"Do you have your titanium?" Renit asks.

I open the jacket pocket to show him the titanium bands. He nods, silently thanking me for being thorough, and for one last time, he drags a hand through his hair. A nervous habit, I've noticed, and one he uses to stall himself from going any further with the task at hand.

Once again, we're standing near the cliffsides. The only spectators in Arego are Bren and Tesha standing in the shadow of a building, their arms crossed over their chests. Everyone else, whether rebels or ordinary witches in search of safe harbor, is hidden within the streets and buildings. They were warned that a storm was coming today, and it would not be an ordinary one caused by natural events.

The banished prince of Esaria, Renit Marron, the king's weapon, will bring destruction to Arego once more. But it's not the same destruction he caused last time—months ago during his father's orders. This time, he'll be trying to quell his power with his Grounding; me. Although this brings back memories of loss, Arego is still standing and is more alive than ever. It doesn't have the same feel; everyone is out for revenge but the heart is the same. The village is a safe place.

"Renit, it'll be fine," I reassure. "If anything happens, I have titanium. And Bren can step in if he needs to."

"Fine," he grumbles. "But don't let him stab me in the back when you're not looking."

I roll my eyes and with an urgent wave of my hand, force him to start the long process of Grounding his storm. Renit glances one last time back at the village in hopes something forces him to stop what he's doing and help a random rebel, but no one is coming to his aid today. After not being able to use his power for so long, he's grown scared of it. Not only that, but his power is more and more impatient every day there isn't a proper Grounding established. On more than one occasion, his veins have glowed with lightning and his eyes, bright already, turned molten.

With a deep breath of smoke out through his nose, Renit can normally calm the storm's rage. But not for long. He needs a proper Grounding and with one more establishment of my power taking down his, we'll be in the clear. Renit will use his storm without incident; a goal the king had months ago. No one knew we'd be training on the other side of alliance.

Our powers are constantly reaching out for each other, Renit's especially, so the day has come where we finally bring them together. They'll be able to mingle and learn each other. It won't be the gentle, fluttering interactions they're used for. Today will be about fighting for dominance between the two strengths and my power of ground will have to be the winner; the storm cannot prevail. Otherwise, we've failed.

Finally, once he realizes there's no stopping this, Renit closes his eyes. The ocean breeze pushes at the back of his head and flutters his clothes. The endless expanse stretches out behind him and before I lose myself in the beauty of this sight, I blink myself back to reality and relish in the weight of the titanium bands in my pocket. More than one, for additional precaution.

Renit exhales through his mouth and tips his chin towards the sky. I've never seen him work before, not completely, so this is a first for me, too. He's worked on this power for three hundred years, only to have it go against him, and today is the day we fix that.

I glance back at the village to find Bren already watching me from a distance. Tesha is already bored; she picks at her nails with one foot pressed against the wall behind her. My childhood friend, on the other hand, is watching me warily. He's never seen this progress in action before, he doesn't know what we went through those months at the castle, and he worries it won't work.

If only he was there to witness Renit's persistence. No matter how many times the Grounding bond failed to bring our two powers together, the prince forced me to keep going. Nothing had worked, of course, but with an added touch of strength gifted to me from two months of being underneath the king's control, the struggles may conclude today. I won't allow any other alternative. It's time Renit feels at peace with his strengths.

The storm begins to swell above our heads. First, the wind kicks up its pace and swirls around on the cliffsides with us. The strong gusts tear at my clothes and pull at my hair, bringing a wave of chill along with their frozen strengths. Even for summer, the force of Renit's strength will not be warmed.

Renit's dark hair is thrust back and forth; it becomes a mess of thick strands fluttering around his forehead and sticking out in all directions. My focus remains on the pure animalistic qualities of his appearance until lightning, brighter than the sun, crests from the veins in his wrists. The lightning snakes up his arms and disappears underneath the sleeve of his tunic; only to reemerge on his neck.

I step forward to ask him if he's all right, but Renit twitches with recognition and squeezes his eyes shut tighter. His power doesn't want me near him. This will be harder than I thought. The power of storm is going to whatever it takes to remain in control, the same thing Renit tried to do in the first place. The last thing he wanted was for me to be in control, I couldn't get my foot in the door without him kicking me right back out.

Again, everything is coming to an end today. Everything.

I look up towards the sky. Dark clouds swirl over our heads and along with that wind, rain falls. The droplets are ripped from the normally calm foundation of their form and rip in all directions. I block the stinging bite of the rain with my hands by shielding them over my face. Leaving enough room to watch Renit, I prepare myself for the worst.

The storm takes over the cliffsides in a swirl of fear and destruction. I receive flashbacks of that night when I stared up at the sky and watched lightning brighter than stars cleave down from the clouds and attempt to strike me. That was Renit. Now, as I look up at those clouds pumping and growing with each second, I discover the lightning is the same.

It twitches throughout the dark and greets thunder with an open fist. The ground shakes upon recognition of that storm and Renit, the banished prince, finally releases that lightning and the rest of the storm for all to see. His eyes finally open, staring directly at me, but it's not the witch I know that remains. When he looks at me, there's hardly a semblance of recognition.

The Outburst and the true Renit are fighting for dominance inside his mind. He twitches as if something is biting at him from within and the storm flickers. The force of his storm does not scare me anymore, the utter rage of it is everything Renit has hidden underneath his skin for so long—it's been at a bursting point for longer than I've been alive.

One second, he's watching me with warning dancing over his features. The next, the storm takes over and he's looking for more than one way to kill me with his storm. I have to do this in the right moment to get a grasp on his strengths. The Outburst is barely settling within him and if history tells me anything, it won't take full control until he starts the descent of a tornado from the clouds. That's when his power convulses with strength and Renit's control slips from his fingertips.

The wind becomes stronger, the rain heavier, the lightning and thunder louder and brighter. A power like this one should not go untested, the strength in it alone is monumental enough to cleave through the world itself. And as the lightning travels up his skin once more, brightening his eyes until they appear to be crystals, I realize the time has come.

I prepare myself and alert my power that we're not playing today. We're not sitting idle, and we're definitely not sleeping or worrying about nightmares. Today, we're Grounding Renit Marron's storm, whether his power is willing tobe controlled.

The lightning unfurls at his fingertips and mimics the jerky, uncertain movement of the sparks within the clouds. Somewhere in the distance, hiding within Arego, chimes ring out in warning from the oncoming wind. The grasses near the cliffsidesare nearly torn from the ground and the ocean waters, calm minutes ago, are now ripping themselves to shreds.

Planting my feet securely onto the ground, I watch Renit. Above me, I don't have to look to recognize the tornado spiraling down from the clouds. As long as I get to it before the bottom of the spiral touches the ground...a blast of lightning whips towards me and I throw up a wall of my power to block it. Renit's storm is strong, but it can't cleave through the surface of the world.

I twist out from behind that shield and send a whip of my own, this one being solid rock. It slams directly into Renit's stomach and he flies back, skidding against the rough surface of the cliffsides. Before I have the chance to wonder if he's all right, I'm running in his direction without a care for the storm breaking out overhead.

If I didn't think the winds could get stronger, I was wrong. They toss me left and right and slow my advances towards the witch attempting to recover from the blast I just dealt him. Lightning snakes from his fingertips after the wind gave him enough time to recover and the blast slams against my shoulder, scraping my arm, but narrowly misses striking home.

The smell of burnt flesh will be ignored for now. Smoke rises in the corner of my vision and the sting of Renit's blast slowly settles into my bones. As I throw ground over him, locking him onto the surface of the world, tears prick at my eyes from the pain and I can do nothing through the blurred vision but hope his lightning isn't circling above my head right now.

Renit's body thrashes underneath the weight pressing against him. I've seen fear in his eyes before, especially so in the throne room when his father slid the potion down my throat, but this is a different level. It's not Renit reacting to the fear; it's his power. The power of storm is beginning to panic, and it will do anything to get me away from the source of the strength, the witch struggling underneath the clumps of ground pressing against his body.

I practically sit on top of him. Renit's silver eyes widen with rage and he sends down a blast of lightning, only to hit the shield I construct over our heads. A dome made of solid stone blocks out any light except for the beads of lightning curdling through the veins in his neck. He jerks with an unsettling amount of desperation and his body, no longer his own, will do whatever it takes.

The lightning crackles down around us and strikes the shield. With his arms pinned, he can't directly strike me but his hands are close enough to my ankle that if his power slips through...I can't think about this any longer.

I slam my palms into his temples and without wasting a beat; I thrust the Grounding bond inside him. His head is thrown back, a quiet moan escapes his lips, and the bright silver of his eyes begins to dull. Not from losing life, but from regaining control.

My arm continues to burn with utter pain, but I thrust my power within his magic reserve. It snakes through and bites at the power of storm to weaken it, evident so by the slowing of wind, the thunder weakening, the lightning's blasts being much less severe. I fight a constant battle with it, sometimes the storm regains control and smothers my strength. I'm forced to push back, back, until my head is spinning and Renit's strength gives in once more just to enjoy the satisfaction of watching me struggle.

"You're fine," I whisper. "You're fine."

Renit thrashes but when his eyes open, there's a semblance of the witch there before he's gone again and replaced by the storm that craves control. I push harder and grit my teeth together, nearly screaming through them to force everything I have, down to the last bit of ground strength, into his body.

When I drop the shield to use that extra bit of strength, the wind rips at my clothes. I'm soaked within seconds from the level of rain breaking out through the clouds, but Renit isn't done fighting yet. He prepares his lightning for one last blast and my power isn't prepared. Shit.

I have no other choice, even after all the progress we've made, to clamp a titanium band around his wrist. The lock tightens, pressing against Renit's skin, and I fall back. The storm immediately departs, the cliffsides resume their calm demeanor, and Renit gulps down air as if the storm was suffocating his ability to breathe.

With the titanium band wrapped tightly around his skin, we don't have to worry about his storm breaking through. He sits up, leaning back on his elbows, and blinks rapidly to clear his vision and look at me. What he finds is a weak witch clutching onto her shoulder of charred skin and tattered fabric.

From the sudden exhaustion in Renit's eyes, it's easy to tell how much he hates himself and his power for not getting things right.