Chapter 1
A vivid blush stained the evening sky, daubing horse-tail clouds in rosy hues. Diffuse lightning, the kind most often appearing over the ocean in summer, pulsed behind those wispy clouds like a dying heartbeat. I wasn’t trying for artistry, though. I was aiming for lethality, brutality, and raw power. Yet, all I had managed was this idyllic scene that might have inspired an artist’s creative urges, but not my enemies’ fear or respect.
Clenching my teeth, I closed my eyes and strained every muscle as my mind reached for the lightning like a lasso lunging for the neck of a wild horse. Static crackled across my skin, raising fine hairs along my arms and neck. Despite my best efforts, I’d only managed to release a meager discharge of negative ions in the heavens—a force as feeble as a candle flame in a windstorm. “Come on, Evie,” I said to myself. “Get your head on straight.”
I rolled my shoulders, flexed my fingers, and imagined a sharp lightning bolt slicing a jagged wound across the atmosphere. Thunder, glorious and deep like a growling beast, rumbled in my memory...and there it remained, locked in my dreams and recollections, never finding release in the real world—not through me, anyway. The last time the storms had responded to my commands, I had been standing in a forest on the border of Aeolus Daeg’s estate in the country of Dreutch. Gideon Faust, my betrayer and savior, had pursued me into those dark woods, and I held the storms over him as threat and warning.
But in this field on the outskirts of Prigha, capital of Bonhemm, the thunder ignored me. Perhaps I had strayed too far from my home in Inselgrau. Maybe I was too withdrawn from the Stormbourne legacy. Or had my own self-doubts defeated me? Most likely, my failures resulted from some of all those things combined.
As I stood there, locked in a cycle of useless, self-defeating thoughts, the rosy horizon deepened to violet, and a few audacious stars pricked through the darkness. The swishing of tall grasses announced an approaching visitor.
“Is it time to come in already?” I asked.
Gideon stopped close behind me, and his familiar scent carried on the breeze—sweat, leather, horses, and hay. My heart juddered, a momentary syncopation in its regular rhythm. Despite all that had happened between us, his nearness still unsettled me.
“It’s nearly dark,” he said. “You’ve been out here for hours.”
My shoulders slumped. “I’m well aware.”
He squeezed my arm and let go. Although fleeting, his warmth bled through my blouse’s thin fabric and seeped into my skin. “Marlis is hungry. It’s your turn to cook.”
I faced him, frowning. “Is it? Already?”
His nose wrinkled. “Unfortunately so.”
“My cooking’s not all bad.”
He chuckled as the breeze stirred loose strands of honey-colored hair around his face. He looked like an imp, if imps could be large and imposing. “Not if you’re starving. Which I am.”
“Come on then.” I led the way out of the field. “There’s bread and cheese at least. I don’t think even I could mess that up.”
“Never say never, Evie.”
We turned onto a dirt path trailing away from the farmland bordering the old city of Prigha. I had practiced storm gathering in that field nearly every evening since we arrived in Bonhemm the previous month. My greatest success had come the week before, on a night when the skies were already filled with clouds, wind, and rain. I had reached for the lightning and stroked it with my will. Like a contented cat, the lightning purred beneath my touch, but the moment I nudged it with a gentle command, it hissed at me, baring claws and teeth before darting away.
Gideon and I reached the city’s outskirts and crossed an ancient stone bridge spanning the Vivan river. Lamplighters were working their way through the streets, and a dim glow illuminated Prigha Castle. The ancient fortress rested atop a hillock at the city’s center like a giant slumbering dragon with jutting scales and a long winding tail wrapped around itself. In reality, those jutting scales were merely the castle’s multi-spired roofline, and the winding tail was a long brick wall encircling its courtyard.
In another time, in another world, I might have ventured to Prigha Castle and visited the newly instated empress as a peer. But now...? Gideon and I turned down a side street the lamplighters had ignored, trying our best to sidestep puddles. Sometimes the street collected pools of harmless rain. More often than not, those puddles harbored a noxious concoction of human, animal, and industrial waste. An unfamiliar man slumped in a dark doorway, and as we hurried by, he coughed, retched, and spat, adding another bit of foulness to the street.
Once upon a time, I had lived in the comfortable home of an elemental god. Compared to the legends of our ancestors, my father was diminished—more mortal than deity—but he’d commanded thunder and lightning as well as any general commands an army.
Look at me now.... How far the mighty have fallen.
Although, I would have argued I had never been very mighty.
Except for a few displays of cunning and uncanny power I could not seem to repeat, I had been, and still remained, a rather unremarkable young woman. Presently, I lived in a tatty flat at the top of a flight of rickety stairs in the slums of Prigha. The last battle I had fought, and nearly lost, was waged against a family of hostile rats plotting to overtake our meager pantry.
“I don’t mind the dark and the dirt so much,” Gideon muttered as I turned the lock at our apartment door. It swung open on rusty hinges that squealed, broadcasting our entrance. “But why must everything smell of piss?”
Marlis looked up from her seat beside an oil lamp in our sitting room. A bundle of fabric filled her lap, and she pinched a slim sewing needle between forefinger and thumb. Although smaller and daintier, she closely resembled her brother, with his gray eyes and caramel brown hair. She smiled, and my earlier angst and irritation bled away. Gideon’s sister radiated peace. An innate healer, she brought comfort with her mere presence. “Gideon,” she chided. “Language.”
He harrumphed and stepped into the area set aside for the kitchen, his big frame filling the small space. A pot of water warmed on the stove, and he ladled it over his hands in the dish pan. I squeezed in beside him and mirrored his actions. We shared a bar of stiff lye soap that stung the cracks in my knuckles and cuticles. Washing laundry and darning socks chapped my skin, but the chores also paid my share of the rent. Gideon worked in the empress’s stables, mostly as a laborer—cleaning stalls, grooming the horses, pitching hay.
The stable master must have noticed his considerable talents with the livestock, though, because he’d been spending more time in the training paddocks, or so Gideon had said. I hadn’t visited the stables, yet. Work and storm chasing had left me little time for idle social calls.
Despite what I’d said, I hadn’t forgotten it was my turn to make dinner. Earlier, on my way out to the field, I’d stopped and bought a few short, dried sausages from a street vendor. I removed them from my cloak pockets and set them on the counter while Gideon unwrapped the bread and brought out what was left of our cheese. We kept both hidden beneath a sturdy wooden crate weighed down with a few old horse shoes. The rats hadn’t managed to gnaw through our homemade bread safe, although I had caught one trying to push it off the counter several nights before.
I had bought something else, too, and my pockets were deeper than Gideon probably suspected. To our meager supper, I added a skimpy square of chocolate.
He paused, knife poised over the cheese, and squinted. “Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded. “It’s been a while since we’ve indulged.”
Floorboards squeaked as Marlis stood and crossed the room. She peered over my shoulder and gasped. “Evie, you shouldn’t have. You should be saving your money.”
“For what?” I asked bitterly. “To fund a revolution?”
Gideon snorted and resumed his slicing.
“For whatever it might cost you to find the Fantazikes again,” she said. “You never know when you’ll need to buy a train ticket or pay a ship’s fare. You have to be prepared for any possibility.”
I huffed, and my breath stirred the dark hairs that had escaped my braid. “It’s been a month, and we haven’t been able to find a trace of the Fantazikes. It’s as if they launched their airships and flew to the moon.”
“Are you saying you’ve given up?” she asked.
I eased Gideon’s knife from his hand and sliced the chocolate into three pieces. “I’m saying I love chocolate, and I could use a little sweetness in my life today.” His hazel stare met mine as I plopped a morsel on my tongue and sighed. “Tell me there will be unlimited chocolate in the afterlife. If so, I could die today and be happy.”
His gaze narrowed. “Don’t say that, Evie.”
