--and no god, no court, no chain, nor time itself will keep me from you.
Atlas
Through stormlight, I watched her. Every flicker of defiance in her voice struck me like lightning down my spine, a reminder of the bond that burned between us. She thought she could push me back into silence, but each word she spat only tethered her tighter.
Gods, the hunger of it. Not the hunger of flesh alone, though that lived there too, but the hunger to be seen. To be recognized after decades of chains and silence. Her gaze had met mine in a dream, her palm against mine in waking, and still she fought to call me curse. Storm or curse, chain or fate, it didn’t matter. She had answered.
Every instinct screamed at me to go to her now. To tear down the walls of her little cabin, to press her storm marked hand to mine until she could no longer deny what already bound us.
The bond hummed in my blood, old as the first storm, certain as thunder finding the ground. I had felt her long before chains ever broke. The night they bound me, the sky itself had whispered her presence into me. But when her hand touched the pillar, when her storm answered mine, I knew.
The world thinks I was freed by lightning, but it was her. It has always been her.
I swallowed the urge, letting the restraint bite deeper than chains ever had. If I broke too soon, she would only run further. So, I stayed in the stormlight, just beyond her reach, watching. Waiting.
She thinks I’m a dream. A phantom carried on thunder.
A low growl curled in my chest as the storm bowed its head to me, as it always had.
The next strike of lightning flared, painting her face in silver fire, stubborn and beautiful in her denial.
I vowed then that when the storm called again, she would not mistake me for something imagined.
Chapter 14
Storm Given Flesh
CAELIRA
His voice still haunted the walls of my cabin long after the storm had passed. Deny me all you like, little storm…you were mine the moment the storm marked you. I had pressed my fists into my temples until the words blurred into silence, but silence was a cowards lie. Every breath I took seemed to carry his vow, like thunder waiting to break.
By morning I thought I had steeled myself. I thought I could shrink back into ledgers and hearth-smoke, into something small enough to be ignored. But Verdant had other plans.
A knock came, sharp and certain, I opened the door to find a man waiting on my step.
He stood tall, built broad as the oaks that shadowed the path, his face a lattice of scars that looked older than his years. A hunter was my first thought, everything about him said it. The bow slung over one shoulder, the steady stance of someone who trusted muscle and silence more than speech.
“Caelira,” he said, his voice rough, like stone and ground under boot. “The council sent me.”
I didn’t need him to finish. “Protect me,” I said flatly.
His hazel eyes flickered once. He didn’t deny it. But in the pause between us, in the way his hand brushed the fletching of his arrows I heard the truth.
They said protect, what they meant was watch.
“Name’s Eryndor,” he added. “You’ll find me nearby.”
“I’d rather not find you at all,” I replied dryly.
Eryndor’s scar-creased face didn’t change. He only inclined his head, like someone who had heard worse and already decided it didn’t matter.
“Walk with me,” he said.
I stood in the doorway a beat too long, knuckles white against the frame. I could have shut the door in his face, bolted it, buried myself back in silence. But silence hadn’t kept the council from sending him, hadn’t kept their eyes off me. The leash was already cinched, refusing to move would only make them tug harder.
I reached for my cloak. The fabric was still damp from yesterday’s rain. I threw it over my shoulders and fastened the clasp tight at my throat. The weight of it felt heavier than the cloth had any right to, like even it knew what waited.
“I don’t need a guard,” I muttered.
