Thunder Dawning

By Nyx Lebeau

Raina has been told for years that she deserved to be venerated, that she was the subject of awe. Somehow, the prison that she has been trapped in for over a decade doesn't seem to fit that description. Enough is enough. She is going to take her chances with the outside world.

 

Dawn has been living day to day since her family died, and she thinks she is doing alright. Except she hasn't been able to move back into her old room, and there is a growing distance between her and the people in town. Not that it matters in the end, because there isn't anything she can do to change.

 

Two women with wildly different views of the world probably should not be forced together. Too bad the worst sandstorm of the year has them trapped together. Now they have to reconcile their differences or fall victim to something far more dangerous than nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nyx Lebeau
• Release date: Oct 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393541370

Book preview

Escape

Raina had been walking for hours, but the threat of discovery, of being captured yet again, kept her going. The sun was starting to rise, the first hints of daytime heat chasing away the chill. She knew that by midday she would be cursing the dry heat as she stumbled over the dunes, but right now the gentle warmth was the only thing keeping her going.

She paused at the top of a dune, checking behind her. While there had been no indication that anyone had seen her when she escaped, the guard rotation would have checked in her room a few hours ago. At least, she thinks that it would have been an hour ago. The windowless nature of the compound had made it hard to tell time.

It wasn’t until she had made it over two more dunes and the sun had broken free of the horizon that Raina fully realized what that meant. She was free, with nothing holding her down, in this giant expanse. One more glance behind showed that there were no pursuers and her tracks had been blown away by the wind. She sunk down to her knees, not caring about the sand that wormed its way through the thin cloth of her pants. To think, after years of white walls and cold rooms that she could feel this!

Despite the apparent safety, Raina didn’t allow herself to rest for more than a few minutes. She may be unused to life outside of the compound, but even she knew that she would need food, water, and some kind of shelter. So she pulled herself to her feet and kept walking, far away from where she had come from.

By the time that the sun had reached its peak, the heat was unbearable. Raina had no idea how far she had walked, but her feet were aching and her ankles were struggling to deal with the shifting sand. The dunes seemed to stretch on for forever, only ending in a hazy dark line on the horizon. The only signs of water had been some spiky plants that she did not want to touch (though she may have no choice if she couldn’t find something else to eat) and a few lizards that scurried underneath rocks as soon as they saw her. There were birds circling overhead, though Raina couldn’t say what kind.

She was stumbling now, her feet dragging with each step. Raina had only pushed herself to see how long she could go without food or water once before she had found out that her keepers would resort to dire measures to ensure her survival. After that, her rebellions had become quiet, easily missed things. This... This was far beyond anything that she had known. Her movement was slow, her mouth was parched, her eyes were blurry, and her mind felt foggy. And that was only the problems related to dehydration.

By the time that the sun touched the horizon, Raina could barely move. The cooling air brought little relief to her sunburned skin, and her eyes were stinging from the sand. Here, at the top of one of the largest dunes, she could almost pretend that she saw lights in the distance. As she collapsed to her knees, she thought that she saw a cloud of sand moving against the wind. Just before her legs gave out on supporting her entirely she saw lights through the cloud, lights that seemed to be getting closer. Her last thought before her head hit the ground and she lost consciousness was ‘They’ve found me.’

The Woman in the Desert

The first surprise was waking up at all. Raina had really expected them to keep her drugged to the gills if they had gotten to her in time, and that was a pretty big ‘if.’ She kept her eyes closed, taking stock of her aches and pains. Her head was clearer now, and while her mouth was still dry her tongue didn’t feel like the sand outside anymore. Her legs were sore, and she could feel the blisters on her feet. Her arms and shoulders seemed to have taken the worst of the sun, and any shifting of the sheets made her wince. The folds of skin on her back still had sand trapped in them, which meant that they hadn’t even touched her wings. While that in itself is cause for alarm (the Caretakers always made sure that her wings were in perfect condition) the shifting revealed something that had never happened before.

She was not held down.

No restraints, no drugs, no heavy blankets or tight bundles. The clothes that Raina are wearing felt like the ones that she had escaped in. So, she was in better shape than when she passed out, she was not tied down in any way, and it seemed as if no one has tried poking her wings.

Raina was absolutely terrified.

She slowly opened her eyes, trying to gauge her surroundings. She was lying on a soft bed with a patterned blanket carefully tucked around her. There were windows (another surprise) that looked out over the desert with curtains drawn back to let in the sun. The room looked lived in, as if Raina was not the first person to stay in it. Bookshelves line two of the walls, though not all of them held books. There was an entire shelf that only held feathers and pretty rocks, pieces of the outside world that Raina had never been allowed. Another held little creations made of sticks and strings, all tied together to look like the animals that Raina had only seen in pictures. The sunlight sparkled off of a wooden door and a brass knob that didn’t seem to have a lock.

The