And maybe that was the worst of it, not that the path was chosen, but that some hidden part of me wanted to follow it.
Chapter 13
The Voice
CAELIRA
Ihad spent years trying to become small enough to be ignored, keeping my head low, my voice soft, my hands always busy. Ink stains, kneaded bread, balanced ledgers, all safe marks of a life that left no trace. If I didn’t draw the storm’s eye, maybe it would forget me.
But storms don’t forget.
They wait. They circle. They press against the shutters until the wood splinters.
And I was starting to realize… maybe I didn’t want them to.
The memory of the Hall still burned in my mind’s eye, the looks, the accusations, their hunger to bind what they didn’t understand. They wanted me to cower, to kneel, to be silent. But silence had never saved anyone. It hadn’t saved my parents, and it wasn’t saving me.
As the thunder rumbled outside, the sound cracked through me like a dare, sharp and alive. My hand burned, flashing silver, and for the first time I didn’t look away, I welcomed it.
The storm wasn’t outside, not anymore.
It was in me.
And the truth that terrified me the most was that I no longer only feared it. Some part of me wanted to answer back.
I thought of the oak and the dream that followed when I laid my hand against its bark. Silver had veined through it beneath my palm, bright as lightning caught in living wood. In sleep, I had felt the memory of chains carved deep into its grain, the echo of him bound there, too much storm for the world that tried to hold him.
But the tree had not broken.
And when I touched it, it had not recoiled.
The current that moved through its marrow had not felt like a curse. It had felt like recognition. As if what ran through the oak ran through me as well.
My fathers unfinished story came to mind, the man bound in stormglass, cursed for being too much storm. The storm does not forget. It always comes to collect tis debts. For years I thought that was meant to frighten me into obedience. But now I wondered if he had been speaking of something else, something too dangerous to finish.
And my mother’s voice wove through the memory like a tether. Never let them see you afraid. I had taken it once as a plea for safety, but now it felt like a command.
The council had called me dangerous. The town had called me cursed. And for the first time, I didn’t want to run from either.
Something in me straightened, quiet but undeniable. A seed of defiance pushing against the soil it had been buried under for too long. I could not make myself smaller forever and I didn’t want to.
I closed my hand, feeling the pulse of silver beneath. I lifted my chin to the room as though to bind myself with my own words. “You are not theirs to chain.”
The words should have stayed in my chest, fading like breath. Instead, they seemed to echo outward, into the rafters, into the air, into the storm raging outside itself. And something echoed back.
At first, I thought it was only the memory of dreams. The ruins. The chains. His eyes like stormcloud split with lightning. But memory doesn’t speak and this… this spoke.
Not aloud.
Not in thought, exactly.
It came in the hush between thunder and strike, threaded into the pulse of my hand, words I couldn’t have invented if I tried.
Caelira.
My breath snagged on the sound of it. The same voice I had heard once before, outside my door, and I swore I had imagined it. The hearth was calm, the shutters closed, nothing moved, and yet I felt the weight of a voice inside the silence, shaping itself around my name.
I rose to my feet, heartbeat loud enough to shame the quiet. “Not real,” I whispered to the empty room.
