She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)

Something sucked up against Lia’s nose when she woke. She gasped, jerking forward to claw at her face.

It was her veil. Lia wrenched it from her head, her eyes feeling dry and grainy as they found the vaguely familiar footboard, the chest of drawers in which she had no possessions to place, and the wide windows with the view of Chaol she’d gulped down her first night in town.

“How did I get back to my room at the governor’s compound?” she whispered to herself. “I was at the drum tower, by the dry market. There were officials. My father. Ewan standing next to me on the balcony, and…”

And Knox on the wall.

Lia clawed the air around her with her mind, trying to find the auras, the fleeting thoughts, even the familiar buzz of Calsta’s energy inside her, but it was all gone.

Shoving her veil to the floor, Lia slid off her bed. Breaking oaths wasn’t something to be taken lightly. The masters told all Devoted over and over that once Calsta chose you, she would not let you go. That she forgave mistakes, but not easily. Lia shuddered at the memory of touching Ewan, but his thoughts had strayed too far from Calsta when her hands touched his chest. His oaths had been broken too, his aurasight drained just the way hers had been. That was all Lia had wanted.

With his aurasight gone, he hadn’t seen Knox on the wall.

What was even more interesting: Lia hadn’t seen Knox until his aura blew up. She paced to the window, blinking when her mind didn’t sail out to look for her old friend again. Knox’s aura had been hidden somehow, blanked out by some kind of barrier. It had cracked for a moment, but even before she’d touched Ewan, Knox’s aura had begun to dim down to nothing again, as if he’d found a shield that worked against aurasight.

But there wasn’t a way to hide a Devoted aura. That was why every person in the Commonwealth who was touched by Calsta ended up in a seclusion. At least, all the people whom Devoted passed close enough to notice. If hiding were possible, Lia would have been tucked into bed in her family’s home on the other side of the Water Cay, not standing alone in this room with a dirty veil at her feet.

A cool wind slipped through the open window, beckoning Lia to her balcony door. The governor’s home was on the far side of the Water Cay, high enough that she could see all the way to the ocean waves beyond the river mouth, the whole world clear without her veil to turn it a dingy gray. Drinking in the greens and blues and hints of copper roofs, Lia pulled off her outer dress, sticky with yesterday’s sweat. She stepped onto the balcony in her slip, the sun kissing her bare arms, the stone warm against the soles of her feet. It was the first moment in two years when it didn’t matter if anyone saw her.

“Lia?”

Lia startled, wildly searching for the voice, but all she could see was balcony and the ground fifty feet below. She put a hand to her head, the balcony’s stone floor almost seeming to bend under her, the vertigo of not being able to immediately place people by their auras making her dizzy.

“Lia!”

Lia peeked over the balcony’s rail, an even darker worry muddying her thoughts. If someone could get close enough to speak before she saw them, then Ewan could be anywhere in the governor’s house and she didn’t know where.

Just under the stone rail, a girl was hanging from the wall by her fingertips. A girl with red hair. “Dad said you were here,” she rasped. “I couldn’t let you go away again without seeing you.”

“Aria?” Lia’s throat closed like a trap. “How did you…? There are soldiers guarding this house! Don’t you know anything about Roosters? They’d kill you in a second for coming up here.”

“The ones watching this side of the building aren’t very smart. Auroshes are very interested in fighting each other. And people. And plants. And puppies—”

“What did you do to the auroshes? Don’t you know that they could kill you in… less than a second?”

“They like me.” Lia’s little sister pulled herself up another foot, peering through the railing. “Are you okay? You look…”

“Happy.” Lia knelt down, drinking her sister’s freckled face in. “So happy to see you.”

“I was going to say naked-ish.” Aria eyed Lia’s bare arms and feet.

Something hot and ecstatic bubbled up in Lia’s throat, coming out without asking permission. A laugh. She hadn’t laughed in—

A fist pounded against her bedroom door, the sound shuddering through her. “Hide!” she rasped at her sister, pulling her up over the railing. Lia shepherded Aria to a potted tree at the corner of the balcony, and her back straightened when the pounding came again, this time even harder.

A voice leaked through the door. “Are you awake?”

Her stomach dropped. It was Ewan. Lia was blind without Calsta.

“Lia? I’m coming in.”

After checking to make sure Aria was hidden, Lia darted into her room and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a light summer cloak, meant to cover every inch of her. The door slammed open, and Ewan was in the room, crossing the floor, pushing her hard against the wall.

“What in Calsta’s name—”

Ewan shoved his lips against hers, trapping her against the wall.

In her mind, Lia’s fists balled. Her elbow broke his nose, a punch cracked one of his ribs. She executed a perfect kick to his head and watched his skull slam into the floor.… But her actual body, the one being crushed into a wall, had turned to glass. Immobile. Petrified. Seconds from shattering.

He kissed her neck, buried his face against her shoulder, breathing in so deep, it was like he was trying to consume her. “I knew you’d be waiting for me. You want this—”

“N-no!” Lia finally found herself again, squirming as he ground her spine into the wall. “I don’t want…” His hands seemed to be everywhere, as if he’d grown ten extra ones when he walked into the room, every inch of her so very exposed. “Get away from me! You forget yourself and your oaths—”

“You know they chose you for me. You chose me.” He pulled back long enough to look into her eyes. “Our oaths are already broken. You touched me. You were waiting for me practically naked.… It’s obvious this is right.” His fingers on her shoulder pulled at the cloak until it slipped off. “It doesn’t make sense to wait any longer. This is Calsta’s will.”

Lia gasped as he stuck a hand into her tangled hair, pulling it back from her face. He stared at her, his grease-yellow eyes sliding across her. “You weren’t this freckly before, were you?”

The words set her free from the sick paralysis holding her prisoner. Lia knifed her hand into Ewan’s ribs and kicked the side of his knee. He reared back, his hold on her loosening enough so she darted under his arm, sprinting for the door. She’d always been fast, even before she’d had Calsta’s energy to call on. There would be Roosters somewhere on this floor—

Fingers grabbed her hair, dragging her back. “If you think fighting makes you more devoted to Calsta—” Ewan’s voice bit off with an oath, and suddenly the hand tearing at her scalp was gone.

There was a flash of red hair and a streak of blood, and then a small set of hands grabbing her arm. “Run!” Aria croaked.

Following her sister’s pull, Lia stumbled toward the balcony door. She broke off the latch with the flat of her palm, then pulled the door shut behind her, her mind in a panic. A shattered latch wasn’t going to stop Ewan. He was trained to do more damage than any common soldier even without Calsta’s help.

So was Lia. But it had been two years since she’d been allowed a sword.

She certainly didn’t have one now. What had Master Helan said before she left? To remember what she needed. To believe that Calsta knew it too, and then to let go of her fears and wants and needs and trust Calsta to provide. The problem was, letting go meant she had to believe Calsta cared what Lia needed, something she hadn’t found evidence for in all six years she’d worn the Warlord’s insignia.

Aria’s thick coppery brows buckled together as Ewan’s weight slammed into the door. She looked up at her sister. “What do we do?”

Lia grabbed Aria’s hand and pulled her to the balcony rail. With one quick prayer to Calsta asking for forgiveness, she helped her sister over the barrier.

Another slam against the door shattered the window, glass skittering across the stone balcony. But Lia was over the rail and climbing down, Aria just below her.

“Lia!” Ewan yelled from above, bits of glass still flying. He hadn’t gotten through yet. Where were the Roosters? They’d brought six warriors with them, and none had even come to investigate.

Lia climbed faster, the rough brick cutting into her fingers. The farther down she climbed, the harder strings binding her to Calsta seemed to pull. So she began to cut. The cold, lonely view. Snip. Her veil and gloves in a lumpy pile on the floor. Snip, snip. The threads that had kept her from hugging her own father, from even looking him in the eye. Snip. Vivi, her one companion…

Lia closed her eyes, a tear squeezing out to burn down her cheek. She was not meant for a life bound like a fly, waiting for the spider to come.

Warm air billowed up through the cloak across her bare legs. Aria’s red curls beneath her lit like fire in the sun, her sister cackling like an old witch as they jumped off the wall.

The sound of the door crashing open overhead was almost quiet in Lia’s ears when she started to run, Ewan’s voice a heinous, indistinct roar.

Snip, snip, snip.