Aelindra's POV
I'm dying.
No—I'm burning.
The lightning doesn't stop. It keeps pouring into me, wave after wave of fire that feels like my insides are being ripped apart and put back together wrong. I can't scream anymore. My voice is gone. My body won't move.
But my heart—oh storm, my heart—it's beating so hard I think it might explode.
Something is happening inside my chest. Something impossible.
The pain suddenly changes. Instead of burning me up, the lightning starts digging. Like invisible hands are reaching inside my ribs, searching for something. I feel chains I never knew existed—chains wrapped around my core, around the deepest part of me—and the lightning shatters them.
The sound is inside my head. A crack like breaking glass, but a thousand times louder.
Then everything explodes.
Power floods through me. Not gentle power. Not controlled power. Wild power that makes me feel like I'm going to burst into a million pieces. It rushes through my blood, my bones, every tiny part of me, and I realize with horror that this is mine. This has been inside me my whole life, locked away behind those chains.
Why? Why would anyone lock this away?
The lightning finally stops. The world goes quiet except for my gasping breaths and the hammering of my heart.
I'm still alive.
I fall to my hands and knees on the cold stone, shaking so hard my teeth rattle. Rain pours down my face, mixing with tears I didn't know I was crying. Every muscle in my body screams. I smell burned cloth and hair—my own.
But I'm alive.
"What... what just happened?" I whisper.
That's when I see it.
My hands are glowing. Not bright, but enough to notice in the storm's red light. Under my skin, faint lines are forming—patterns that look like frozen lightning, spreading up my arms like tattoos made of light.
Storm-marks. Just like the ancient drawings in the history books.
Just like the Stormforged Prince was supposed to have.
My hand flies to my chest, and I gasp. There, right over my heart, I can see a mark glowing through my wet shirt. A complex pattern of lightning bolts twisted together in a circle. It pulses with each heartbeat, and—
I freeze.
My heart isn't beating normally. It's beating twice.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Two heartbeats where there should only be one.
Terror floods through me. "No, no, no—what's wrong with me?"
Then the voice speaks inside my head, and I nearly jump off the platform.
"WHO DARES AWAKEN ME?"
The words aren't spoken out loud. They echo inside my skull, deep and furious, like thunder given a personality. And they're not my thoughts. They're someone else's.
I scramble backward on the stone, wild-eyed, looking around for whoever spoke. "Who's there? Show yourself!"
"Foolish mortal. I'm not 'there.' I'm HERE."
Something pushes against my mind from the inside. Not painful, but wrong—like someone is trying to move into a space that's already full.
My hand clamps over my chest, over the glowing mark. "Inside me? No—get out!"
"I CAN'T, YOU IMPOSSIBLE GIRL! You struck yourself with lightning during a Crimson Storm! You absorbed consciousness meant to remain scattered! And now I'm TRAPPED!"
The fury in that voice makes me flinch, but underneath it, I hear something else. Something that sounds almost like... panic?
"I don't understand," I gasp. "Who are you?"
Silence. Then, quieter but no less intense:
"You truly don't know what you've done, do you?"
Before I can answer, pain explodes behind my eyes. Not physical pain—this is different. Wrong. Like memories are being poured into my brain that don't belong there.
I see flashes of things I've never experienced:
A beautiful ballroom filled with nobles in silver clothes. A young man with white hair and glowing eyes standing on a platform, wearing a crown made of lightning. Then betrayal—dark magic twisting through the air, people screaming, the young man's face contorted in agony as his body explodes into pure light—
I'm thrown out of the vision, gasping and clutching my head.
"Stop resisting," the voice commands, but now it sounds strained. "I need to... stabilize... can't maintain..."
"Get OUT!" I scream, terror overwhelming everything else. There's someone in my head, in my heart, and I can feel him there like a second person crammed into my body.
"SILENCE!" The voice roars, and suddenly the air in front of me shimmers.
I stop breathing.
A figure is forming from the lightning itself—translucent and flickering like a reflection in water, but definitely there. Tall. Male. As the form solidifies enough to see details, my brain struggles to process what I'm seeing.
He's the most beautiful and terrifying person I've ever seen.
Silver-white hair that moves like living storm clouds. Eyes that glow gold with cracks of silver running through them—exactly like mine probably look right now. His face is too perfect, too sharp, like something carved by an artist who was showing off. Storm-marks pattern his neck and what I can see of his arms.
He looks maybe twenty-eight, but his eyes look ancient.
And he's staring at me with an expression of cold fury mixed with something that might be fear.
"You," I whisper, recognition hitting me like another lightning strike. "You're—"
"Prince Raelith Skyrender," he says, his voice like thunder given words. "The Stormforged Prince your Council scattered seventy years ago. And you, little fool, just pulled my consciousness into your mortal heart."
I shake my head, trying to deny it. "That's impossible. You're dead. Everyone knows—"
"Everyone knows LIES." He moves closer, and I can almost feel warmth radiating from his translucent form. "I didn't die. They trapped me in the storms, scattered my consciousness across every lightning bolt, every thunder crack. For seventy years I've existed everywhere and nowhere, screaming in agony with no one to hear."
His glowing eyes bore into mine. "Until you climbed this tower and demanded the storm give you power. Until you struck yourself with lightning during the one storm strong enough to carry my full consciousness. Until you accidentally became my prison."
"Prison?" The word comes out small and scared.
"We're bound now. My consciousness exists inside your heart—literally. That mark over your chest? That's the anchor point. Every beat of your heart sustains me. Every breath you take, I feel. Your emotions, your thoughts, your pain—all of it bleeds into me just as mine bleeds into you."
He leans down, bringing his face close to mine. Even translucent, his presence is overwhelming. "If you die, little exile, I return to seventy years of scattered torment. So I suggest you start being more careful with that fragile mortal body."
I should be terrified. I should be running. But instead, fury rises up through my shock.
"You suggest I be careful?" I laugh, wild and broken. "I just got struck by lightning and survived! I have a ghost living in my chest! My sister stole my life, my father threw me away, and the Storm Council wants me dead! Careful doesn't exist anymore!"
Something flickers across his perfect face—surprise? Respect?
"Perhaps you're not entirely useless," he says slowly. "Most mortals would be gibbering wrecks by now."
"Most mortals didn't spend three months surviving in the Lower Drifts after losing everything." I force myself to stand on shaking legs, meeting his glowing eyes with my own. "If you're stuck in my heart, then you're stuck with me. I'm not gentle. I'm not nice. And I'm definitely not careful."
His translucent lips curve into something that might be a smile. "Good. Because what we're going to do requires someone willing to burn the entire sky down."
"What are we going to do?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Lightning crackles around his form as the storm intensifies overhead. "We're going to destroy the Storm Council. All of them. For what they did to you—" His voice drops to something darker, more dangerous. "—and for what they did to me."
Thunder cracks so loud the platform shakes. And I realize with growing horror and excitement that this ghost-prince isn't just angry.
He's furious. Seventy years of furious.
And now that fury is living inside my heart.
"Revenge," I whisper.
"Revenge," he agrees. "Together."
Before I can respond, his expression suddenly changes. Goes sharp and alert.
"Someone's coming," he says. "Multiple someones. Storm Guards. They felt the lightning strike and know someone survived."
My stomach drops. "How many?"
"Six. Maybe more behind them." His translucent hand reaches toward me, and I swear I can almost feel it. "They'll kill you on sight if they realize what you've become. So I suggest—"
Footsteps echo from the stairwell. Heavy boots on stone. Getting closer.
Raelith's form flickers, becoming more transparent. "Call the lightning," he commands. "Like you did before. Except this time—" His smile is sharp and cruel. "—you have MY power to draw on."
"I don't know how—"
"Then learn. FAST."
The first Storm Guard bursts onto the platform, weapon drawn, and freezes when he sees me standing there, glowing with storm-light, my eyes blazing gold and silver.
His face goes white. "Impossible..."
More guards pile onto the platform behind him. Six total, all in full armor, all staring at me like I'm a ghost.
I should be scared. Should surrender.
Instead, I feel power crackling around my hands—wild crimson-and-white lightning that dances between my fingers like it's alive. And in my mind, I hear Raelith's voice, pleased and predatory:
"Perfect. Now let's show them what happens when you wake a sleeping prince."
The lead guard raises his weapon. "In the name of the Storm Council, you're under arrest—"
Lightning explodes from my hands before I can think.