The Tame Before the Storms (A Thundering Synopsis)
No one runs from the Black Guild. An alley. Rain. Two children who looked at me like I was something out of a nightmare rather than someone who had just saved them. Geep, fumbling into me before I even knew to look for him. Ryn, home before I was, torn up and lying about his adventures. A braided length of red closed in his fist. Where did he get it? Then the list on the wall. Vendu's name beside mine. Ryn's face when he read it. Next thing I knew, we faced a Sycorb in the training ring. Zengar. The first time my gift reached for a mind and came back with nothing at all. Good as a kiss, he said, licking blood off his own lips. We were being watched. Someone else's cloak. Someone else's calm. Red light where a face should have been. My brother, leaving me behind. The last images sent to me from Ryn: a pouch of gemstones, and me, flying, fast and far. But I read him wrong. And Zengar appeared to tell me, Your brother's not going to need it anymore. No. It couldn’t be. My world spun into chaos. But my brother taught me to survive. Which brought me to a park. Two children on a teeter-totter, and a decision I made before I finished thinking it. I met Hani, whose mysterious hair turned more silver than black by the time we reached the lake that was our destination. Zephyrus, emerging out of the wind and the dust. Seen in a dream before I ever knew of him… Where he’d whispered, You are my Firestorm. Two Dragons in one dream. One hunting for me—the one I wanted so badly I woke up ashamed. I had to run, or they’d be found. But I didn’t get far. A cell underground. A tray of food I didn't want to eat. You were bred for this. Our offspring. Plural. A crimson gaze that made the room taste like old blood. A species not extinct. Not quite. Rescued by a tornado thrown at the compound like a fist… Zeph told me about Rala. Vanished in the middle of a market day, and no one—not her intended, not the aunt who raised him, not the one ability I was trained to use on everybody else—had found so much as a trace. I promised to look for her. Who knew it would lead to cheesebuns, and a Sylph who didn't seem to notice he was buying my silence with food. We track Rala to a boy on a rooftop, sick to his stomach, gone within the week. There had been blood-red light where lightning should be. But only Watchers can create gates out of nothing… Watchers—and those supposedly extinct. Twice now, that phrase. Not extinct. Not quite. Then we find a lock of silver hair under glass. And a charm gifted three years ago. On a birthday. He stood frozen at the display case, and I had to say please before he'd move. Someone—or something—opened a gateway where one wasn’t supposed to be. We ran to the market wearing someone else's clothes, and someone else's patience. Five followers became two, became none. They'd only been waiting for bigger guns to do the nabbing… Survival was knowing when to stand your ground, and when to run. We ran. A cave that sang when I kicked it. Zeph playing the columns like he'd been born knowing how. You are my Firestorm. The storm inside him had a name for what it did to a town once, and it was an accident he still couldn’t talk about. Cindery one. He wasn't supposed to know that word. They pursued us. We met Killer, the bird who let me feed her only because she decided not to eat me first. A river monster with my pack in its teeth. A tarp. A guard on a bridge who wasn't a guard. Faith, whose calm laid over me like a hand I hadn't asked for. Kenji and Kalen leading our stalkers the wrong way on purpose. Alistair: this is your only way out. Riley, and a snap of golden light. A garden, and Faeries fawning over him. Grunt, and a crashed-through fence. And well, that can't be good. Cara. A Watcher who made me talk without meaning to. Talakai. He knew my story like no other could. Bloodmagic. A word that made the room feel colder just for existing. And Finn. But that wasn’t all—a house in the mountains, burning. Children in the underbrush, and one of their faces was a face I already knew. I awoke and found Zeph sitting on a rooftop. We are connected, he said, about a girl I have no right to be jealous of and couldn’t stop being jealous of anyway. That has to come on its own, or not at all—the Watcher wouldn't say what "that" was. But we are found, again. And we flee, again. To a treehouse grown, not built. The Perditor's name—spoken like a warning… A beautiful Satyr looked into my eyes and said, You're a Dragona. Something about the way she said it didn't feel like the first time she'd seen me. Kiko's whole body had gone still when I told her I had a brother. Chains around her horns. Five on the right, four on the left. The same chain that was wound around Ryn's braid of red hair. If he needed an out, all he had to do was bring that to a certain booth… She gave him that hair. She never asked his name. I thought I would know, she said. What did she mean? I find out that Zeph is the last Stormdrifter. There is no one else. Bloodmagic has cut Finn off from the leylines, and Sylph bone dust is his way back in. We were not safe enough, so the Watcher brings us to islands pulled whole from the ocean floor by a man they call the Perditor. I could see why Cara wouldn't let him near Finn. Too much power, not enough leash. We receive a tip about a captive Sylph. It smelled like a trap—because it was a trap. My plan, then: bait a Sycorb with my own scent and let him walk into a room he couldn't walk back out of. Zeph offered me a piece of himself and made me wear it against my skin. It hurt him more than he let on… My plan led to Vendu, drugged and chained, calling me a Reader like it was an insult. A prince's sword lit up with runes, feeding me more power than I could hold. I saw Finn. A table. Strands of hair that glittered every color of the sky, and a chained shape on the floor that used to be a person. Black sand. Four moons. A castle with no landing ledges, built for keeping things in. Two teams, one plan: Zeph as the loudest possible target, Rala as the only thing that mattered. We find a room full of harvested hair. Forty-two bundles. Some barely enough to fill a fist. And a Unicorn horn that glowed the color it should never glow. Three Sycorbs rounded a corner, and only one plan left that didn't get everyone killed: be the thing they wanted more than anything else. Zengar's eyes, and my own traitorous pulse. But then the storm swept them away… Vendu, in the sky, talons soaked in Dragstun. Telling me I'd still be aware when he finished. A storm that wasn't Zeph's storm until it was. Sand with a voice. A Dragon made of moonlight and grit closing his jaws on my throat like a claiming. You saved me, and neither Zeph nor I said the rest of it out loud. Were we finally safe? And what did safe mean, with Rala's skin like paper over bone? Half her hair still missing. No guarantee what we’d found would be enough. Gart, on a windswept ledge, telling me a story about a waterfall and an Elder's son that wasn't really about him at all. Maybe it's time for Stormdrifters to die out. What was he trying to tell me? I decided to leave. I decided to stay. I decided both in the same breath and left Fate to sort it out, if that bitch even existed. Rala's eyes opening. Rala's hand finding Zeph's like she'd never once doubted it would be there. I think we are fated to be together—and it wasn't Zeph she meant. I see through her eyes. A cage. Bars. A Dragon flinging himself against them with madness where his eyes should be. Green scales. Yellow beneath the filth. Could it be?