by Amy Braun
My chest and ribs hurt, and I couldn’t breathe. I scrambled to my feet, slipping on the wet brick and nearly collapsing. Hadrian stood up quickly, moving with a fluid grace I couldn’t have managed even if I weren’t having a breakdown.
“You must remain calm, Ava, and end this storm.”
“I don’t know how!” I screamed. “I don’t know anything! Who were those people? What do they want with me?” I suddenly backed up from Hadrian. “What are you going to do to me?”
He laid down his sword and held out his hands in a placating gesture. The rain drenching him from head to toe made him look cool and beautiful, the same way a blade is beautiful before it cuts you open.
“I am your Guardian, Ava. You are tethered to me–”
“I don’t know what that means!”
“It means I am bound to protect you,” he snapped. “It means I am supposed to prevent you from doing this.”
He waved his hand through the storm, but neither the rain nor hail bent with his hand. Not like it did with me.
“I am not going to hurt you,” Hadrian continued, “but nor can I help you or give you the answers you seek if you do not calm down.”
My heart thundered violently. My breath struggled to catch up. I pressed a hand to my chest. My eyes burned from tears streaking down my face, the traitorous drops becoming lost in the cold, hard rain.
“I can’t,” I panted. “I can’t, oh God, what’s happening to me?”
Hadrian took a patient step toward me. “Ava, listen to me. You need to release this storm. You are going to cause a flood.”
A flood… like the one that surged into the school after I had my nightmare. Another occasion where I was panicked and terrified of the world around me.
Ironically, the rational part of my mind said yes. That something happened to me, probably during that week I went missing. It told me I had caused the flood at the school. It reminded me of how I used the weather around to me to stand up to Declan. It persisted to tell me I was able to create hail when Hadrian told me to. It all but yelled that I was causing this rainstorm right now.
Causing water that could be flowing back into the school again, hurting my parents or drowning my little brother, who already had trouble breathing–
Strong hands curled around my arms. I jumped and choked on my scream. My eyes registered Hadrian standing in front of me, as solid and unbreakable as a wall.
“Close your eyes, Ava.”
I didn’t have the answers to this seriously screwed up situation. But Hadrian did. I could listen to him until I dragged the truth from him. I closed my eyes.
“Now breathe. Slowly. Concentrate on breathing, and nothing else.”
Right, I thought. As if it’s that easy.
It is not meant to be.
I jumped when I heard his voice in my head. I blinked my eyes open. Hadrian’s face was stony as ever.
“How did–”
“Close your eyes and breathe, Ava. When you are relaxed, the answers will come.”
I chewed my lower lip, uncertain whether I wanted to believe him or not, but I closed my eyes again anyway. I’d taken some yoga classes with Piper a couple months ago– she got them free as part of one of her modeling contracts– so thinking about her helped me regulate my breathing. I thought about the air filling my lungs, cool and sweet, turning warm in my chest, and sinking to the very marrow of my bones. I kept thinking about it with every breath, erasing all thoughts and fears.
Why didn’t I start thinking about yoga before? I thought dumbly. Then I remembered, Crap. Hadrian can read my thoughts.
A stutter escaped his lips, like it was a laugh he wasn’t able to hold onto. I found I enjoyed the sound, the warmth and depth of it. I also liked the way his hands covered my arms. How gentle he was being when I had seen how dangerous he actually was.
I added it to my mantra, drawing in deep breaths, absorbing warmth from them, replaying Hadrian’s rumbling chuckle and feeling the strength of his hands.
That was when I noticed the hail had disappeared, and the rain was little more than a cool mist. It lightly danced on my face, a sweet sensation that drew a smile from my lips, and made my head light as a feather.
“That wasn’t so bad.”
My voice was slurred. When did I get drunk?
I opened my eyes and blinked against the fogginess in my eyes. Hadrian was still holding my arms, but he was frowning.
Still...
“You’re cute when you pout.”
I must have been drunk.
He sighed. “This is the first time you’ve Enervated, isn’t it?”
“No clue what that means, handsome, but the answer is probably yes. I think I’m gonna go home and sleep now.”
I tried to pull away, but he didn’t release me. “That is not a good idea.”
“My choice. Not yours. No more touchy.”
I plucked his fingers off my arms with methodical precision. It was way harder than it should have been, but I got them off, one by one. Smirking at his stubborn expression, I took a step back. Felt a little woozy, but that was probably because I was walking on uneven, icy ground with a haze in my head. Yet my pride was strong at the moment, so I turned around and took another step.
The world swayed the moment I planted my foot down. I felt my body crumple like a wet towel. A deep voice cursed, “Primes,” strong arms circled me, and then the world went black.
Chapter 6
I don’t very drink much or very often– I’m still a year underage, but Piper always drags me to big college parties– but when I do decide to go on that particular binge, I go all out and pay for it in the morning. Usually because I’m trying to use a vice to escape the mental trauma of a college party where the students are puking up everything they’ve ever eaten in their short history and throwing off clothes like confetti.
This went far beyond the worst hangover I’d ever had.
My head was a maelstrom of pounding and throbbing, and I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet. My stomach was one giant knot, the ends stretched and pulled like it was in a game of tug-of-war. My chest was tight and my throat was dry. Even my skin felt prickly and uncomfortable.
Putting it simply, I felt like shit.
“No more drinking,” I rasped out. “Ever.”
“You have not had anything to drink,” a deep voice said from my side.
I turned my head and opened my eyes, which was a huge mistake. My neck strained and my eyeballs felt like they’d been punched. I grimaced and flopped back onto whatever surface I’d been lying on. It was some kind of springy mattress with a fleece blanket over top.
“Ow,” I complained. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“The pain will dull soon enough. You need to sit up.”
“I’d really rather not,” I grumbled.
“Then your questions will remain unanswered.”
I cracked open an eye to glare in the direction of Hadrian’s voice. He was resting on his knees beside me, watching my face with a pensive expression.
Resigned, I slowly opened both eyes and pushed myself up. I moved sluggishly, dragging myself up and leaning back to find the headboard. Only there wasn’t one.
I gasped at my body’s sudden pitch into nothingness. Hadrian’s strong hand pressed against the upper part of my back and kept me from falling off the mattress.
His hand steadied me while my head spun. “I said sit up. Not lean back.”
I glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Sorry. Next time I’ll have to avoid getting knocked out and just obey your commands to the letter.”
Hadrian’s mouth was a hard line, though I swore a glimmer of amusement passed through his eyes. “That would be a relief.”
My lips curled into a scowl and I sat up, leaning away from his hand. The movement cramped my stomach. I winced and wrapped my hands around my middle, simply wishing the ache away since there was nothing else I could do about it.
“Truly, Hadrian, you earn the most troublesome charg
es.”
I lifted my head– a little too sharply– to find the new voice, and finally taking in my surroundings.
At first, I assumed I was in a pale hallway. Then I noticed the gleaming metal bars evenly spread on the walls. I was in a prison.
Standing in the middle of the cell block on my left, dressed in the same azure and navy blue leather armor, were a man and a woman. The man had smooth, sepia skin, though his eyes were hazel with dark blue circling his pupils. His arms were folded over his well-muscled chest. His hair was a curled mess around his head, which made him look like he just rolled out of bed. The smirk on his face was charming and playful. If I hadn’t seen the sword hilts crossing along his back, I wouldn’t have thought he was dangerous at all.
Next to him was a gorgeous middle-aged woman. She was shorter than him, but I immediately pegged her as the more dangerous of the two. It wasn’t only the way she stood, with her feet shoulder-width apart and her arms loose at her sides, like she was ready for a fight at any second. It was the look on her face. A hard tension that downturned her pretty red lips, turned her azure blue eyes to slits, and made the tightness of her short blond braid look even more severe. As I absorbed her appearance, I noticed that while the base of her uniform was similar to Hadrian’s and the other guy’s, there was a difference.
On the top left of her chest, angled over her heart, was a silver sigil printed into the leather. It was the sword-in-the-rain sigil I’d noticed on Hadrian’s back earlier this evening.
Memories of the battle slammed back into me like a sledgehammer. My lungs felt too tight for all the air I started gasping in.
I was trapped alone in a prison with three strangers. I didn’t know what happened to Declan, if those people following me were still out there, or how long I had been gone. The last time I was knocked out, a week had gone by.
I didn’t know much of what was going on, but I did know that these people surrounding me were like Ferno and the man who’d stabbed and tortured me. Staying with them wasn’t safe.
“Where am I?” I asked. “What’s going on? Who are you people?”
“You are in an empty prison facility,” informed the woman, whose voice was as cold as her beauty. “The other answers should be obvious.”
“Obvious how?” I fired back. “Why are you keeping me here?”
“She is confused,” Hadrian grumbled from my side.
The other man looked at him, frowning. “That in and of itself is confusing,” he said. “She must know she’s one of the Ice now that she’s under your charge.”
Hadrian turned his sharp blue gaze on me. It didn’t stir the feelings I hoped it would. “Perhaps she does not. I have never seen one of them like this before. She still has a human form.”
A human form? I stared at him like he was speaking Latin. “Of course I do!” I shouted. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Hadrian just looked at me.
“You told us she was not the only one,” the woman said, leading me to believe Hadrian informed his friends of everything that happened on the street before I woke up. “The other human that attacked you knew what he was and what he was capable of.”
“She used her powers as well,” Hadrian added grimly. “She must know.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I snapped. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
The other man laughed. It was a pleasant, deep sound, richer than Hadrian’s. It made him instantly more charming and likeable than the broody heartbreaker sitting beside me.
“Of course,” he said in a teasing voice, “the first Stormkind you take as charge in over a century, and she happens to be a delirious handful that’s still in her human skin.”
I barely heard the last of his taunt. All I heard was Stormkind. I repeated his remark over and over in my head, piecing the words together until I was sure I had their meaning.
It still didn’t make sense.
“Stormkind?” I said. “You… you think I’m a Stormkind?”
Hadrian’s eyes sparked and unnerved me. “I know you are. It was you who was controlling the rain and the hail, remember? What I do not understand is how. You are still in your human shell.”
“In my… because I am human!”
“Maybe you were before,” the woman said. “But you are not anymore.”
Dread clawed into my stomach and scratched its way to my heart. Dizziness filled my head again.
“I need to go home,” I whispered. “I need to get back to my family.”
I gathered my strength and tried to push off the mattress. Hadrian’s hand clamped on my shoulder and held me in place. He wasn’t hurting me, but he was stronger than I could ever hope to be.
“No,” he told me. “You need to stay here. We need to understand what you are. There has never been a human with the powers of a Stormkind before. It is not safe for you to walk away.”
I grimaced and shoved his arm off my shoulder. “I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you that I’m going home.”
I swung my legs off the mattress and stood up without help. I swayed, but kept my footing. Hadrian had risen with me, but I pushed him away.
“Don’t come near me,” I warned.
Something that looked like hurt flashed through his eyes, gone so quickly I was sure I’d imagined it. I must have. Hadrian’s disdain for me was clear. I was an enigma to him.
Heck, I was an enigma to myself.
I started for the door, which I could see between the shoulders of Hadrian’s pals. The problem was of course getting past said pals. The man and the woman edged closer to me. The man’s eyes were a little more sympathetic, but the woman was a block of ice.
“You cannot leave,” she stated, in a way that made her think I had no choice. “You will stay here until we discern what you are and how you became tethered to Hadrian as a human.”
The temperature in the prison block seemed to drop three degrees, even though I could feel my own anger rising hot and fierce. “You can’t do that to me!” I barked. “I have a family! They’ll be worried sick, and my brother has asthma–”
“Those are not my concerns,” she interrupted. “Nor are they yours. Not anymore.”
A knife in the chest would have hurt less than her words. Then the hot spike melted against my anger.
“Don’t you dare accuse them of being unimportant. You don’t know anything about me or what matters to me.”
The temperature dropped again. Though my temper was focused on the woman, I could see the man behind her flicking his gaze between Hadrian and me. I don’t know what kind of look was on Hadrian’s face, and frankly, I didn’t care. I wanted to get out of here, away from these people (if they were people, and not something else in human skin), and never see them again.
“I know you are not natural, in any meaning of the word. I also know you are dangerous. And it is our honor-bound duty to protect this world from that which is unnatural and dangerous.”
I kind of figured she would say something like that. This woman was obviously the leader of the trio, used to being obeyed and having everything happen the way she wanted it, exactly when she wanted it.
Unfortunately for her, I was in a really bad mood, and I wasn’t going to stand here one second longer than I had to. I’d been gathering that cold sensation in me, wondering about how I could use it against her and the guys. I thought about freezing this whole prison block, making it brittle and slippery for when they inevitably chased me. I thought about the coldest wind I could imagine, using it to replace the hot anger swirling inside of me. Then I shoved out my hands and pushed.
A cynical part of me didn’t expect it to work, and it didn’t exactly go as planned. I mean, I hadn’t anticipated the sharp tingle in my hands as they turned white and frosted. But the rush of cold that left my fingers was unmistakable. I couldn’t see the gust of wind, but the two warriors were definitely pushed back by something when I shoved out my hands.
They staggered on the slick floor, which wa
s made extra slippery by the layer of ice forming under their boots. I looked down, my jaw dropping when I saw the frost was coming from my feet and covering my legs. I could feel the cold, sense that it was there, but it didn’t bother me, even if I was just wearing capris, my t-shirt, and denim jacket.
A firm hand clasped my arm. I jumped and found its owner– a very angry looking Hadrian.
“That is enough, Ava.”
I scowled, the remnants of my temper exploding to ashes. I grabbed his wrist, feeling the heat of his bare skin…
The heat rolling through his pulse, warm and pleasurable, an energy like the light of the sun that slipped through my flesh and made itself at home.
I’d never experienced anything like this before. Whatever I felt under his skin was euphoric, strong, consuming, and beautiful. I felt like I could take on the world with his power. It filled in all the empty pieces of my life, made me whole. I hadn’t known how empty I had been until I saw the power laying beneath him. Under nothing more than a fragile layer of flesh. Tantalizingly close, and agonizingly far away.
Letting that hot, wonderful energy drug me, I started clawing at his wrist. He jerked his arm, trying to push me free, but I didn’t let go. I heard him shouting– at me or the others, I had no idea–but I couldn’t make out the words. I had no care for them.
He fought me, but didn’t make a move to strike me. I didn’t know why. I still didn’t care. Everything around me was getting cold, so cold, I just needed the warmth he had under his skin.
He kept twisting, shouting, and I needed him to stop. I clamped one hand over the back of his neck and pinched my nails hard into his wrist.
I broke the skin, but didn’t feel the sweet euphoria I was expecting. I pinched harder, feeling hot blood but not that mysterious, bright heat I wanted.
He shouted my name again, and this time I looked up into his face.
That was when I saw it. There, behind his eyes, a shimmer of light and life. The heat I wanted, that I could feel through his skin and in his blood, but couldn’t attain. I watched his lips mouth my name and other words I couldn’t decipher, and found the secret to his energy.