He didn’t know how to handle all the wanting that threatened to drown him in a deluge,so he needed to make his escape. Cal wasn’t certain he’d survive another moment in her presence.
“No,” he answered, fading into the familiar obscurity of the fog at last, “it’s Calamity.”
* * *
FROM THE DESK OF ELISE SASINI, AN EXCERPT FROM THE MANUSCRIPT THE SHROUDED CITY:
No one knows weather like a weather witch. That’s what my mom told me, and what her mother told her. I come from a long line of weather witches — an unbroken chain that stretches back into the fuzzy obscurity of witch hunts and elvish rule, the wild thicket of generations past. I’m no gloriana, but I’m no slouch, either. Weathercraft is in my bones. I respect the craft as much as I respect those witches who came before me.
That doesn’t make my forebears right, though.
A weather witch is an interpreter. We are translators of a language in which we can never truly claim fluency. We understand and often influence, but we don’t truly know the weather. That claim can only be held by those born into the currents and storms, those rare beings who are hammered magic and earthly power.
Elementals.
* * *
The next day was miserable and incredible in equal measure. Despite the precipitous adrenaline drop, Elise hardly slept. The thin cot and frigid room weren’t the issue. Nor was the sound of people moving across the platform outside her door, presumably night dwellers and bleary-eyed pilgrims going about their business.
It was Cal.
Elise felt breathless and windswept for many hours after he slipped back into vapor. Her mind raced in ever-tightening circles around one subject: him.
He was both everything and nothing like she imagined. He was beautiful in an ethereal way that she never could have pictured. Miles and miles of smooth alabaster skin stretched over a body of lean muscle. Long, long hair flowed in currents around his aquiline face. His eyes were nothing but spilled ink, reflecting all that they saw.
Even in the dark, the sight of him made her stomach muscles tighten with ripples of awareness. Never, in all her life, had she been so potently aware of another being’s physicality. It was as if she was hyper aware of every movement, every twitch of his beautiful fingers and flick of his hair.
Worse than all that, Elise couldn’t get the sound of his voice out of her head.
Cal was soft spoken. Even when he was furious, he didn’t truly raise his voice. He spoke in a murmur — a low baritone of the softest velvet. When a man spoke as if every word was a secret to be shared between them, he held untold power over the senses.
And he told me his name, she thought, staring at her half-eaten oatmeal the next morning. Her smile refused to fade even in the face of bland, overcooked oats.
Cal. Calamity.
Instead of satisfying her curiosity, he’d only thrown fuel on the fire.
Why was he named that? Did he pick it himself, or did someone else? Why? Elise couldn’t imagine a person less suited to being called Calamity than the hauntingly beautiful elemental.
And then there was the question of his accusations. He expected her to seek him out for assassination? That meant that someone had done that in the past, and Elise was terribly curious about who and when.
All day she paced the Aerie, her thoughts spinning in circles of disbelief and dizzying joy. She still couldn’t wrap her head around her success, nor that he was actually considering her offer.
Well, sort of.
He did intend to ask her for something. It might have made her nervous, but Elise was aware enough of her own flaws to realize that, no matter what he asked for, she would almost certainly agree. Short of murder, there was very little she wouldn’t do to satisfy her curiosity.
But if there was something else there, layered under the curiosity and the driving need to break into the marrow of a story, Elise didn’t care to examine it. She understood that she was attracted to Cal, of course, but she didn’t spare it much thought. The smooth skin of his palm cupping her throat might have been the single most erotic moment of her life, but she doubted he felt the same.
Could an elemental even feel lust? Elise didn’t know. Not every race did.
Not that it matters, she thought, standing in the glow of the single light of the boat house. She stared out at the choppy water and hugged her arms tightly around her middle. Anticipation was a current under her skin. Would he show? Would he demand something impossible? Would he touch her like he did before?
No, stop that. Elise shifted from foot to foot. Even if he did feel lust, you can’t just assume he would be attracted to you. He’s a fucking elemental. He could be into, like, clouds or something.
But even that thought didn’t stop the swooping butterflies that filled her stomach when she watched the fog move in. When it crept over the edge of the dock, she held her breath.
Cal emerged with a rolling, floating step forward. The moon was full and the sky clear. The moonlight bleached him of what little color he had, leaving him in varying shades of silvery white. Just like the previous night, he was completely naked. Not that it mattered. The fog swirled around him such that he might have worn clown pants and she would have been none the wiser. Not that she was looking, of course.