"The bride may bend to the storm—but should she break it, the kingdom shall bow to her."
— Skycourt Proverb, sealed records beneath the Skydrowned Archives
I push him—harder than I mean to, but not enough to make him fall. He doesn't resist. Just watches me as I slide from the stone rim, dripping petals and light, crossing to the far wall where the robe waits. My fingers fumble with the fabric. It feels too heavy. Too much. But I pull it around myself anyway. Tie it tight. I can't look at him yet.
The storm outside quiets by degrees. The walls stop humming. The water returns to stillness.
But between us—silence stretches.
I breathe. Once. Twice. Then I turn.
"How did you know?"
His silver gaze meets mine—steady, unreadable. "You screamed."
I swallow. "You were outside?"
He nods slowly. "I came to take you to dinner. I was waiting at the door. I heard you… felt it. The storm. It broke through the wards. I couldn't hold it."
My jaw tightens. I clutch the robe tighter at my waist.
"And you thought touching me would help?"
"No," he says. Then, softer: "I knew it would."
I stay where I am—the robe clinging to my skin, my hair dripping onto the stone. He hasn't moved. Just kneels in the water, hands resting on his thighs, like he's waiting for judgment.
"This," I say quietly, the word a tremor, "does this happen with every bride?"
His eyes narrow—not in anger, but in something like pain. "No."
"So, what was that?" I gesture toward the water. The storm. My skin. "What did you do to me?"
"I didn't do anything to you, Amarin." My name in his mouth is softer than it should be. "It was already inside you."
I shake my head. "Then why was the court saying it wasn't supposed to happen yet? Why did they look at me like I'd broken something?"
He stands slowly, water trailing from his shirt—clinging to him like a second skin. He doesn't answer immediately. Just stares at me.
"You weren't meant to stir the storm until the ceremony," he says at last. "The Tempest Vow. The surge was supposed to lie dormant until I called it forward. But it didn't."
"And why not?" I press. "Why me?"
"I don't know."
The honesty in his voice cuts sharper than a lie.
He takes a breath. "You're not like the others."
I exhale a sharp laugh, bitter at the edges. "That much I'd gathered."
"Your… mark," he adds. "I've never seen something like it. The storm recognized you. It answered you before it answered me. That's never happened before."
That stings more than I want it to. "So I'm an accident. A mistake."
"No." His voice turns fierce. "You're a change."
I stare at him. "A change?"
My voice is quiet. Cold at the edges. "What does that even mean? What kind of change?"
Velasyr doesn't answer at first. The storm no longer rages outside—but something still flickers behind his eyes. Something unsettled. He moves toward me. Not fast. Not slow. Measured, like he's crossing some line he doesn't know the shape of.
His shirt clings to him, soaked through. His boots leave wet prints on the stone. His hair, loose now, trails silver down his shoulders. His cheeks are flushed—but not from the bath. And still, not as much as mine. I can be sure of it.
I clutch the robe tighter around me, the fabric damp where it clings to my collarbone. My mark has dimmed, but I feel it—warm, aware. Listening.
He stops just short of touching me.
"The kind of change that rewrites things," he says. His voice is low again. "The kind that makes the storm choose differently. Act differently. Break the rules it's always followed."
"And that scares you," I say.
A pause. Then—softly, "Yes."
His honesty hums in the space between us. But it's not fear of me I see in his face now. It's awe.
He takes a step closer. Just one. But it's enough. I shift back instinctively. Not far—but enough to redraw the line between us. His eyes flick to the space I've reclaimed. He doesn't speak for a moment. Then, with a breath that sounds more like surrender than frustration, he nods once.
"As you wish," he says.
He turns—water still dripping from his boots, his sleeves. The storm doesn't follow him this time. It waits, like I do.
He reaches the threshold. Pauses.
"I'll wait for you in the dining hall," he says, without looking back. "Take whatever time you need."
And then he's gone—leaving mist, silence, and the echo of something I'm not ready to name.
I stand there a long moment after he leaves—robe clutched tight around me, breath still uneven. The steam clings to the air, but the heat has drained from my skin. The storm inside me has quieted, but it hasn't left.
A soft knock. Not urgent. Not hesitant either. Just… expected.
"Come in," I manage.
The door opens, and Rowen enters with the same grace as ever—her storm-gray dress uncreased, her hair braided so tightly it might've been carved from stone.
Her eyes flick to the robe—belt too tight, the weave of the mark beneath—the steam, the petals still circling the surface of the pool, the water traces of the impatient storm just a moment ago. But she doesn't ask. She never does.
"I've come to help you dress, my lady," she mumbles.
There's no judgment in her voice. No curiosity. Just that careful stillness she always wears—like armor.
I nod. "Thank you, Rowen."
She moves past me with a basket draped in silk, setting it beside the mirror. The gown inside is darker than before—deep indigo, the color of a bruised sky, threaded with silver like lightning caught mid-strike. Not bridal. Not soft. Something else. A warning, maybe.
Rowen lays it out. Then turns to me, lifting a soft cloth to my face.
"Shall I begin?"
I nod again, throat tight with everything I'm not ready to say.
By the time I'm dressed, the last of the sun is long vanished behind the stormline. The clouds outside bleed rust and violet, casting long shadows against the glass walls. I'm wrapped in dusk-dark silk, barely covering the violent in me. My hair pinned with stormsilver combs, my face quieted into something that almost looks composed.
Rowen waits by the door, hands clasped.
"Shall I take you to the Stormtable, my lady?"
The name coils in my chest like breath held too long. I've heard it spoken only once—on the lips of Elder Marin and Elder Bentuneli. The place where power eats. Where the court watches. Where Velasyr waits.
I nod.
We walk in silence through the high, veiled halls. The castle is quieter now. The storm in its walls, more breath than roar. But it watches. I feel it in the way the air tightens around me with each step. The corridor leading to the Stormtable is long, lined with tall windows that flicker with stormlight. The closer we get, the more my heart wishes that it's only him tonight. And the more I feel it again—that low hum in my collarbone. Not pain. Not yet. Just presence.
Rowen stops before a tall arch of blackened stone veined in stormglass. She bows.
"They await you."
I hesitate. 'They,' my hopes shattered. Another play to perform. I don't even know why Velasyr is still lying. That the storm is only his. How can I even control it when my mind is in such a spiral already?
I don't think twice, and I step inside. If I were to really think about it, I would have run out of this theater. Down to the village. Past even Shellmere itself.
The Stormtable is nothing like I expected.
It isn't long and narrow like in Shellmere's great halls. It is circular—vast, seamless, carved from a single slab of obsidian-cloudstone that ripples faintly with veins of silver light. No head. No foot. No thrones rise above the rest. Even so, it feels like a storm eye—where everything spirals inward.
A chandelier of braided lightning arcs overhead, suspended by storm-forged metal that hums with restrained power. Along the walls, glass panels flicker with scenes of sky and sea, shifting with the storm's moods. Velvet banners in hues of dusk and thunder hang between them.
Courtiers seat around the table. Important figures sitting as if they are at the center of the sky. Or, they are the center themselves. Just one figure seats at the far arc of the table, fingers laced together before an untouched meal.
Velasyr.
He rises the moment he sees me—slowly, silently, as if he's afraid sudden movement might startle me back into the storm. His silver eyes take in everything: the braid at my shoulder pinned in silver, the soft drape of the gown, the color still fading from my cheeks.
But he doesn't speak. He only watches. Like something that's already chosen the shape it wants, but is still bracing for rejection. A beat passes. Two. Then three. Despite that, he says nothing.
One of the figures at the table murmurs, "Glad you found the time to join us, Stormbride." Hypocrisy creased into every syllable.
My attention drops to them—standing as well, and I am just realizing it. I look back at Velasyr. Something in him eases. His shoulders lower—not in defeat, but in deference. His hands unclenched at his sides. And I realize—he's waiting for me to speak first, to give him permission to approach me.
I finally turn to the courtier, wearing a formal drape and red underneath. He doesn't look that old, but somehow, it feels as if he wear from a previous era. And maybe, he is.
"And I am surprised to see you all here." I say, echoing his hypocrisy.
Velasyr approaches—steady steps, eyes locked on mine. He wears the storm itself: dark, dangerous, inexplicably enticing.
He closes the space in a breath. Wraps his hand around my shoulder and whispers, low and unheard: "I couldn't stop them from coming, play this dinner with me."
It's a plea and a command what comes from him.
"Why should I?" I dare say.
"Amarin," he says giving no options.
He turns swiftly, sliding an arm around my waist—staking his claim not with violence, but with spectacle.
"Isn't she exquisite?" He declares to the Stormtable.
"Indeed," a figure of a younger man with brown hair resonates.
He should be close to Velasyr's age. At least, before taking the storm's hand. Before immortality. Velasyr looks at them—the young man with the neatly parted brown hair, his smirk just shy of insolent, the rest murmuring behind half-lowered goblets, as if agreeing… or plotting. Plotting how best to unmake me.
Velasyr doesn't break his stare. Especially not from the brunette youth with the practiced ease of someone used to being adored—or feared. His fingers brush lightly against the small of my back, guiding me forward, steady. Possessive, maybe. Intentional, surely.
We reach the seat beside his. No thrones, no high-backs. Just curved stormwood chairs etched with threadlike sigils, old enough to hum with meaning I don't understand yet. He waits for me to sit. I do—back straight, hands folded, refusing to shrink beneath the weight of so many watching eyes.
Velasyr takes his place beside me. Only then does he speak again—low, even.
"Lord Caelren," he says, gaze fixed on the young man who had spoken first. "I think you're enjoying the view a little too much."
Caelren—his name lands like sleet.
The young lord raises his cup slightly, unbothered. "Merely admiring what the storm has chosen."
Velasyr doesn't smile. "Admire from a distance." A pause. Then, colder: "Before I remind you why it did not choose you."
The room shifts—subtle, sharp. A flicker in the chandelier above. Stormlight pulses once in the floor beneath us.
Caelren leans back, hands raised slightly. "Of course, my lord."
But his eyes flick to me again. Velasyr doesn't respond. But the lightning flickering in the chandelier above us flares again—just briefly.
My eyes drift across the table—so many robed figures, some curious, some wary, some hollowed by centuries. But not all of them are ancient. Some look barely older than I am. And I wonder—how long have they been watching brides like me? How many of them smiled this same way, once?
Someone sets a plate before me. The food is beautiful. Iridescent cuts of fish, rose-root glazed in stormhoney, a thin goblet filled with something bright and effervescent. I don't touch it. Velasyr glances at me—subtle, only once—but doesn't urge.
Instead, he lifts his own cup. "To change," he says.
Some raise theirs in response. Others hesitate.
I don't move. I just look at him. And quietly, I murmur, "What kind of change?"
He turns toward me slightly—the candlelight catching the edge of his cheekbone, the silver strands, recently dry, clinging to his collar.
"The kind that makes the storm remember it once had a heart," he replies.
And that, more than anything, terrifies me. A silence coils around the table—tight, expectant. Then a voice breaks it. Cold. Female. Measured.
"So tell me, Stormbride," says a woman seated three arcs down. Her hair is braided into a crown of silver thorns, her gown a deep grey that shimmers like night about to turn violent. "Did you cause the surge at dusk?"
My spine stiffens. I don't recognize her, but I don't need to. Her tone is the kind I know too well—the kind sharpened like cutlery and wrapped in silk. Outside, the storm murmurs. Inside, my mark answers. A low boom. Far off, but not far enough.
"I'm not sure what you mean," I say, keeping my voice even.
She arches a brow, lips curving slightly. "The eastern wards flared. The sky turned indigo. This has never happened with a bride's arrival. So I'll ask again, for the benefit of the court—was it you?"
A low ripple threads through the table.
I glance at Velasyr. He doesn't speak. Doesn't intervene. He's watching—sharp, unreadable. Letting me decide whether to perform or flee. I don't run.
"I didn't do anything," I say—too fast.
The chandelier flickers—once, twice. The floor beneath my chair rumbles faintly, like something beneath wants to rise.
"Oh?" The courtier's gaze flicks to Velasyr. "So the surge came from you, Stormlord?"
Something clamps around my chest. Not panic. Pressure. My mark flares—hot beneath silk. The air tastes sharp, like I'm breathing the edge of a blade. The room stills. Gusts of wind howl across the tall veilglass windows, rattling their crystal seams. A warning. A promise. I may break loose, and no one will stop it.
Velasyr speaks at last.
"The storm only answers to me," he says softly—but there's iron under velvet.
Then, without taking his gaze from the court, he reaches across the table. Wraps his hand around mine.
The moment our skin touches, something inside me quiets. Not fully. But enough. The mark dims—just slightly.
"As you can see," he adds, voice smooth as pressure, "I can't be apart from Amarin for long."
A ripple moves through the Stormtable. Disbelief, veiled poorly as decorum. A few glance at our joined hands. One voice breaks the hush. Lord Caelren again—still too young-looking, still too certain.
"Convenient," he drawls. "That your bride calms the storm before the Vow is spoken."
"Perhaps the storm is impatient," Velasyr replies, not smiling. "Or perhaps it knows what's to come."
"That may be," says the silver-thorned woman, her tone honeyed with suspicion, "but tradition does not bend to instinct. If the storm reacts now, unbound—what happens if it's left too long?"
"Or, if it cannot be bound at all," murmurs another.
Eyes sharpen on me like knives seeking the seam in armor.
"The Tempest Vow must be performed," an older figure presses. "And not at the moon's turn. Sooner."
"A week," another courtier suggests.
"Three days," says another. "Or the Stormlord risks losing control again."
Velasyr doesn't flinch, but his hand tightens around mine. "We will follow tradition."
The silver-thorned woman leans forward, her voice like silk drawn across a blade.
"And if waiting endangers the Skycastle—the sky-kingdom?"
A beat. Then, Velasyr turns to me. Not as a shield. Not as a symbol. But something far more dangerous—an equal.
"I trust Amarin will be close enough to clench it," he says.
The murmurs return—quieter this time. But deeper. Like thunder rolling beneath marble floors.
And for the first time since I sat at this table, I realize something unsettling. They don't fear me because they know. They fear me because they don't.