A beckoning Lightstorm sent a charge through the air, and Fulminant energy sang through Kess’s veins with a song she swore she could feel. The very thought of it was both nauseating and exhilarating, a storm within her very blood.

  It would work this time.

  She called to those powers she kept tucked away so deep that sometimes she refused to even acknowledge that she had them, ignoring the screams pounding her eardrums and the scent of blood assaulting her nose. There was no control— only a wild and intangible form of power. Something that would maim anything she touched— including herself.

  Kess felt the familiar blue lightning trailing down her arms slowly, hers a deeper blue than her captives. It filled the space around her as the men leapt back, yelping. The wind howled, swirling into the alleyway, and even her sword wielding captor took a step back.

  With Fulminancy, big acts of destruction like this were comically easy, but Kess’s was on another level entirely. She’d always lacked the finesse and control of other Fulminant, but her own powers were so wildly out of control that she could easily level a city block on any given day.

  Kess swallowed the bile that threatened to bring up the small amount of water she’d consumed with the feel of the power coursing through her veins. In her head, screams echoed and she swore she could smell singed flesh. She shook her head, trying to clear the memories.

  Tonight was different.

  When the very air crackled around her and she felt that she could dredge up no more of that power, Kess released it.

  The world collapsed around her.

  The men flew backwards, thrown nearly a block away into an unmoving heap. The closest was vaporized where he stood. On either side of her, the buildings shook, and Kess prayed they would hold as she tried to channel the power down the alleyway. A strong cracking sound emanated from the buildings to her left and right, ominous and final.

  The power released like a flash of lightning, quick, destructive, and gone as quickly as it came. Kess opened her eyes again and surveyed the damage, weaving slightly.

  Her tormentors were gone, lying still or immortalized as dark smudges on the abandoned alleyway. Most of the power had slammed into the building to the left. It threatened to collapse on the alleyway, cracks spider webbing through the wall. A few places on the cobblestones were decorated with soot, and Kess fought back nausea as she realized that those had been men.

  Shaking, she stepped forward to run again.

  No men followed her. The only men who could give witness to what she had done were now dead. Kess felt, as she limped forward, barely conscious, that her act of supposed self defense had only confirmed what she had always known.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Kess was a monster.

  Monster or not, she had to find her brother. She moved, as if in a daze, towards the address she’d memorized, and threw her cloak over her shoulders as she entered more inhabited portions of the city. Whitering passed, and Dawnring emerged, the homes occupied and busy even at this time of night.

  Kess’s steady steps forward— pained though they were— were the only thing that kept her sane and conscious. She counted them in her head, a repetitive sort of dirge to forget the atrocities she’d just committed.

  Finally, a well-kept mansion emerged from the tangle of buildings in Redring. It was set into a courtyard with other quiet houses, though many of them looked unoccupied. Kess was grateful for the quiet street— she didn’t want to discuss anything with onlookers.

  She didn’t want to discuss anything at all, really. Not now.

  Still, she forced herself towards the courtyard, where a guard took one look at her short, injured stature and simply let her pass with a bored look on his face. Kess reached the ornate front door and knocked.

  After a few moments of yelling, a young man a little older than Kess appeared, his dark hair disheveled, and his eyes tired. There was soot on his clothes, and even his face had a few dirty smudges. Kess found his looks an odd contrast with the wealth of the building, but pushed it out of her mind for the time being.

  “I need—“ she began. The young man cut her off, leaning in the doorway.

  “Look,” he said, voice quiet. “I can’t keep helping every beggar that comes to our doorstep— not while Arlette’s around. She’ll kill me if I spend more of our budget on the poor, but she doesn’t have to know.”

  “But—“

  The man held up a hand, then looked over his shoulder. His voice lowered further and Kess had to strain to hear it.

  “Have you met old Marlon yet?” he asked. Kess shook her head in spite of herself, trying to navigate the conversation with her spinning mind. “He’s in charge of the warehouse I set up. Should be warm there, and dry when the Floodstorms come along. I sneak food out there as often as we can afford too, so we—“

  Finally, Kess had had enough. She threw back her hood, grabbed the young man by his shirt, and let everything out at once.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, but my brother does have a tendency to associate with know-it-alls and sycophants. Regardless, he worked with someone at this address once. He’s missing now, and I’ve had a day that Fanas herself would envy, so you can take your cloudspawn dung about me being a beggar and save it for the next unfortunate person to show up at your doorstep.”

  She unfurled the bloodied envelope in shaking hands and shoved it in the man’s face. “This man,” she said, thrusting it forward. “Take me to him, now.”

  The young man blinked, shocked, as Kess held onto his shirt.

  “But that’s—“

  Then she collapsed in a dead faint.

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