“They’ll come for you too, you know,” Reina said. “Just like they did for her.”

  From the comfort of her recliner, Rae peered through a curtain of crackling Fulminant energy that cascaded across her sister’s face. Dark tendrils of Rae’s own lightning did little to hide the way her sister’s brow knit together in the dim light. It was a rare therapy parlor that let you use your own Fulminancy at all—Rae had taken weeks to find this one. As a self-service parlor, the wizened man at the front would leave you to relax with your own Fulminancy and company. No questions asked, no Fulminancy besides your own. Rae liked it that way—it meant fewer people to overhear delicate conversations.

  There were more of those these days, unfortunately.

  Rae leaned back, trying to reclaim the relaxation she’d just lost. “Maybe they will,” she said, closing her eyes to better feel the warmth and prickling twinge of the Fulminancy as it relaxed her muscles. “Not particularly worried about it, though. When they do, I’ll be ready.”

  “Ready for what, Rae?” Reina snapped. The chair creaked as she sat up, and Rae opened her eyes to find her sister’s light, ashy blond hair so much like her own disheveled as it came out from the tie. She narrowed her eyes at Rae. “Do you not think they’ve dealt with people like you before? Do you not think that in hundreds of years they haven’t had a rogue Seat? Clouds above, they had one not ten years ago now—Mariel’s Seat—and now where is she?”

  “Dead,” Rae said, folding her arms. Or she wishes she was.

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “They’ll find another Seat.”

  “Rae,” Reina said, softer now. The low hum of Fulminancy filled the space where the words died on her tongue, and Rae found the entire process a little less relaxing with her sister nagging her. Reina leaned forward, gaze intense. “Whoever she was, she had friends and family, or at least someone who cared about her. She’s not just a Seat—you’re not just a Seat. Where does the power end and the person begin, Rae?”

  That did give Rae pause. That crackling well of power sat nestled deep within her gut, and had for as long as she could remember. A single whisper of thought brought the slumbering beast to life in a tingle that zinged throughout her body, giving her strength, speed, and even relaxation if she wielded it right. Maybe there was life without Fulminancy, but if there was, Rae couldn’t remember it. It would outlast them both, as it had outlasted their parents. It was as inescapable as the cycle of wet, dry, and lightning-filled tempests that rolled through Hillcrest without fail each year.

  Rae fiddled with a loose thread on the chair. “Power and people are the same, Reina,” she finally replied. “One uses the other. Seat or not, she was foolish to get involved with the Council in the first place.”

  “I doubt she had a choice.”

  “We all have a choice.”

  Her sister flopped back into her chair and bored a hole into the wall with her gaze. “I don’t recall getting a choice about this parlor,” she groused. “They’re dangerous, Rae—especially with your Fulminancy. I’ll admit that your control is excellent, but it’s like trying to control a Lightstorm—you’re bound to slip, eventually.”

  “Unlike our esteemed Mariel, I actually practice with mine.”

  “Which is why I’m so worried.” Rae rolled her eyes clean to the ceiling, but Reina continued, undaunted. “They’ll find us if you keep using them. I don’t know how, but they’ll find a way. Clouds, Mariel didn’t even want to use hers and they still killed her. What will they do about a woman flying around the city hiding from them?”

  Reina shook her head, gaze solemn as she stared at a collection of heated rocks in the hearth that were accompanied by someone’s oddly orange-tinted Fulminancy. Funeral rocks, Rae thought immediately. She shook her head. Not all rocks were reserved for funerals, just as not all gifted Fulminant were destined to be used by the Council.

  “Whatever they did with Mariel was wrong, Rae,” Reina continued quietly. “There were rumors that she was blackmailed or coerced with her family. What’s stopping them from doing the same with us?”

  Rae pulled her feet up to her chest, watching the rocks pop in the hearth. “There’s a crater around the palace,” she said. “She probably just snapped.”

  “And killed her family at the same time?” Rae didn’t have an answer for that. Her sister tapped a finger against her cheek, thinking. “There’s more to this. Something else happened, Rae, and I don’t want it happening to you. We need to be more careful—no more of these trips, even if you swear by Fanas and Faleas that the owners look the other way.”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “I hardly think that the Council is going to be looking for a lost Seat in a parlor of all places.”

  “Do you think it matters to them where they look?” Reina asked. She shook her head, arms folded. “We’re getting too complacent. We’re too relaxed.”

  “We’re good at what we do, Reina,” Rae argued. “We’re good at disappearing—becoming someone else. What lead could they possibly have on us?”

  “That two women continually disappear into the night, then reappear elsewhere. We’re leaving a trail, whether we realize it or not. The Council is well connected and wealthy, and Hillcrest isn’t that big. We need to change jobs more often, and we can’t frequent the same places anymore.”

  Rae scowled at that, but her sister had a point. Patterns were damning. But Rae liked patterns. She enjoyed the little life she’d cobbled together with her sister, hopping from one place to another. Doing so, however, was draining, and there was something to be said for getting comfortable and staying put for a while. They’d done it with the last several jobs now; the last one had taken them almost three years to divest themselves of. Comfort was tempting, but it was dangerous. At least Rae maintained solid control over her powers—other Fulminancers had more difficulty remaining hidden, given Fulminancy’s tendency to explode in untrained hands.

  She sighed, trying to recapture the fleeting calm of a moment now lost to her sister’s worries. “Fine,” she finally said. “Fanas knows your gut is usually right about these kinds of things. We’ll be more careful, Reina.”

  Some of the tension left her sister’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “We’ll get through this, Rae. Somehow.”

  Rae smiled back at her sister, though her thoughts soured. Reina was a thin, anemic light in the darkness of a life spent running, hiding, and constantly moving. There were only so many places they could go in Hillcrest, and only so many ways to reinvent themselves. And underneath it all, who was Rae? A coward, for running? Some sort of revolutionary for keeping her power out of the Council’s hands? Or just a woman, trying and failing to live a normal life?

  Reina insisted that Rae’s powers didn’t define her, but how could Rae think otherwise, with the entire stormsick city blasting the opposite message from every rooftop? Fulminancers rose to the top of Hillcrest’s bloody fighting rings, where the very best lived a life of wealth and ease. Hillcrest’s only university was partial to any research done by Fulminancers—Duds need not apply. Even the sashes around their waists were greatly enhanced by Fulminancy, giving the wearer access to better shops, bakeries, and fighting rings. Her sister’s words were those of an idealist, but most importantly, they were the words of a woman wishing fervently that her sister had been born normal.

  It doesn’t really matter, she thought. We can be whatever we need to be, together. Her sister would keep her anchored to who she was—she’d always done so.

  Silence descended over the parlor until a particularly grotesque sound gurgled from Rae’s gut. She gave a little apologetic shrug to Reina, and she laughed.

  “It’s only been a few hours,” she said, grinning.

  “Using Fulminancy makes me hungry.”

  “The parlor was your idea.”

  “Well,” Rae said. “I have another. Those pastries we tried last week? Those were the best clouding things I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve got to learn how to make them. They can have my Seat if they teach me.”

  “I don’t think they’ll want it,” Reina said with a giggle. “But living as bakers for a few months is one of the best ideas you’ve ever had.”

  “Well, there was that time we sold snacks in that Uphill ring.”

  “That was only good until one of the Fulminant fighters nearly gave me a lightning-shaped tattoo.”

  Rae winced at the memory and reached for a drink nearly empty by now. “Not my best idea,” she said. “But I never thought the Fulminancy would reach that high.” The mountain ice clinked slightly in the glass as she raised it towards her sister, smiling. Reina raised her own back.

  “To more adventures,” Reina said.

  “To less nonsense,” Rae replied.

  Reina laughed and sipped her glass.

  A tendril of Fulminancy snapped viciously, and Rae frowned, her drink halfway to her lips. There was something off about that sound—like the otherworldly crack of ice on a frozen lake. She hadn’t felt her own Fulminancy change, so where—

  A high-pitched sort of preening squealed through the air. A searing heat. A whump of air. The sound disappeared from the room, and heat and fire blossomed in a wave that threw Rae from her chair. Instinctively, she threw up her Fulminancy around her in a cocoon, but it did little to dull the pain as her back slammed through the glass window at the front of the shop.

  Rae tumbled through piles of glass shards in the street, the shock of the icy rain just barely enough to return her to her senses. A blazing light lit the streets where there should have been none—fire, consuming the building before her. Gasping, swearing, each piece of glass a tiny knife in her hands and back, Rae scrambled back towards the shop with one thought in her mind.

  Reina.

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.