My sister-cousins flank me, glaring at him. He winces and almost lets go, poking out his bottom lip a little. “Don't be idiots, the three of you! The rescue groups?—”
“Are no more qualified to enter a burning building and search for survivors than I am. Let go.”
He begins to slide into a full-on adult-ish male pout when Murungaru jogs up. He glances at Numair's hand, giving my stubborn chevalier a mild look—one ofBaba'smild looks.
Numair's expression grows stubborn. “I'm not letting the girls rush into a?—”
As I step forward, yanking him with me if that's really how he wants this night to go, there's another drumbeat of thunder and seconds later, a crash of lightning halfway between me and the burning building.
An explosion.
I'm thrown, reminding me of the day High Fae picked me up and flung me into a tree like a kid tossing a frisbee. I land on my back away from the blast, ears ringing, chunks of rock and debris raining down as I throw my arms up to cover my head, hastily erecting a shield against any magical elements.
My cloak catches on fire and I roll to put it out. When I roll onto my back again, about to flip to my feet, terrible pain tears through my chest. I glance down at the jagged piece of wood impaling my abdomen—and stare, shocked. I can't remove it unless I want to bleed out, and I should stay still but I need to move in case there's another?—
Pain in my head, then black as I fade. . .
And wake to the misty place, a dull echo in my head and abdomen reassuring me I'm still attached to my body. I sit up, vision clear and ears no longer ringing, and stare.
The Prince, clad in a sleeveless gray robe open to the waist, his blue-black hair draped over his shoulders, kneels, cradling a small body in his arms. He isn't alone.
Three shadowy figures surround him, at least two coming into clarity as I watch.
A black Dragon rests a massive chin on its claws, his deep blue eyes watching me with ancient calm. His tail lies in a semicircle around Renaud and the others. A tall two-legged male clad in black-and-gold scaled and spiky armor stands at the Dragon’s side, a broadsword at his side. His head is helmed—not even a slit for eyes. And closest to Renaud, the shadowy outline of a winged male. He crouches, still but ready, his wings raised behind him.
Every instinct in me screams to back away, but Renaud’s anguish reels me in. There are tears down his pale cheeks, his still face. He rocks the boy in his arms and I flinch when I realize I'm looking at white-blond hair, the small body dressed in a child's white-and-blue formal Court robes.
The lightning followed me here, illuminating the dense grayness, and I scramble to my knees when I see another body, the mist drawing away to reveal?—
I crawl forward, every self-preservation instinct gone.
“Mother.”
The Prince doesn't look up, but the lightning strikes over and over and as I close in on them, a howl rises. Wind, a demon's shrieks, a maelstrom I recognize. It whips my hair and pummels my side, sending me sprawling.
Recovering, I push to my kneels, crawling forward when the Prince looks up.
I freeze.
His eyes. . .his eyes are. . .mad. There are no whites, only the pale moonstone gray struck through with striations of black and blue, and I swear I see lightning in his eyes too, or perhaps evening stars.
He stares and I don't know if he sees me; I don't care.
I lurch forward, toward my mother's still body dressed in a thin linen sheath, her true gold hair in two shelled and beaded braids down her chest, her skin golden brown from days of sun and sand. She'd been porcelain pale the years I'd known her.
His pale lips move, forming a word, and I can't tell whose name he speaks. Embriel, Muriel, Aerinne. Or if it’s just a denial. All I can tell is the emotion he's feeling ravages him. Blank, eerie angelic beauty, the eyes of a demigod's shattered mind, and the storm at his back.
Sara al hudar, sa ni rasha—Call the Storm and We will Answer. The motto of House Montague.
His storm.
This. This is all the rage and grief and anguish and denial I've been searching for every time we meet, confused when I find nothing. . .dreading its emergence.
If I’d had his storm, his lightning, I would have destroyed the city years ago, so I can’t in good conscience blame him now.
Not when I stare at the child in his arms.
He doesn't move, staring into my face. If he sees me at all. I drop my gaze from his and stare at Embriel—the boy Renaud must see him as now—then I look at my mother. The younger version he must remember her as.
