1
The first crackles of lightning scatter across my skin as the perfect storm swirls above me. Its been building since yesterday—from the moment I last subdued it.
The Storm Vault is so high that normally I can’t see the eye of the storm, but this one’s growing so fast that the dark center is an expanding mass before my eyes.
It’s coming for me.
The Vault is constructed of thick stone, hundreds of feet high and wide, and lined with about a million protective spells. There’s only one way in and one way out—through an ante-room that leads to another airtight room. There are three sealed doors between me and the rest of Erawind.
I don’t kid myself. It’s not the doors or the spells that keep the storm under control.
It’s me.
I call the powerful force to me, coaxing it down, ignoring the intense fear that rises inside me.
Curse my survival instincts.If I listened to them, I’d run as far and fast as I could away from this place. But there’s no escape from my daily task.
Centuries ago, the gargoyles conjured dark magic to create the perfect storm to wipe out the elven race. Hundreds of elves lost their lives while the Elven Command tried to subdue the storm—but they couldn’t destroy it. Realizing they had no choice but to contain its fury, the elves created the Storm Vault and tried to trap the storm inside.
But even their most powerful spells couldn’t keep it here. At the moment when the storm’s fury would have destroyed the last spellcaster, her young daughter burst through the Vault’s defenses and ran to her. That’s when a miracle happened. The girl absorbed the power of the storm into her body. The storm calmed for the first time.
That girl was the first Storm Princess. I’m the fourth.
I’ll stay in my role until another princess is revealed and replaces me. There’s no retirement. No choice. If I try to leave, the storm will follow me.
Until it latches onto another Storm Princess, I’m a living, breathing lightning rod. And if I die before another princess is revealed, the storm will be unleashed. We’re connected, the storm and I. As long as I’m alive, the perfect storm remains under control.
Icontrol it. Even if it doesn’t feel that way.
I murmur, “C’mon, Beast, what have you got for me today?”
I’ve been calling it the ‘beast’ for as long as I’ve been coming to the Vault—every day since I was eighteen when the storm chose me. That was seven years ago.
I stand firm as a streak of lightning blazes from the distance, striking me as fast as I can blink. It zaps the soft spot between my shoulder and my collarbone, and despite my preparedness, a soft ‘oh’ escapes my lips. Somehow, it always knows where to hurt me most. I roll my shoulders and focus on my breathing, knowing that if I stay calm, the strikes won’t hurt as much.
My job is simple: absorb the elements. Take the worst of the storm into my body to keep it from exploding from the Vault. I do this every day. Every day the storm calms, and then it builds again. Again and again, I come here to calm it. I should be used to my daily ritual, but somehow the storm always finds ways to surprise me.
Right now, it’s the lightning I need to worry about.
Another strike licks fire across the back of my neck and I know it’s time to move. I lift my hands above my head, slowly drawing them down and across my body, controlling my breathing as I step into a warrior’s routine.
The princess before me was a dancer named Mai Reverie. I don’t have the grace for dancing. Combat moves are the closest I get.
The next strike falls directly through the circle of my arms, but it curves at the last moment. It follows the angle of my arms, curling to match my form, traveling an inch above my skin, moving with me instead of against me.
Another strike follows, joining the first and spreading across my body, curling around me in a white and blue light show. Strike by strike, the lightning follows my movements. As fast as I absorb one strike, another one hits, but the contact is soft now. Sometimes I feel like the storm is an angry child who wants only to be noticed, to have someone take care of it.
The first time the lightning moved with me, nobody believed me. Only my personal advisor, Elise, is allowed into the ante-room to watch me through the large glass panels on that side of the Vault. One day, my bonded partner will be allowed in here too, but for now Elise is my only witness and even she struggles to believe what she sees.
The lightning plays across my skin and taps my shoulder.
I grin. “Oh, you want my attention, do you?”
But my smile quickly fades, because the light show disperses and I realize that the tap to my shoulder was a warning. The atmospheric force bearing down on me is stronger than ever. It presses against me with suffocating density; like a blanket through which I can’t breathe. I gasp against the sudden pressure. Then, just as fast, it lifts.
I look up and wish I hadn’t. Storm clouds gather at unnerving speed. The lightning gives way to something worse.
Rain.
