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

Lia drank a sip of her watery tea, sighing in boredom as the second-to-last interview let the door swing shut behind him. Not a single person in this city would so much as frown at the Warlord’s carriage as it passed, much less plot against her. The Warlord had been so certain something was going on in Chaol, but based on the readings Lia had done from behind her screen, the most likely revolt would be directly related to the subpar refreshments in the waiting area outside her interview room.

Pushing a long red curl out of her eyes, Lia called, “Next please.” She fingered the veil where it lay discarded on the desk beside her, ready to be finished with this whole ordeal.

Footsteps entered the room, a man’s aura blazing into Lia’s mind. His thoughts were focused on the lukewarm tea in his cup and a fond glimmer for a black horse with a star on its forehead. Before Lia could dig deeper than the fleeting images at the surface of the official’s mind, a child ran through his thoughts.

She had red hair. Skinned knees. Freckles that Lia could have mapped out herself because it was her own face she was staring at, but young. Lia’s gloved hand shook as she carefully replaced her teacup in its saucer, looking down at her notes. No names were given as part of the list of men and women she had to read, only titles. Valas. Second only to the governor.

Lia’s family had done well in her absence.

Her father’s aura had been the first Lia noticed back when she was only six. Startled questions to her nurse about the ghost hugging Daddy’s head had gotten Master Helan to come from the Rentara seclusion to test her. The Warlord didn’t take Devoted until they were eleven at the earliest, but those five years meant to be a gift to Lia and her family had felt like counting down to her own death, every moment of Lia’s childhood seasoned with dread for the man in the veil who would take her away. Her father had cried as he’d hugged her goodbye.

He was remembering that now too, the sight of her riding away with Master Helan, like his life was an embroidered tapestry and the Devoted had just taken one of the threads and pulled, leaving a gaping hole.

“Am I supposed to… do something?” His voice was exactly the same as it ever had been, cocoa from the far south.

Just sit still. Let your mind go blank. That was what Lia was supposed to say, but the words were lodged tight in her throat. I’m right here. I can see you missing me. It couldn’t be half so much as I miss you. But those were the wrong words, so Lia gripped the table, forcing herself to focus. Keep the Warlord safe. Read all the officials’ auras. All the servants, the gardeners, anyone who will have access…

“I don’t mean to be rude.” He was talking again. “I know Devoted can’t give out much information, but my daughter went into your seclusion about six years ago. Could you tell me if she’s doing well? She was our world… and we’re so proud,” he hurried to add. “If you had news of her, perhaps it would help me to miss her a little less.”

Lia tried to breathe, but her chest was knotted tight. One little sob escaped her throat, and the valas’s thoughts seemed to go cloudy, Lia’s own emotions too loud for her to read what she needed from her father’s aura.

His chair creaked as he shifted in his seat. “Lia?”

“You can go.” She choked it out, knowing any more would result in consequences.

He sat for a moment longer, her emotions still a swirl of thunderheads obscuring her sight into his aura. But that was worse because she wanted to see what he was thinking. To see herself as a little child bursting with light the way he remembered her.

Devoted were supposed to be free from petty society, political marriages, the world. But Lia couldn’t help feeling the world had been stolen from her instead. That every useless laugh, every moment of wasted time she’d observed from behind her veil, was precious and beautiful. She savored what she’d seen in her father’s thoughts, the love that surrounded her in his memory.

The only thing that surrounded her now was a screen.

“It is you, isn’t it?” He whispered it. “Are you all right? Are they treating you well? We love you so much, Little Spot.”

Her throat clenched. Little Spot. She’d forgotten he used to call her that. “You have to go.”

The floor creaked when he stood, but he didn’t move toward the door immediately. It was a waiting silence, a drowning one, one she wanted to break with her voice or his.

Then the door opened. Shut. And she was alone.

Lia pulled off her gloves and put her bare hands to her face. Her cheeks were warm and wet, tears like rain on her fingertips. Ewan’s aura approached the door outside, so she hurriedly scrubbed them dry and grabbed her discarded veil.

The door opened, Ewan already talking before he was in the room. “Are you going to come out? That’s the last one for…” He pushed the screen aside without asking, trailing off when he found her frantically pinning the veil back into place. “Oh, sorry.”

She could see from his thoughts that he was not sorry.

Picking up her gloves, Lia pushed aside her notes and stood, edging around him to get through the doorway. This time he didn’t move to make way for her, her skirts and veil catching on the buckles lining his cuirass as she passed.

Nodding to the Rooster standing guard outside, Lia nearly ran to the balcony door. I gave you my life, Calsta. The words anchored her to the earth as she pushed through the door to the open air. I gave you everything the world could offer me.

She crashed into the balcony’s stone railing, her hands groping for something to hold on to, the city spread out below her, bristling on with life as if hers weren’t about to come undone. She’d given everything, but Calsta had given her nothing but emptiness in return. It had been six years since she’d seen her mother’s smile. Two since the veil had been settled on her head, turning her into an object of value but kept in a box so she stayed pristine. Gloves were a precaution against touching another human, one Master Helan had insisted upon, and her naked hands felt rebellious. Air gusted up from below to steal inside her coverings as she clutched at the railing, the smooth stone warm against her fingers.

One year since Knox had left. Her brother in the seclusion hadn’t even said goodbye before he’d left her so horribly alone.

Sounds filtered up from outside the drum tower compound, the dry market’s air crammed tight with laughter, children playing and singing. Friends joking with one another over a fruit stand, a young woman gazing up at a young man in a university uniform, her mind so full of him that Lia couldn’t find anything else in her thoughts. In the distance, the city wall stood like the edge of a teacup, and all the deliciousness she couldn’t have was trapped inside its bowl so far below her.

Ewan stepped out onto the balcony behind her, his thoughts a salivating mess. The powerful flare of gold around him seemed to be siphoned away a little with every step he took toward her, as if he’d contracted wasting sickness. It probably wouldn’t go entirely unless he touched her.

Until he touched her.

Lia shivered.

“Look for Knox one more time. Please, Lia.” He bent toward her to whisper it, his lips almost touching her ear. “I swear I’ll never ask you again.”

Lia scuttled back. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of Knox dead somewhere in the city. She could still remember him arriving the day after she did in the seclusion’s primary hall, the way his nose scrunched when he’d taken his first bite of lentils. The hollowness inside him, as if he’d left more behind than his home, his family.

“I’ll take care of you,” she’d said. “If you’ll watch out for me, too.” And so they’d eaten, back-to-back, wishing their meal had some taste. Ewan had been there too, loudly complaining about the food and taking it poorly when Knox told him to shut his mouth.

They’d fought, the masters looking on. Knox had won.

When Knox had cut his way out of the seclusion, of course they’d given the search to Ewan, the one Devoted who would have died just to wipe Knox’s name from the rosters. Lia had volunteered to help back then, thinking maybe she’d find Knox first.

So she could ask why he’d left.

Why he hadn’t taken her with him.

Now Knox was gone, his name on Ewan’s glistening mouth. Her parents were gone, out of reach even though they were right here. Her sister, Aria, all freckles and bared teeth. Lia would never be bitten by her again. She wouldn’t see her sister’s first khonin knot tied when she turned thirteen, wouldn’t see her graduate from the university. Aria could be dead in the ground for all Lia knew.

Lia chewed on her lip, the coppery taste of blood leaking onto her tongue. They’d taken her sword, exchanged her fight training for mind-reading lessons with old Master Helan, his voice thin and papery and so very quiet, as if hearing thoughts made everything else too loud. She was too loud for him, or too young, or too proud, and her first lessons had been tainted by a fierce anger from him that she didn’t understand. It was as if her teacher hated Lia under the veil just as much as she did herself.

What else would Calsta take? Was there anything left? Anger churned through Lia, her aurasight lashing out like a monster, its many arms shooting to the farthest reaches of Chaol in one violent swoop. It crawled down the streets, snaked through the boats in the wide canals between islands, sank into the chinks between stones in the wall. It pushed into malthouses, passed over a man on a horse with a little freckled girl in his thoughts, headed toward her family’s home on the Water Cay. Every aura in Chaol was white.

But then something changed.

An aura high on the river wall suddenly burst out in flickers of gold. Lia’s eyes jerked open. She turned to face the lower cays, where the aura vacillated between gilded and white, so muted and small no one but Lia could ever have seen it.

It was an aura she knew well.