Sometimes, a few of the Arcus Irae children would wander off, accompanied by a Tempest or each other—leaving an anxious Losa to fret and wear the grass bare under her pacing paws. Her awareness of her colorful charges tingled constantly, nerves worn raw and bare, and she refused to relax her focus on them lest a single slip-up lead to yet another heartbreak. The rainbows needed their freedom. They deserved the liberty to explore what might be their permanent new home, to discover places they might come to love. As their ex-regent, Losa owed them that privilege after all the poor darlings had gone through. She might be their “princess” in title, but she would not be their dictator. That didn’t make her job any easier, however. That didn’t mean she wasn’t ill to her guts when Scamander disappeared for a few days, or Zawyne went dancing toward the vast lake to swim. With all this time spent squeezing herself dry and trying to keep herself together, Losa had not visited the wolf who owned her heart in far too long . . .

It happened as she was reentering Dierne Hrof, exhausted from a day spent trying to track Scamander. She heard Hurricane call her name like a clap of thunder—startling her out of her thoughts and pinning her to the spot. A joyous grin lit up her mask like daybreak, her blue-violet eyes dazed but pleased. “Hurricane!” Her response was reflexive; for moons now, the princess had accepted that her hessian felt most comfortable guarding her from this kingdom’s periphery, resolved to eliminating threats before they could ever reach the border. Hurricane knew her well enough to give her time and privacy to heal the heartache that came with the demises of her younger rainbow charges . . . and she adored him for it—loved him all the harder for not smothering her when he so clearly wanted to ensure she never left his sight. True, she’d worried about him those first days . . . when the midnight predator could hardly walk, much less hunt for himself. The both of them were too protective, too possessive of one another to simply allow the other to suffer by themselves. How they’d managed not to drive each other crazy—or pry themselves away from their partner’s side—was nothing short of a miracle. But if Hurricane had called to her, that meant he was ready to really speak to Losa. And that made her heart soar.

Already her delicate paws carried her toward the source of his voice, steps light and airy. Her tail started to wag when her vision picked out his silhouette shadowing the trees. “It’s about time, you moose. Sorry I haven’t been down to see you, it must have been dull . . . um . . . Ah. Hurricane. There’s . . . you have . . .” At last there was nothing barring him from view. The colossal titan stood tall before her, an onyx monolith with windows of lightning. And antlers. A branching bone-crown growing right out of his brooding brow, fully large enough to lift Losa off the ground. Fully large enough to hold an Arcus Irae on each beam, actually. Her heart did a mighty thump in her chest. Hurricane looked like a forest god. “So . . . how long have those been there?”

Unfortunately, Losa never heard his answer. Because Aindreas was careening toward them in the next breath, vitriol like molten silver spilling from between his snarling lips.

Rainbows did not generally feel their Tempests the way their guardians could feel them; Losa knew when Aindreas walked near, for the protective aura he cast warmed her like the rays of a gentle sun. Sometimes, when his emotions spiked, she tasted those as well—but never on the same level as she experienced the hearts of the Arcus Irae children. When she was just a pup, her parents had explained that a reason existed for this separation of her own mind and that of her knights. The blue-eyed soldiers had to inhabit the perceptions of their charges to better defend them from danger, to know at any given time in any place precisely what their rainbow needed. As for the rainbows . . . to make that bond any stronger, to give it a two-way flow, would be disastrous. The colorful beings already presented a great temptation to those who looked after them; it would be cruel to place another burden upon the Tempests when they already worked so hard to battle their own desires, their own worries, their blazing wrath.

Losa trembled under the blinding force of this trademark Tempest Rage, quickly positioning herself between the blizzard Emperor and her stygian paramour.

“Hurricane, this is King Aindreas. He . . . we . . .” Here Losa fumbled miserably, dropping her royal composure the way a child would drop a crown too heavy for her hands. How was she supposed to explain the connection she and Aindreas shared? Every sentence that raced into her mind was immediately crumpled up and tossed aside, inadequate and unbelievable. Our souls recognize each other. We’ve all been here before. This is a scene played on repeat—and I have no idea why. Losa growled quietly to herself, visibly recomposing before lifting her head and pinning Hurricane with the same challenging stare she’d been perfecting since her eyes opened. “I trust him. None of his entire bloodline was present in the kingdom when the coup occurred. He has given me no reason to fear for my life, or that of the other Arcus Irae.” For the most part, the bubblegum damsel delivered her lines without a single quaver. She and Hurricane stood as equals—he wouldn’t listen to arrogance, but he’d also blatantly ignore her if he so much as glimpsed a sign Losa felt unsure. The obsidian dragon had been calling her on her bullshit from the moment the lass could speak. However, imperceptibly . . . her lyrics stumbled upon the word “other.” The deaths of Fairuz, Vera, and Fallon lanced through the pastel dancer with the jagged pain of a fresh wound. If anyone were to blame for those graves, it was Losa—not the furious ivoro currently seething beside them, his very soul on fire with the single-minded passion to protect her. “Toirneach Mhutair . . . I humbly implore you to trust me on this.”

And then—to prove to him she could handle this terrifying new side Hurricane shown her—she scrunched her muzzle up in a teasing smirk. “Of course, if you refuse to get along, I can always tangle those new branches of yours in a bush somewhere until you cool off.”

Losa pivoted with a sassy swish of her banner, making sure to swat Hurricane across his broad muzzle as she did so. Inwardly, the girl trembled to turn her back on the beast her childhood guardian had revealed; the thundercloud creature that faced Aindreas was a monster capable of tearing opponents his same size into pieces, and the princess desperately wanted to prevent a battle between the soldiers of snow and shadow. Hurricane could eat anyone that threatened a single hair on her head . . . and Aindreas would do the same. Should the powerful gladiators leap at one another’s throats, Losa had no doubt they’d destroy one another in a cataclysmic eruption. Closing her heavenly portals, the dawn-painted lady briefly extended a wave of comfort and gentleness toward the viciously pulsating node of hatred scorching the Tempest’s insides. His soul felt hot to the touch; a star on the verge of supernova, devouring all other thought from Aindreas’ mind. “Ofer . . . King Aindreas. Please forgive Hurricane. He was only doing what he has done best since my birth: look after me. And I never made that job easy for him. Also,” she quipped, eyeing Hurricane from the side, “he is an idiot.”

At last Losa dipped into an elegant bow, exuding genuine humbleness for one of the few times in all her days. “I promise you will be hard-pressed to find a soldier who is this man’s equal, no matter his faults. I’ll personally see to it that he makes himself indispensable to Dierne Hrof. Besides . . . I l-love him, for some reason. And I . . . I r-really miss him being c-close. I guess.”

The ballerina would absolutely not meet Hurricane’s striking yellow gaze as she uttered this. All her attention focused upon the clear azure lanterns of her Ofer—the luminous oceans that would surely see the truth in her spirit and the value of Hurricane past the wall of ire that wanted to consume him.