The light is so bright it could be daylight on the cliff. Baelen lies on his side so close yet so far away from me, blood dripping from the deep slash down the side of his face and jaw. He doesn’t move and I can’t tell if he’s breathing. I can’t tell if he’s alive.
He has to be alive!I have to get to him. I have to help him. I have to know that he’s okay. I reach forward, pulling and struggling, trying to escape the storm’s grip, pushing through the pain, stretching out my arms and hands as far as I can. I scream with effort trying to break the lightning’s grasp.
But as soon as I lift my arms, I sense it—the lightning pulsing through me,travelingthrough me. My eyes widen with horror and realization, but it’s too late. The lightning shrieks through me, through my hands, through my fingers, into the air, across the distance and… into Baelen.
The impact picks him up, a curl of electricity seizing him and lifting him high into the air. His unconscious body glows red and orange, suspended, connected to me through the shining thread. He shudders, jolts, burns. I’m hurting him even more than I already did by pushing him. I’m killing him.
It’s my fault.
It’s all my fault.
I scream with the effort to pull my hands back, trying to curl my fingers into fists and drag my elbows to my sides, forcing my hands down. Finally, finally, I break the connection. The lightning releases him and he plummets to the ground, half on the rocks, half on the ledge, smoke rising from his body in white curls.What have I done?
“Let me go!” I scream into the sky—at the lightning shining back and forth between me and the boiling clouds. It’s a brilliant, white thread connecting me to the expanse above and it widens before my eyes, expanding beyond me, beyond the cliff’s edge, ten feet wide and growing.
At the same time, the clouds explode into thunder and fireworks made of multi-colored lightning. The thunder crashes. The wind howls. A sheet of rain washes Baelen’s blood from the stone.
No, this can’t be…Sobs tear out of me, racking my body. I fight it with everything I have, kicking and struggling, not wanting it to be true.
This is not an ordinary storm. This is…theStorm.
I am the new Storm Princess.
