“No, Cassius is the firstborn. As heir he should have stayed in Locke.”
Roar started to argue again, but held her tongue. Locke had been destroyed. The entire royal family was in Pavan. She remembered the mocking tone of Casimir’s voice when he called Cassius little brother. She’d overheard Cassius’s plans to manipulate her; he’d even mentioned something about his father and a plan. She collapsed, retching with horror; her stomach twisted and jerked, as if trying to wring itself out, but there was nothing in it to expel.
Oh skies. Cassius did not want to marry into the throne. He wanted to seize it, to replace the one they’d lost.
“We must return to Pavan. Now. Something … something is very wrong.”
*
They rode out immediately from Taraanar, despite complaints from Sly. Locke did not know what troubled Roar, nor would she tell him, but he knew she was distraught over something. And he and Duke both trusted her enough to follow her word without explanation. When they made camp the first night, she did not bother trying to set up her own tent but crawled into his. She clung to him tightly and when he tried to get her to talk, she silenced him with a kiss.
“Please,” she whispered against his mouth. “Help me forget.”
He did not know what he was helping her to forget, but he hated seeing the hurt and fear in her eyes, and if he could ease that … he would do anything.
He pushed no further than he had by the river. He did not want their first time together to be when she was upset. But he distracted her with his mouth, with his hands on her skin, with tender words spoken against the rapid flicker of the light in her chest.
And eventually, the tension in her eased, the fear fled from her eyes, and she went soft in his arms. He held her for a while, but neither of them drifted toward sleep.
Nervous, he took a deep breath and said, “I need to tell you something.”
She stiffened and asked, “What?”
He almost wished he could take the words back. Already the worry was creeping back into her eyes. He smoothed his fingers over the furrow in her brow and said, “The witch I went to see with Jinx…”
She returned his touch, trailing her hand down his cheek to the line of his jaw. “What about her?”
“She told me something.”
Roar sat up, the blankets falling to her waist. “A prediction? About me?”
“No, about me. She … she told me my name.”
Roar gasped. “And you are just telling me now? After all my silly nicknames?”
He sat up and took one of her hands between his. “I like your silly names.”
“What is it?”
When he hesitated, she shook off his hold and climbed into his lap. Her hands cupped his cheeks and brought their faces close together.
“Tell me,” she whispered, followed by a soft kiss. “Tell me what to call the man I love.”
His breath caught, and she was already calling storms to life, for there was one inside him now—fierce and proud. She had hinted that she felt the same. Had said it without saying the exact words, and he saw it constantly in her eyes. But hearing it now out of her mouth washed away the last of his doubt.
“It’s Kiran,” he told her. “My name was Kiran Thorne.”
She said the name back to him, and he liked it a great deal more coming from her.
“It’s a good name,” she said. “Strong. We can ask Sly to be sure, but I think Kiran means ‘ray of light’ in Vyhodin. And you are very much that.” She ended her pronouncement with a quick kiss and added, “And Thorne would make an appropriately fearsome nickname for a hunter.”
He laughed. “Yes, I can’t wait for Jinx to call me a thorn in her side.”
“I like it.” She looped her arms about his neck, drawing their bodies even closer. “Thorns protect the rose. And from the moment we met, you’ve sought to protect me always.”
“And I always will.”
She smiled, but it was not as bright as the ones she usually gave him. Fear’s hold on her was too tight, even now. She looked at him, her gaze flicking back and forth between his eyes.
“There are things I have not told you,” she said. “About my life in Pavan.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t care. None of that matters now.”
“It will matter again. Soon.”
“So then tell me. There’s nothing that you could say that would change the way I feel.”
Her face scrunched up as if she was in pain, and her voice shook as she said, “I—I am—”
She broke off with a gasp as heat flared between their chests. The crystal she wore around her neck had gone fiery hot, and she scrambled from the tent, barefoot and wearing only one of his tunics. He groped around until he found his harness, and the warning horn he kept attached to it. He blew the horn as he crawled from the tent, pulling the harness over his chest.
It was the dead of night and he could not see whatever storm came for them. The other hunters began scrambling from their tents, supplies in hand, each of them spinning around, trying to find the threat.
“Fog,” Roar breathed. “I can feel it. Hungry and sinister. It meant to take us as we slept.”
As she spoke, Duke held up a lightning lantern, and then he saw it. They had camped in a small thicket of trees, and swallowing up the branches around them was a thick gray cloud. He spun, but it was all around them, blocking them in.
He retrieved his fog Stormheart, the other hunters that had one following suit.
“Stop!” Roar cried. “Put down your hearts. I can handle this. But it’s too confusing to feel all of you.”
Locke hesitated and she said, “Kiran, please.”
Then he did as she asked, returning the stone to his harness and telling the other hunters to do the same. For a long moment, nothing happened. And his hands itched to take up his Stormheart again, especially when Roar stepped closer to the creeping fog.
But then … it began to roll back. Roar marched forward, and with each step the fog retreated farther and farther until he could not see it at all.
*
The storms continued to come as they made their way toward Pavan, and each time they did Roar made them surrender. As she had learned from the skyfire storm, the connection she felt went both ways. If she was not careful, their souls, their desires could bleed into her. But she could do the same to them. She had sowed fear into the fog, the certainty of its destruction, and it retreated rather than fight. She soothed the rage of a twister until its winds slowed and it broke apart in the sky. She stood in the eye of a firestorm and offered it comfort, even as burning embers rained down around her.