Not like this. She thought she had accepted the rebellion’s plan to hand Casimir over, but now that she had spent goddess knew how many days in the madman’s company, she knew there was no justice in that kind of fate, only cruelty.

She opened her mouth to tell the Stormlord no, but his attention broke abruptly away from her to the way he had come. He cursed, and a moment later the sky ruptured. From a clear blue sky an explosion of wind spread in every direction. A pinhole of darkness grew into a vortex of thick dark clouds that pulled at the universe around it, dragging in clouds and trees and everything nearby. A twister began to form as darker clouds bulked up in the sky, and the roar of it on the wind drowned out everything.

She did not even hear the Stormlord move. Everything happened so fast. She only felt him jerk the knife from her hand, saw the glint of the blade in the sun, and looked up just in time to see him drag it across Casimir’s throat. She watched the prince’s eyes go wide, felt the spray of blood across her face and the front of her body.

She did not know when she had started screaming, only that she was. But it, like everything else, was lost to the monstrous twister that was sucking up everything in its path not far away.

The Stormlord tucked the knife away at his belt, and then crossed toward her. She scrambled backward, her hands scraping over dirt and rocks. She managed to push herself to her feet, and then she ran. Impossible as it was … she ran toward the twister. She only made it a few paces before a hand caught her wrist, hauling her back.

She sent out a scream for help—audible and inaudible—and jerked hard, the socket of her shoulder twisting painfully. In the distance she saw that the twister had expanded in size, and for a moment, she could have sworn she saw a person caught up in its vicious winds, but then the shadow rotated beyond her view, and she could not be sure.

Something rumbled ominously in the distance, and the Stormlord growled in frustration behind her. As she watched, the rotation of the twister began to slow. The winds screamed as if in protest. In the moment of distraction, Aurora used her free hand to grab the still-bloody knife from the holster on the Stormlord’s belt. And with unflinching surety, she plunged the blade into his chest.

His fingers loosened around her wrist and she broke free, running for the trees. She did not stop until she made it to the edge of the clearing, and only then did she glance back briefly to see how close her captor was.

The clearing where he had kept her was empty, except for the prone body of the dead Casimir Locke.