“I still don’t understand. Constance tried to kill you for the spell,” Emris said, frowning, his voice tight with the hurt and anger that always touched his voice now when he spoke of the woman he had once loved. “And then she abandoned us both to the dead when she might have helped you bring me back. Why do you pay her body so much respect? Why do you feel you owe her anything?”

Lena didn’t know at first. She tried to focus, grasping for the right words. “It’s like … it’s like we’re sisters, of a sort. I’m bound to her, whether I like it or not. Without her, I would not be me. It doesn’t matter what she did. Who she loved. Who she betrayed.” She tilted her face toward his, reached up and traced his three scars with the tips of her fingers. His eyes softened. “There is still so much I don’t know about you,” she said. “And now I’ll have time to find out. I just need to do this one thing. To finish her story—and to start mine.”

He kissed her gently. “All right. I’ll see you at the feast.” He glanced at the sky. “You don’t have long before people start to gather.”

As Emris descended, Lena gazed down at the empty courtyard, the windows lit up in the towers and the wings, the doors of the great hall flung open and yellow light spilling from inside. Duke Winton had ordered an enormous funeral feast—in remembrance and celebration of the lives lost during the dark years. The storm years. The whole castle was holding its breath, waiting to sigh. Waiting to breathe again.

Night had nearly fallen by the time she saw Emris cross the courtyard and disappear into a doorway, heading for his room, the sun a thin red line on the horizon. Lena gazed across the distance to the body of her enemy, the body of her sister.

I’ll give you what you always wanted.

Lena raised her arms and tugged upon the magic inside her heart. The storm responded like a horse left too long in the stables, straining to race across the sky—bolting from her in a motion that pushed her backward against the wall. The rush of it was heady, intoxicating—wonderful. Black clouds rushed from her mouth, spun from her fingers. She felt the cold burn of lightning beneath her lungs, the wild rumble in her blood, the joyous freedom of commanding a power so great it could swallow mountains. The clouds poured into the clear evening sky over Constance’s body, weaving around her, spinning tight, and enveloping her in a coiled embrace. The storm cloud was like a hive, a buzzing, contained thing encasing the top of the tower.