He starts to speak, but footsteps echo down the corridor. Guards responding to the explosion. We have minutes, maybe less, before Caspian’s forces find us.
I meet Torin’s eyes and feel his determination through the bond. Feel his love. Feel his absolute readiness to face whatever comes next.
“Caspian’s at the dam,” I say.
“Then we stop him.” He pulls me to my feet. Water streams from our bodies, pooling at our feet. “Can you fly?”
I spread my wings—fully healed, transformed, powerful. “Can you keep up?”
His smile is fierce. “Try me.”
We run toward the exit, toward the surface, toward the battle that will decide the fate of thousands. But I’m not afraid anymore. Not of drowning, not of dying, not of losing myself in connection.
Because I’m not alone. I’m not Zara Stormwright trying to prove she’s more than her brother’s shadow. I’m not a diplomat playing it safe to avoid embarrassing the family name.
I’m the storm. We’re the storm. And storms don’t ask permission.
They change everything.
15
TORIN
I’ve spent my whole life in the water. I never knew I was drowning until she taught me to breathe.
We run through the corridors of the Citadel, and everything feels different. Wrong and right simultaneously. My body moves with a speed I’ve never possessed—not just faster, but more efficient. Every step generates tiny electrical charges that propel me forward. The water I sense through the walls responds to me differently now, carrying information faster, clearer, like I’ve suddenly developed a sixth sense I didn’t know was possible.
Zara keeps pace beside me, and through the bond I feel her wonder matching mine. She’s not gasping for breath the way a surface-dweller should after running through deep corridors. Her transformed lungs are processing the damp air with impossible efficiency.
“Can you feel it?” I manage between breaths.
“Everything.” She touches the wall as we round a corner, and lightning sparks from her fingertips—controlled, precise, nothing like the wild charges from before. “The stone. The waterin the walls. Your heartbeat.” She looks at me. “I can feel your heartbeat like it’s my own.”
I can feel hers too. Two rhythms that should be separate but have merged into something synchronized. When she breathes in, I feel the expansion of her lungs. When I gather water, she feels the pull of my magic like it’s happening in her own body.
We’re not just bonded anymore. We’re connected at every level.
Footsteps echo ahead—guards, at least four, judging by the displacement of air and water I can sense. Caspian’s loyalists. We have seconds before confrontation.
“Ready to test these new abilities?” Zara asks, electricity already dancing along her arms.
I shift partially—scales emerging, gills opening—and feel the charge she’s generating conduct through my body without pain. With pleasure. Like I’m finally complete. “Ready.”
The guards round the corner and stop dead, staring at us.
I don’t recognize them. Young. Maybe new recruits Caspian pulled into his radical faction with promises of glory and reclamation. They see my scales shot through with gold and Zara’s storm-gray feathers, and their confusion is palpable.
“Stand down,” I order. Sentinel authority in every word. “The High Elder?—”
“The High Elder has been relieved of duty,” the lead guard cuts me off. He’s maybe twenty, scales still bright with youth. “Elder Caspian has assumed emergency authority. You’re traitors. Both of you.”
“We’re trying to save you from genocide,” Zara says flatly. “Caspian’s going to destroy the Great Stone Dam. Thousands will die.”
“Thousands of surface-dwellers,” another guard spits. “Good.”
The casual cruelty of it hits me like a fist. These are my people. Deep Runners I’m supposed to protect. And they’ve been twisted by grief and isolation into something I barely recognize.
“You think drowning children makes you strong?” I step forward. “You think becoming murderers saves us? We’re dying. Have been for generations. Caspian’s plan won’t change that—it’ll just drag the surface world down with us.”
