The Gathering Storm

===== **Spoiler Warning: Plot details follow.** =====

Celia turns 16 and is just starting to take charge more often, making much tougher descisions. As she gets back from her confusing summer, and delves into her sixth year at Renasci, she soon realizes that this will be the most stressful and exhausting year yet.

## Synopsis

The news Celia Fincastle received at the end of school last year came as a surprise, and it isn't the last surprising information she'll get before she heads back to school for another year at Renasci. The summer brings challenges right from the start, and by the time she gets through the Summer Tournament, she's just hoping she makes it to the start of school without anything else falling apart.

School isn't any easier, though, and Celia struggles to cope with all of the changes. She needs to find the remaining clues from her parents, no easy task when she can't let anyone find out what she's really doing. She also has some decisions to make, questions with no easy answers that will affect the rest of her life and possibly the lives of those around her. But there are other things going on, things that Celia can't quite see yet. Something's brewing and Celia knows it, and this time the price they'll all pay might just be too high.

## Plot

Celia has just started making more decisions, as she had just recently turned sixteen. One of these descisions is what to do about Quiroz, who had, in the last book, shown up at Renasci looking for Celia, beaten up and awful-looking. Celia used her training with Dr. Spedacura to heal him, although it took a lot out of her. Now, Quiroz tells her that he had ran away from Casimir and that Casimir had tried to force Quiroz to give him his gifts, a twisted version of transference, but it had back-fired and Quiroz had ended up with a lot of Casimir's memories. Every time Celia touches him, it sends her deep into a dark memory, and she goes briefly unconscious.

As she stretches her mind gifts more, Higby shares his memory of the proclamation which only serves to bring up more questions.

She starts hearing a small voice calling her name.

She meets up with her friends to cheer Josh on at the Summer Tournament but soon things take a turn when Josh and Celia get into an argument which ends with Josh kissing Celia and Celia involuntarily slapping him. He wins the tournament, but For the rest of the summer, he refuses to talk to anyone and looks miserable, right when he should be celebrating. To make matters worse, a camerman managed to get some shots of the kiss and then slap so it's all over the front page of the newspaper across the demesne. Celia gets to meet Josh's sister who chews her out hard for putting Josh in that situation.

She also hears from Truno, that Lyerly had a vision that Celia was going to be tricked again and something bad was going to happen.

Later on in the summer, Celia visits Aunt Agatha, by suggestion of Higby. Aunt Agatha is very lonely without Celia and they talk about how Aunt Agatha, although she doesn't know a lot, knew way more than Celia did and didn't tell her for those nine years.

The summer flies by in a swirl of confusing and messy and Celia is soon back at Renasci. This year, Maddie’s younger sister, Sabrina is starting at RAGS, and she is put into Mensaleon. She soons becomes very popular, making up names for practically everything and everyone one, and starting a trend that you must say "Pickle!" if someone says "what." She drives Maddie up a wall, and not only that, but Hux is still sending postcards of Hildegard to Maddie as well. She hates her siblings.

Celia continues visiting schools, searching for the clues, going to Pachay with Kitt. The clue they find next, sends them to Illumine. Originally, it was just Maddie that was going to go, but INKS invited all of her friends to come along and attend a gala.

Christmas arrives, and it just happens that everyone besides Celia's friends and advisors are going home for Christmas that year so they have free reign of the entire school. Unfortunately, Celia's Christmas break isn't much of a break for her.

Everyone is assigned a student mentor as school resumes, and Celia decides to join the program. Maddie is put with Rina (Sabrina) which is going awfully. Sabrina is not at all focused on her schoolwork and actually *fails* her seventh year tests, even though they are just testing out your abilities. This is why, when Celia's mint asks to be reassigned, Celia is double-paired with Sabrina. She forces Maddie and Sabrina to work it out and Sabrina manages to retake the test without too much trouble.

Celia talks with Heath's dog, Warley, who informs her that someone has been lurking outside, presumably looking for Quiroz.

At Bellicose, Lyerly's vision of a trap becomes horribly twisted as the Desert Knights recapture Quiroz. Dr. Gemynd erases Quiroz's memory- just the crucial information that he knows- just before the Desert Knights veherate away.

Because of all the emotions swirling around in Celia's mind, it isn't a surprise when she gets a vision, but this one is critical. It tells her she has a sister, Neeghan.

On the very last page of the book, someone is standing at the door, claiming to be looking for his son. It's someone Celia is the opposite of happy to see.

## References

1. ↑ "The Gathering Storm," Goodreads, last modified 2014, accessed December 20, 2021, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22927619-the-gathering-storm.