Before I can truly process what’s happening, that long-buried second self roars into control. It’s like shedding a snakeskin. Casting away the tender-hearted little girl they tried to break.
A part of me wants to cling to that previous self like an old, threadbare coat that’s kept me warm for years. But the light thrums beneath my limbs, buzzing and hot, pushing at the inside of my skin with the force of nature itself.
A gasp hisses between my teeth. Bitter, biting rage drips thickly down my throat.
I—erupt.
Light tears out of me in a hundred directions at once. It blisters down the length of my arms and my legs. It bursts from my temples, down the sides of my blood-spattered face, shooting out of the corded lines down my neck. It’s cold and terrible, blinding and seismic.
Come to me, creatures of the skies!I command.
From a million places at once, I feel them respond. Birds from across the castle gardens and deep into Vallen Forest. They pinwheel toward the Aurora Tower unquestioningly, as surely as I were pulling them on kite strings.
My eyes remain closed, but my ears are open. I hear wings pounding at the locked glass windows. Caws sharper than blades. Talons scratching at the latches.
Come to me, creatures of the land!I beckon.
The ground rumbles as my call is answered by an army of mice, cats, foxes, beavers.
I call to the yellowjackets. To the goldenclaws in the stable. To Plume.
And I don’t stop there.
I summon forth the creatures of the waters—fish and eels and salamanders—which means raising the very waters of the raging Ramvik River right here to this throne room.
The ground rumbles beneath me, vibrations rattling the windowpanes.
Wind, I command.Thunder. Quakes. Everything. Come to me!
The floor trembles harder, and I hear the gasps of people around me as they try to process the impossible happening. My summoned creatures burst through the windows and door, flooding the throne room with claws and stingers and sharp beaks.
Screams ring out.
The stone tiles crack and break apart as the Ramvik River rushes upward.
Pins twist in my stomach. It’s exhilarating, this power.
It’s wild.
It’s—
“Sabine?” Basten’s velvet-deep voice calls in my ear, and it’s so shockingly familiar that it tugs me like a rein, tethering me back to myself.
My eyelids flutter open, slowly, as my spirit swims up from the blindingly bright depths of endless light.
There—I can see him. He’s a hazy outline against the brightness. Even blurred, I know the shape of him the way I know my own breath. The flow of his raven hair. The softness hiding in his lips. The way his eyes drown in mine.
My lips purse to call his name, but a different voice interrupts my attempts.
“No.” Vale’s voice is stern yet rings with a strange note of pride. “That isn’t her name. Not anymore. That isn’twhatshe is.”
“I know who she is!” Basten bites out, fierce and sharp. “She’s the only thing in this damn world worth the gods’ wrath!”
At his words, my eyes snap fully open, and I stare up at the beautiful chaos I’ve called to me.
There’s Basten, so handsome it hurts, his eyes bleeding out every fear in the world as he gazes down at me.
Just over his head, more birds than I can count sweep through the arched chamber with deafening caws like shattering glass. Wind and rain roar through the open windows, and thunder rumbles so close that the chandelier sways.
