outside of the inn was nearly the same color as the reddened earth it sat on. It was plain and squat. But the inside was a sunburst of color—rich woven tapestries, intricately painted pottery. The calming smell of incense hung in the air.
She could feel the others peeking at her when she was not looking, and nausea rolled through her stomach. A headache throbbed at her temples. One by one the hunters collected a key from Duke. Quickly, she reached into her pack for her coin purse, glad she had brought enough with her to last a while. When she asked Duke how much she owed, he shook his head.
“No need.”
Sly, who had just received her own key, gave Roar a hard look before walking down a hallway to the right, her feet muffled by the thick, blue rug that stretched the length of the hall.
“I have money. I can pay my way.”
“Keep your coin,” he said. “None here have paid their own way until their training ended and they began receiving a cut of the market sales. You will be the same. It is our investment in you.”
Roar had been a lousy investment so far, and would continue to be so, for she had always planned to leave once she had what she needed.
“Please,” she said, “I would really prefer to take responsibility for my own needs.”
“It’s already done, child. I’ll not argue with you. You have Locke for that,” he said with a knowing grin. Her face flamed, and she took the key without another word.
“Last room on the right.”
She kept her face forward as she walked down the hall. She sorely needed a bath and sleep, and everything else could wait until tomorrow.
But her mind refused to wait. Thoughts beat at her as she bathed in the cramped tub in chilly water brought by a young maid. Her feet were raw from breaking in boots that were fitted to someone else’s feet, and she carefully covered her blisters and wounds with a healing salve.
But for every measure of pain the salve soothed, the more room she had to think of home. What was her mother doing now? Surely, she had received the note Nova was supposed to give her. Was the queen furious? Was she afraid?
Roar pulled her worn copy of The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram from her pack. Lord Wolfram was the nephew of the last king of Calibah. Southwest of Pavan and just north of Locke, Calibah was all dangerous swampland and ruins now, given over to the predators who lurked in the murky waters. A year before she was born, the kingdom had been beset by storms. Again and again, it was ravaged with no reprieve, until not even the royal Stormlings could hold them all off. Many died. Many times many. Wolfram volunteered to lead an expedition out to sea in the hopes of finding a land that was not afflicted by storms. That had been in the year of Aurora’s birth, eighteen years prior. The ship was never heard from again.
The book was neither unrealistic fairy tale nor harsh cautionary tale. It walked a fine line between hope and despair—a land that Roar had walked most of her life. And if there was some small chance that Finneus Wolfram had lived to find a land safer than this one, perhaps she could too.
She’d read the book so often that the pages had grown thin with use. The spine was cracked and the edges worn. No matter how many times she read the story, it had never failed to enthrall her.
Until now.
For tonight, she was much closer to despair than hope, and she could not see the potential for truth on the pages, only fiction. More likely, Finneus Wolfram had gone the way of every other Stormling who had ever ventured out to sea. And she was a silly girl if she thought she would meet a different end.
“Enough.” She threw the book down upon her bed and stood. She could not stay here and wallow in her fears and doubts any longer. She dressed quickly, pulling her boots up over brand-new bandages. She no longer had a cloak, and a chill clung to the rocky desert outside. She still had the cream-colored scarf that she had wrapped around her hair when she left Pavan, so she draped that around her shoulders like a shawl and sneaked out of her room, down the darkened hallway and out into the night.
She kept to the shadows, darting down roads without any specific destination in mind. When she found a gap in the village wall, she climbed over the rubble and outside. Her feet sank into the sand as she walked. Overhead, the stars blazed from horizon to horizon, brighter than she had ever seen them before. She found an area without brush and cacti, where the red sand was thick enough to be soft, and she lay back, stretching her arms and legs out, until she saw nothing but sky.