Together they laid the queen’s frail body out over the small bed frame, and Aurora did her best to plump a flat pillow beneath her mother’s head.

“I’ll move fast. Like lightning made flesh,” she promised. Aurora pressed her lips to her mother’s dry cheek, and closed her into the dark room, praying to the goddess she would still be there when they returned.

Fog, while less destructive to property, is one of the most precarious storms to encounter in person. Its magic, like the low cloud’s slow creeping invasion, is insidious and subtle. In the same way that the dense clouds can obscure an entire mountain from view, so too can it obscure a person’s thinking to the point of imminent danger.

—The Perilous Lands of Caelira

9

Cassius was accustomed to hearing sirens. They sounded when he ate, when he worked, when he slept—or tried to. Sometimes he wondered if the Stormlord had some untold-of magic that allowed him to see into Cassius’s mind, to know when he was the most distracted or vulnerable, because that was always when his storms came calling. It would be more realistic for him to move his living quarters into the dome itself so that he had quicker access to the skies.

But Cassius was a selfish man. He had never denied that.

So like many times before, he was in his office, the princess’s former study, when this siren sounded. He had recently finished dispensing a thunderstorm, a mere annoyance more than anything, and had kicked off his boots and coat to relax for however long he could.

Never long, not anymore. He was so damned tired.

But when the siren sounded, it took even Cassius a few moments to realize that this siren had nothing to do with tempests.

He stood abruptly from his desk, knocking over a bottle of ink in the process. Black liquid spread across his papers like unholy blood, but there was no time to stop it, not even time to be frustrated with himself for his clumsiness.

They were under attack.

Not by storms, but by men.

He hastily pulled on his boots, inserting a spare knife into each one, then grabbed his sword. By the time he entered the main hallway, the edge had left his movements and his steps had grown into a sprawling stalk. This was where he thrived. Give a predator prey and he came alive, no matter how close to death he might feel. His vision sharpened, the exhaustion disappeared, and a hunger rose from deep in his gut.

A fight was exactly what he needed—and not with some faraway magic, but up close, hand to hand, face-to-face, blood drawn. He needed to feel victory. Needed to serve up a defeat that was permanent.

When men died, they stayed that way, unlike the enemies he normally fought.