**BOOK 1 IN THE TALES FROM DROMISSE SERIES**
Silvia considers herself the luckiest woman in all Dromisse. Her soon-to-be fiancé, Duncan Ora, is a candidate for Light Within, the greatest gift that the Almighty Gale can bestow upon someone. Then a ra...
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Duncan makes his way to the edge of the town, following a dirt road slicked with mud and melting wagon tracks. He stops outside the rickety fence of a tall farmhouse. The shuttered windows shake in the wind like wooden bones. A woman with a squeezed waist and wide hips stands outside a mailbox, her coiled hair leaping in springs behind her.
Duncan watches from a distance. Aunt Morissa is someone he looks up to, muscling a family of seven almost singlehandedly after her husband Clarence died. Finding himself before her—behind her—he discovers his feet are rooted to the ground. He can't force them forward. What will she think of him?
A young man bounds through the door of the farmhouse. "Ma—" He stops as he sees Duncan. "Hey! You're trespassin' on Stuart property, ya hear!"
Morissa twirls around. "Hey—!" She cuts off and draws a few paces closer. "... Duncan?!" The mail flutters from her grasp. She runs the length of the yard toward him, throwing open the gate. "What're you doin' here?!" She turns to the young man. "Jack, get Duncan a towel. Now! Or I'll whup your scrawny behind!"
Jack watches with wide eyes and scrambles back into the house.
Apparently, Morissa also has that maddening lightning sense. She can see through his disguise. His sparkling magic reveals his face while she frantically frisks him. "I'm okay," he says. "A little muddy, and a lot wet, but okay. I just came from my parents' home."
He wants to swallow his tumultuous emotions, but they creep out in his wavering voice. Suddenly he's twelve again, helpless and scared as he sneezes lightning all across the farm. Then he's cutting wood with Uncle Wally and waking up in the hospital. Screaming. So much screaming. Fear lingers in the air like a suffocating odor. He's mobbed by Light Within who touch him all over his aching neck. It burns, it burns, please stop! They can't heal him—they can't heal him why can't they heal him do something! Then the Council stares at him, pondering his condemnation. Those eyes, Astraya's stony eyes. Indra Cobalt's nails against the wall, screee, unfaithful wretch, the clatter of Marche, boom boom boom—
Sorrow leaks through his eyes and bleeds into the rain, and the storm swells above the farmhouse. Sprays of lightning touch the distance.
"Hey, don't y'all worry. We'll get you inside and warmed up right quick. C'mon." Morissa tugs him toward the door. "Y'all gon' wash up tonight. Ain't no mud gettin' on those bedsheets, ya hear?"
The two walk inside. A blonde girl in the kitchen chops vegetables. "Ma, dinner is almost done—" She looks up at Duncan and shrieks, dropping the knife. She ducks behind the counter.
Duncan's eyes simmer with magic, causing water droplets to dry up. He runs his hands over his clothes and removes the moisture and mud stains that cling to the legs of his pants. "Laurie ..."
Jack skids to the top of the stairs, clutching a worn, scratchy towel. He chucks the towel at Duncan but realizes too late that it's no longer necessary. "O-Oh." He clasps his hands and wads them into a ball.
