"Some storms are not born in the sky. Some are born in the quiet places between heartbeats."
— The Song of Forgotten Queens
The chamber is empty when I rise again. No voice from the shadows. No silver gaze tracking my every breath. Only the hush of night pressed against the glass walls, and the faint hum of stormlight threading through the stone.
I cross the room barefoot, the stormveil trailing behind me like a captured mist.
The floor is cold beneath my feet, carved from something that hums faintly under my skin—like a heartbeat buried in stone.
The glass wall stretches high, endless, a single pane of crystal cleaving the world into two: the girl inside, and the world she can no longer reach.
Beyond it, the night sprawls wide and merciless. Clouds boil and tumble across the stars, their bellies heavy with unshed rain. Lightning flickers in the distance, veins of light knitting and unknitting themselves across the sky.
I press my palm to the glass. It's cooler than it should be, slick with the condensation of storms unborn.
For a moment, I just stand there. Breathing. Watching.
The storm doesn't see me here. The sky doesn't howl my name.
It's... quiet. Too quiet.
Inside, the anger hums low, a storm of its own.
I should be grateful. I should be terrified. Instead, I feel hollow. Like the girl who stood in the village square, veil fluttering, is still out there somewhere, waiting for someone who will never return.
I thought the sky would feel different. I thought it would roar and rage and tear me apart.
Instead, it waits. Watches.
What are you waiting for? I wonder.
The glass offers no answer. Only the reflection of a girl wrapped in stormlight, crowned in a veil she never chose. A girl the storm refused to destroy. A girl the storm... claimed.
A soft knock startles me.
I turn, hand still pressed against the glass.
The door opens a fraction—just enough for a figure to slip through.
A girl, no older than myself, dressed in a simple gown of storm-grey cloth. Her hair is braided tight against her head, and she moves with the kind of careful grace that speaks of long years spent staying invisible.
She lowers her eyes.
"Forgive me, my lady," she says, voice barely above a whisper. "I was ordered to prepare your bath."
My lady.
The words land strangely in my ears.
She glances up, just once, quick and nervous.
"If you would follow me?"
I hesitate. The glass is still cool under my palm. The night still hums against my skin.
But there's no real choice here. Not anymore.
I let the veil settle heavier across my shoulders and follow her through a narrow arched doorway hidden behind the stormlit curtains.
The hall beyond is dim and silent, the stones underfoot humming faintly with the same pulse as the Skycastle itself.
She leads me to a chamber larger than I expect—a cavern of stone and mist and water.
A vast pool shimmers in the center, fed by waterfalls that tumble from carved mouths high in the walls. Steam coils from the surface, catching the light of hidden crystals tucked into the ceiling like captured stars.
The air smells sweet—rich with the scent of crushed petals and warm oils.
The girl moves quickly but reverently, her hands sure. She sprinkles rose-gold blossoms across the water. Pours vials of clear oils into the pool until the surface glimmers like liquid glass.
All the while, she keeps her head bowed, her movements silent, as if the walls themselves might be listening.
When she finishes, she steps back, hands folded neatly at her waist. She crosses to a stone hook near the far wall and hangs a heavy, dark robe there—simple but fine, the kind meant for warmth and modesty.
"Your bath is ready, my lady," she says, her voice barely carrying over the hush of falling water.
I stand at the edge, the stormveil ghosting around my ankles, and wonder—not for the first time—what kind of life I have been dragged into.
The bath gleams under the misted light. Beautiful. Inviting. And somehow, still, it feels like stepping into a cage.
The servant slips away as silently as she came, the heavy door sighing shut behind her.
I am alone.
The mist curls around my ankles, warm and fragrant, heavy with unseen things.
Slowly, I reach up and peel the stormveil from my shoulders. It falls to the stone floor in a whisper of crystal threads, leaving me standing in the thin shift they dressed me in.
A shift I don't remember putting on. A shift that clings too perfectly to my skin, soft and new and not mine.
Who changed me?
The thought strikes harder than it should.
The Stormlord?
A flash of heat rises to my cheeks—sharp and unwelcome. I shove it down a heartbeat later.
What does it matter? Modesty is a luxury I cannot afford anymore. Not here. Not with him.
I untie the laces at my throat with steady hands, letting the tunic slip free.
The steam wraps around me like another veil as I step forward, water lapping gently at my toes.
For the first time, I see myself clearly.
The pale sweep of my skin, kissed with the faint gold of long-forgotten summers. The lean lines of my body, shaped by river running and cliff climbing and all the thousand small rebellions of a girl who thought she would never leave her village.
My hair falls loose around my shoulders, a wild tumble of storm-burnished black, threaded through with strands of molten copper.
And there, above my left hip, just below the ribs—the mark.
It has always been there. A twist of silver, no larger than a coin. Not a scar. Not a bruise. A strange, perfect spiral, like a tiny storm frozen just beneath the skin.
I remember tracing it as a child, convinced it was a birthmark. A quirk of fate. Everyone has something strange, I told myself. This is just mine.
I touch it now, and a faint ache stirs under my fingers—sharp and fleeting, like the memory of pain rather than pain itself.
I press harder. The ache deepens.
I jerk my hand away, scowling. Not now.
I step fully into the water, letting it rise around me, hot and sweet, silk against battered skin.
The petals kiss against my arms, my legs, drifting like tiny lost promises. I sink lower until only my shoulders remain above the surface.
The ache at my side lingers—low, pulsing—but I shove it down, folding it into the hollow space the storm has left inside me.
The water soothes. The mist hums. The walls stay silent.
For now, I am alone. For now, I can pretend I'm still just myself. That the ache beneath the mark is only that—sudden, shapeless, passing.
I drift in the warmth, letting the water pull at the weight in my limbs. The mist thickens, curling around my shoulders like a second skin.
For a moment, there is only the sound of my breath. The soft drip of distant waterfalls. The faint sigh of unseen winds weaving through the castle's bones.
Then—I glance down.
At first, it's nothing. Just my reflection—a pale blur under the water, my storm-dark hair fanning around me like ink spilled into the sky.
My eyes catch the light—green, not soft, but sharp, fractured through the water into a thousand shards of color.
And beneath them—beneath the reflection—the water stirs.
Not from the falls. Not from my breath. It stirs from me.
A faint glow rises from the surface, ghostly and pale, right where the mark curls above my ribs.
I freeze.
The glow pulses once, soft and slow, like a heartbeat struggling to find its rhythm.
The ache in my side sharpens.
Fear slices through the warm haze, clean and cold. I reach down—fingers trembling—and brush the skin just above the mark.
Pain flares. Bright and brutal.
It tears a scream from my throat before I can stop it—a sound that echoes off the stone walls and shatters the heavy mist.
The door bursts open. He's there in an instant.
The Stormlord. Eyes wild, mouth set in a hard line, his hand already reaching for me through the rising steam.
"What happened?" he demands, his voice sharp and low, laced with something that sounds too much like fear.
I can't answer. I can only clutch at my side, the mark burning like fire under my skin, the water trembling around me as if it, too, can feel the storm breaking free.
He crosses the distance between us in three strides—and without a word, he steps straight into the bath.
Boots. Storm-marked tunic. All swallowed by the water without hesitation.
The mist coils higher, blurring the world to the edges of water and skin and storm.
And when he reaches me—when his hands close around my shoulders, steadying me against the trembling pool—
I don't pull away.
Because for the first time, I am not afraid of him. I am afraid of myself.