Kiran’s voice was low and urgent, and it was the closest Aurora had been to him in days. Her hands felt freezing in comparison to his. She tilted her head up enough to meet his eyes. “I cannot run from it forever. I could run from this world into the next and still get no farther away.”

His dark eyes bored into hers, and the intensity coming off him melted away some of her fatigue. She gently shook his hand off, and began working on the buckles again, less frenzied this time. “This is who I am. I either accept it, or live forever as a fragment of a whole. I told you on the night it happened I would never wish the world smaller, not even to make it easier. My mind has not changed.”

She finished with the line of fastenings and peeled back the leather until a faint white-blue glow lit the space between them. She met his eyes once, firmly, and it was clear he still disagreed. But he had given up his right to have an opinion when he ran from what they had at the first sign of difficulty. He might be content to spend the rest of his life running from the truth, but she was not.

So Aurora stepped around him and into the open. The flickering of the light grew stronger as she met Zephyr’s gaze, and she pulled the leather down enough that the skyfire branching out beneath her skin became visible to the woman.

“You can trust my word because I am not like the other Stormlings. I am what happens when the magic of a spirit witch combines with the lineage of a Stormling.”

For the first time since they had met, Zephyr looked uncomfortable, perhaps bordering on afraid. She did not look away from the storm that resided in Aurora’s chest as she said, “You—you are like him? Like the man outside the gates?”

“Not like him, no. But I can do what he can do. I can call a storm to do my bidding if I so choose.”

Her jaw slack, Zephyr shook her head and asked, “Then why do you need me? Why bother with the rebellion at all? Just go in and take your kingdom.”

“As I said, I am not like the man outside our gates. I have no wish to cause destruction, no wish to bring another unneeded death upon this city. I want to protect it. See it thrive in safety and freedom. If this becomes an all-out fight between my magic and the Stormlord’s with the Locke family in between, I am not sure anything or anyone would survive. I don’t know the answer yet, but I know throwing another storm into the sky is not it.”