Onyx Storm (The Empyrean Book 3)

A gift from one servant of Dunne to another. I must warn you—only those touched by the gods should wield their wrath. I will pray to Her that she need not use it to avoid reacquainting herself with the other who curries her favor. Her path is still not set.

—Recovered Correspondence of High Priestess Deservee to His Royal Highness, Cadet Aaric Graycastle, Prince Camlaen of Navarre

VIOLET

I swear the tornado slows as Tairn battles the wind at the eastern edge of the field, flying for the mountainside ahead of us.

“It is slowing,” Tairn agrees.

“She used it to get us here.” Theophanie’s holding it like a nocked arrow, waiting for our arrival.

Trees are uprooted a mile to the left, turning into low-flying projectiles that hurl across the field like cross-bolts. The tornado may have slowed its progress, but it’s doing far more damage along the way.

The wyvern launches ahead of us, moving our way, and for a split second, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve just invited Malek to our doorstep.

She’s a Maven, and I’m a cadet.

She wields storms with expert precision, and I need a conduit for my lightning.

She’s already felled Tairn once before.

The smartest thing I could do is fly for the wards and save us both—all four of us, considering Xaden and Sgaeyl—but I can’t leave those people to die, even if it means we’re desiccated alongside them.

Riders don’t run. We fight.

“Now, preferably,” Tairn remarks. “If you’re done accepting our deaths.”

“Not accepting, just calculating.” I draw power through my charred veins as the distance between us grows smaller and smaller, gripping the conduit in my left hand and raising my right.

Energy rips through me as I release it, dragging the bolt downward and letting go before it can blister my fingers. Lightning strikes as Theophanie’s wyvern rolls to the right.

I missed. My stomach clenches.

“Again!” Tairn demands, banking right to follow her down as rain turns to ice.

Hail hits in stones the size of peas, then cherries, hitting me with the force of a thousand blunt arrows as wind tears at my face, but I lift my hand—

The conduit shatters.

Glass slices into my palm, and I gasp in pain as blood wells.

No, no, no! I can’t aim without it.

“You have to!” Tairn orders as we spiral downward.

Right. Dying up here isn’t an option I’m willing to entertain, and I’m not about to let her kill my friends—or Xaden, either. I quickly undo the strap holding the jagged remnants to my wrist and let what’s left of the orb, and the fist-size chunk of ice that destroyed it, fall away. My hope plummets with it.

I’ll have to kill her just like I did those wyvern—with volume. I unsheathe my last alloy-hilted dagger and grasp it with my bleeding hand so I’m ready for anything, lift my right hand, and wield again.

I miss as she rolls in the opposite direction and begins to climb. We follow, and I draw power again and again, but it becomes harder with every strike. She avoids every single one as we fly along the mountain, hugging the terrain. Tairn surges with sweeping beats of his wings, gaining on her.

Heat singes my lungs, then burns, then fries, until I feel nothing but fire and rage.

Rock flies as I hit the ridgeline to the right, missing her by ten feet as we fly into the sun.

The sun.

I jerk my head left. The tornado has stalled midway toward the city, and the sky above us is clear all the way to the east.

“She’s killing the storm to make it harder for me to wield!” That explains why I’m burning hotter than before. I jerk my focus back to our prey before it can wander toward the city I’m desperately fighting to save.

“Do not take more than you can channel,” Tairn warns as he lunges forward. His teeth snap closed a few feet behind the wyvern’s tail.

They’re too fucking fast.

The wyvern dives, curving along the ridgeline to the right, and Tairn follows.

A roar of unfettered agony fills my head, so loud it vibrates my bones and shrill enough to pop my ears.

“Sgaeyl!” Tairn bellows, his wings losing their rhythm, and my heart skips a series of beats.

Oh Malek, no.

I hurl myself at the bond, but the wall of ice doesn’t just stand firm; it repels me with brute force. Dread nails my stomach to the floor as we lose speed—

I hear the snap a second before the shadow falls over us. No, not a shadow. A massive net with weights the size of desks attached along the edges.

Tairn roars and banks left, but it’s no use.

“Tairn!” I scream as the net hits, smashing my torso downward onto the pommels and covering every scale I can see. He’d be able to bear the weight of it easily on his torso, but it smothers his wings, and the weights… Oh gods. “Tuck your wings or they’ll break!”

His roar of indignation shakes the rocks loose from the mountainside, but he snaps them closed, tangling in the net.

And we fall.

“Prepare yourself!” Tairn warns as the mountain flies by in a blur.

Andarna. Xaden. Sgaeyl. Mira. Brennan. My friends. They slip through my mind in a whirl of pictures I can’t grasp on to, flickering too fast to fully feel. All I can do is ease off the pommels, lean right to spare the inevitable impact to my abdomen as the thick rope of the net digs into my back.

“You have been the gift of my life,” I tell Tairn.

“It is not over!” he shouts.

We hit with a jarring impact, bone crunching against rock, and my left arm snaps and the dagger falls.

A scream forces its way through my lips as we slide down the mountain…just like the first time we encountered Theophanie. The sound of claws scraping over stone consumes my existence as I fight to block out the pain, and Tairn swings his body weight so we skid headfirst through the trees in an endless, terrifying plunge.

I keep my head down to avoid any low-hanging branches as something digs painfully into my ribs, and eventually our momentum slows.

Holy shit, we just might survive the fall.

“Of course we’ll survive!” Tairn growls.

“Are you hurt?” I ask Tairn as we come to a stop at what appears to be the edge of the forest.

“Nothing that won’t heal after we free ourselves and separate her sinew from bone.” The scent of sulfur fills the air as Tairn breathes fire through the net.

Wood crackles and net thwangs. Then he surges forward and the net slips just enough for me to sit up through the opening that’s clearly designed to hold dragons, not riders.

“We have to get to Sgaeyl.” Which means getting him free, but it will take too long to cut through these ropes with the runed daggers I have. And even if I do, I’ll still have to wield to kill her without my alloy-hilted one, and I’m already edging burnout. My arm throbs mercilessly, and every breath I take scalds my lungs.

“Sgaeyl can handle herself,” Tairn grits out, but bowstring-tight tension and worry radiate down the bond as fire streams again and he fights to get us loose. “And the dark wielder descends ahead.”

Sure enough, Theophanie’s wyvern glides down toward the field like they have all the time in the world, like we’re pinned exactly where she wants us.

Gods, she’s relentless. It doesn’t matter that my arm throbs with excruciating intensity—we have to get out of here right fucking now. Time to use the runes I brought in case of an emergency and pray I tempered them correctly, because this is definitely a crisis.

“We have to get out from under this thing.” Cradling my left arm to my chest, I twist for my pack, but something pushes into my ribs as I dig into the bag one-handed. I discard the ones I don’t need, then snag the one for softening surfaces and shove it up against the rope. Here’s hoping it’s right.

Magic ripples, and the fibers stretch and give way.

My eyebrows rise. It works.

“Rip what you can!” I shout to Tairn.

“Stay seated so we can fly,” he orders, shredding the net on the edges of his spikes, and I take the opportunity to grab whatever’s jabbing me in my pocket. Aaric’s package. I catch the hastily scrawled message on the edge of the package I’d missed when Sloane handed it to me.

For when you lose yours. Strike in the dark, Violet.

What the fuck? The fall has broken the wax seal, and the parchment unrolls as I loosen my grip, dropping a carved piece of gray marble in my lap—a ceremonial-looking dagger with familiar flame-shaped etchings along the hilt. I glance at the accompanying note from the high priestess of Dunne’s temple in Aretia, but the letters blur as the pain in my arm flares and Tairn thrashes to free us.

A gift from one servant of Dunne to another. I must warn you—only those touched by the gods should wield their wrath. I will pray to Her that she need not use it to avoid reacquainting herself with the other who curries her favor. Her path is still not set.

My stomach pitches. How would Aaric know I’d lose my dagger, let alone think that some piece of rock could replace—

“Ahead of us!” Tairn snaps, and I jerk my attention forward and sheathe the marble dagger out of instinct.

Theophanie stalks toward us from the tree line, her hair fraying from its braid, and there’s nothing patient or amused on her face.

I frantically scan what sky I can see. Theophanie’s wyvern waits in the field beyond the trees, and the only other wings I find are locked in battle over Draithus in the distance, which hopefully means she’s alone.

“How much time do you need to free yourself?” I ask Tairn, wrenching the buckle of my saddle free and climbing through the hole in the net. Pain shoots up my left arm, but I pretend it belongs to someone else and keep going. Pain doesn’t matter if you’re dead.

“Moments,” Tairn shouts. “Do not—”

“I’m not going to let her kill you like a trussed pig!” I retort, fear and wrath fueling me as I scramble for his shoulder, struggling to keep my arm stable until he stills. He must have thrown his claws out before the net hit, because his forelegs are already extended, bracketing his lower jaw.

I draw a runed dagger, then slide down, dragging the edge of the blade along his leg as I go. The blade won’t cut scale, but the net falls apart in its wake.

“Brought low by a net?” Theophanie mocks, striding toward us. “How easy it was to catch the pair of them.”

The pair? The scream.

“They have Sgaeyl, too.” Tairn’s rage washes over me like acid.

I put myself in front of Tairn and open the floodgates to his power, welcoming the scorch of heat and flame in my blistered veins.

“Silver One,” Tairn growls in warning to the accompaniment of the sound of shredding rope.

“If I burn out, so be it, but she won’t touch you,” I say aloud just so Theophanie will know I’m not fucking around.

“Have you made your choice, then?” Theophanie asks, coming closer by the step.

“I have.” I flick my right hand skyward and let the energy snap through me, yanking it down with the tip of my finger.

Theophanie races ten yards to the right, moving faster than I’ve ever seen. “You’ll have to be—”

I wield again before she can finish and strike the very place she’s standing, earning an immediate clap of thunder.

But she’s already twenty feet to my left.

“Faster,” she finishes, and I strike again, only for the pattern to repeat.

Again and again and again.

My lungs scream as I breathe the very thing I’ve become, heat and power and rage, but she’s still too fast for me to catch and moving closer to Tairn with every failed strike.

“Almost there,” he assures as ropes snap behind me.

I need to throw her off her game now.

I hold my next strike when she appears twenty feet ahead. “Tell me, do you miss Unnbriel?”

Her eyes flare, and she startles.

Victory. I gather more and more power, spooling it like molten thread. “Do you not yearn for temple?” I use the words the high priestess had on me.

Her face twists with an emotion that almost looks like longing, but it’s quickly masked with anger. “Do you?” she counters. “Or are you immune, having only been touched, but not dedicated?” She charges forward. “Do you know the pain of never being allowed to return, of knowing that it would sever the very thing that’s kept me untouchable all these years?”

I let a fraction of my power release, striking the ground in front of her, and she skids to a halt. Touched. Shit, the priestess in Unnbriel had said that, too. So had the note wrapped around Aaric’s gift. “As a high priestess, you would have had immeasurable power on the isle. How was it still not enough?”

“Why serve a god when you can be one?” Theophanie snarls.

Putrid fear consumes the bond, followed by another roar that nearly buckles my knees.

Sgaeyl. My head jerks upward, my heart lurching against the cage of my ribs as Tairn snarls, his talons furrowing in the forest floor. “Don’t!” Terror clogs my throat as I shout for Xaden, but he can’t hear me.

Draithus is enveloped in darkness, and the shrieking cries of wyvern soon follow, racing across the field and echoing off the rock above.

“What—” Theophanie pivots toward the noise.

Shadow spreads like a ripple on a lake, devouring the field in the fury of an onyx storm and sweeping toward us at a speed that squeezes the hope from my chest, then outright shatters my heart. The pain hits like a physical blow to the center of my chest.

He’s terrifyingly powerful with Sgaeyl, but not like this.

This is the kind of force that ends worlds.

And it’s almost here.

“I love you,” I whisper down the bond, and the ice cracks, but it’s not enough to halt the approaching wave of darkness.

Shadow throws Theophanie to the ground a second before it rushes over me, whisper soft against my cheeks, tossing us into pitch-black night.

“Strike!” Tairn snaps, and I hear the net give way.

Exhaustion grabs hold and refuses to be ignored. I’m too tired. Too close to burning alive. What’s the point if I can’t catch her?

“Use the darkness!” Tairn orders.

My heart stutters. Use the very thing that’s taking Xaden from me? I never dreamed that taking every possible path to cure him would lead to his choice. The fire devouring me from the inside out threatens to consume my very bones, and for a second, I debate letting it. I couldn’t stop my mother, and I can’t stop Xaden. I can’t save him.

Wait. Strike in the darkness. That’s what Aaric’s note said…

Like he knew this would happen.

I gasp as all the pieces click in one overwhelming heartbeat. The reinforcements. Telling me to guard Dunne’s temple. Yanking Lynx out of the way before the doors even opened to the great hall. He knew. He’s been manifesting this entire time.

“He’s a fucking precog,” I whisper in awe. A real one—not like Melgren, who can only foresee battles. If Aaric wields true precognition, he saw this, and he gave me a weapon made of the fractured temple—a temple Theophanie can’t step inside. I don’t believe in oracles, but I do believe in signets.

I unsheathe the marble dagger with my right hand, then mix my pain into the searing power that scorches what’s left of my beating heart, lift my broken arm, and release the agonizing burn of energy skyward.

And hold it.

The continuous strike lights up our surroundings and branches out through the shadow, revealing Theophanie’s back. She stumbles to her feet and whirls toward me, her eyes flaring wide, and she dives left, smacking into an invisible wall and falling backward.

A wall that snarls.

Scales shimmer to the same silver-blue as my strike, and a small dragon stalks toward Theophanie, her head low, teeth bared.

And just like that, my stammering heartbeat stabilizes.

Andarna.

Theophanie reaches out her hand, wonder lighting her red eyes.

I don’t care what her intentions are—she’s not getting her hands on Andarna. Pain wraps me in a broiling vise and fire sears my lungs, but I hold the bolt and sprint. Andarna leaving was one thing; losing her to the touch of a dark wielder is incomprehensible.

“Irid,” Theophanie whispers with reverence, straining toward Andarna. I lunge, driving the dagger straight into her heart. Fire breathes through me, until I am char and cinder and agony.

She staggers backward and starts to laugh.

Then she sees the blood and stops. “How?” Her eyes flare, and she topples to her knees. “Stone doesn’t kill venin.”

“You were never just venin,” I reply. “Dunne is a wrathful goddess to high priestesses who turn their backs on Her.”

She opens her mouth to scream, then desiccates in an instant.

I release the bolt, plunging us into darkness and surrendering to the fire burning me alive.

“Violet,” Andarna whispers.

And then I hear nothing.