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Chapter 1
If nightmares had music, they’d sound like the Storm.
Thunder like a racing heartbeat. Stinging jolts of lightning, a bombardment with neither rhythm nor mercy. And a slow, seething howl, like a beast denied its prey.
With fists of wind, the Storm bangs against the shutters, trying to crack our little house open like an egg. When it can’t, it slices through our walls, finding all sorts of ways to make wood scream.
Amma’s sweet, rasping voice comes from downstairs, joined by the mournful thrum of her sitar. A lullaby, one she used to sing while drying my tears. But there are some sounds that even the sweetest lullaby can’t drown out.
As if the Storm heard my thoughts, the shutters slam open, letting in a blast of humid air fragrant with ozone. My mouth fills with the telltale taste of spun sugar and copper.
I go to the window, bracing the shutters, and then I make the mistake of looking up.
Before me is the Storm. It’s a wall not of stone or clay, but of darkness. Like a gauzy curtain that hangs in a circle around our city, made of layers of mist and smoke and shadow, all the same color as the darknessbehind my eyelids. There’s no escaping it; there’s no gap, and it’s ten times taller than the buildings it dwarfs.
The Storm is ever squeezing tighter, swallowing street and sky inch by inch. We in the fifth ring know that we’re the next to be devoured. The wilds of the seventh ring were taken long before I was born, but the farms and homes of the sixth were lost when I was a child. We live in a state of constant darkening; for years, sunlight has only reached as far as the third ring. A few years from now, perhaps it won’t reach even that far. But by then, Amma’s will be gone.
From the nearby watchtower, the stormbells clang a warning:A stormsurge is coming. I scan the street for stragglers, but I can’t see from up here.
Shoving the shutters back into their warped wood frame, I cross the tiny landing and leap down the stairs, into the main room where everyone’s gathered.
Her slow, dreamy song makes the clanging even more jarring, but Amma’s doing her best, just as she has for the last fifty years, running this home for the cursed. Her steps have gotten slower and her back bowed, but still I’ll never be able to catch up to her, to do half as much as she does.
Without skipping a note, Amma gives me a worried look that asks me to hurry. She’s seated with her sitar in the center of the long room, with stormtouched in their beds on either side. Seven of them live here at Amma’s, mostly children, ones who got caught by the Storm—either beasts dragged them back during a surge, or they went and touched the stormwall—and were then cursed. The Storm doesn’t care how young you are or how promising your life might’ve been. If it manages to touch you, even just the tip of your pinky, that’s it, you’re cursed. Welcome to a lifetime of stares, jeers, and—if you’re really unlucky—my cooking.
I try not to draw Pa’s attention as I make for the door. He leans over the youngest, drawing an ikon on her arm that’ll help soothe her shivering. I’d try to get a good look at it, but the clanging of the bells tells me there isn’t the time.
“Vesper,” Pa warns as I pass him.
I jump at his voice, and my elbow knocks into the bowl at the edge of Gia’s bed, sending half-peeled shalaj roots flying. She makes a rude gesture with her left hand—her right is a gnarled twist of wood, courtesy of the Storm.
I wince, but I can’t stop to pick them up, no matter how precious food is.
Pa brushes his black hair out of his eyes—the eyes we share—and his disapproving gaze lands on me like an anvil. “Don’t go out there. They’ll find shelter. Don’t play hero.”
“Sure, Pa,” I throw over my shoulder, ignoring the certainty in his eyes that I can do no good, that I’m just a child, and not even a clever one at that. The front door rattles in its frame, and I plant my feet before unlocking all three deadbolts. The wind wrenches its way in, whipping at my clothes and flinging the heavy warped-wood door open. With the wind come other things: the wail of the Storm, the bite of the cold, a curl of mist that licks at my ankles. The stormbells peal once more, and the hollow of my chest reverberates with it.
Pa calls out, “Vesper, don’t—” but the wind steals the rest of his words as I step over the threshold.
The wind whips my hair into my face. When the Storm howls like this, with the taste of burnt sugar in the air, it’s rearing up for a surge. Violet lightning streaks through the layers of darkness, revealing the beasts within the Storm. As it flashes, it illuminates the silhouettes ofa scorpion’s bulbous tail, the grasping talons of some massive bird of prey, the snarl of a gargantuan hound. An inhuman eye, glittering with violet lightning, looks down at me. Its gash of a pupil widens and then swivels up as something else catches its attention.
I follow its gaze. In the dim half-light, three red streaks fly toward the stormwall. The Wardana. Our guardians, the city’s first and last line of defense, armed with incredible ikonomancy, sworn to protect us all. Their thousand-and-one-feather cloaks grant them flight; their crimson uniforms gleam like beacons against the wall of blackness. A guilty thrill raises goose bumps along my skin.
The way they fly right at the Storm, prepared to fight—that’s bravery. That’s power. I swallow down the envy that rises like bile in my throat.
The three Wardana angle into a descent. Their trajectory brings them closer than I’d like; just two blocks over and two blocks stormward. They head to where the stormwall bulges, blackness growing like a belly distending. Another bolt of lightning illuminates the stormbeasts clawing at the storm’s edge, hungering to be born. My throat goes dry. If the Wardana can’t stop the stormbeasts from making it out, then we’re in danger.
The Wardana fly into action with a net of woven ikons, flinging it across the bulge. The net glows with pale blue light; it’s as thin as lace, as if they’re holding back a boulder with a spiderweb.
The woven ikonshield holds for a heartbeat, two, three—and then, in an explosion of black cloudsmoke, a massive beast claws through, roaring with the sound of a thunderclap. It’s made of the same churning black cloud as the Storm: a two-headed lion with a mane that shifts like smoke, eyes like pinpricks of lightning. Smaller beasts crawl after it, taking advantage of the momentary breach.
In midair, the Wardana draw their weapons—two spears and a smaller woven ikonshield—and attack.
Behind me, the wind slams the door against its frame, and I snap back to myself.
Farther down the street, a mossy green door swings open, and a squat woman shouts, “Quick! Come inside!”
I join my voice to hers. Two huddled figures run into the woman’s home, and her door slams shut. I scan the street for any other stragglers.
