by Amy Braun
I couldn’t rip it from him. But I could drink it.
His breath misted in front of me, hot air mixing with cold. I dug my nails into the back of his neck and pushed his face toward mine–
Sharp pain exploded across the back of my skull. I yelped and lost my grip on the warrior I’d been holding. I staggered, energy suddenly crashing into me like a strike of lightning. My vision spun a mile a minute, and my heart jerked erratically. I felt my ankle twist and my body fall. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
***
Hangover round two was everything round one had been, except this time I was freezing.
I shivered and reached to draw the fleece blanket to my chin–
My arm jerked to a stop and rattled. I opened my eyes and looked at my arm. Which was attached to a thick stone wall by a heavy iron chain locked around my wrist. I sat up, mindless of the pain sweeping down my body, and reached for the cuff.
My other hand snapped taught. It was restrained, too.
Fear hitched in my throat. I twisted and flailed my arms out of panic, because I didn’t know how to get them free. My legs weren’t bound, but even if I had a lock pick, I wasn’t an Olympic gymnast or full time yoga master. I couldn’t use my feet to pick the locks–
Clunk.
I swiveled my head awkwardly, then turned my whole body. I lost the blanket from my shoulders, but was able to sit the way my captors wanted me to: with my hands helplessly on either side of me, and my back to the wall.
The wall of one of the solitary confinement cells.
Hadrian walked in, gracefully carrying a blanket, a pillow, a tote bag, and a folding chair. His eyes met mine briefly, no discernible emotion crossing through them. Then he set the chair against the wall and placed the other items on the bed beside me. I dragged my knees into my chest, not wanting to be anywhere near him.
“I am not going to hurt you,” he said without looking at me. His voice was heavy. Sad, even.
“I don’t know that,” I whispered back. “You have me chained up.”
Hadrian’s chin dropped. “To protect us from you.”
My first instinct was to ask what that meant, but I stopped short. I was getting used to these mysterious people not telling me a damn thing.
Hadrian reached into the tote bag and pulled out a couple fruit cups, two small cans of tuna, snack packs of cheese and crackers, a bag of one bite brownies, and two bottles of water.
“This was all I could find,” he said. “I’m not sure if there’s anything you dislike here. If there is, I apologize.”
I was speechless because of his attitude. I hadn’t really known how hungry I was until I’d woken up. It hadn’t crossed my mind earlier since I’d been too busy having a meltdown, but now my stomach was starting to eat itself.
Hadrian pushed the food and water in front of me. The chains on my wrists wouldn’t allow me to reach further than the cot, but I could move them enough to eat. The cans and plastic didn’t look tampered with, so I didn’t think the food was drugged.
Besides, these people probably weren’t the poisoning type. Not when they could happily bludgeon or stab me.
My appetite wavered, but I resigned myself to eat and gather my strength no matter what turmoil my emotions were in. For all I knew, this could be my last meal.
At least there were brownies.
As I dug into the food with no care for order, Hadrian moved around the cell. I tried not to watch the weight of his movements as he folded up the tote bag, pushed the pillow and blanket closer to me, unfolded the chair, and sat across from me.
My eyes betrayed me and stole glances at him. He sat hunched over with his elbows on his knees. The swords on his back were gone, and his armor was replaced with a simple black t-shirt, black jeans, and boots. I would have enjoyed the way the shirt stretched along his exquisitely muscled back and shoulders, if I weren’t so angry with him.
Or if I couldn’t see the guilt on his face beyond the dark curtain of his hair.
Seeing him look almost defeated should have made me pity him. But it didn’t. I was his prisoner. No matter what gifts he brought me or how upset he looked, I couldn’t forget that.
And I sure wasn’t going to be the first person to say anything. If he wasn’t going to tell me what was going on, he could stew. I had brownies to distract me for at least fifteen minutes before I started screaming or clawing at the walls.
“Are you feeling well?” he asked, not looking up.
“I’m chained to a wall,” I spat. “Do you really care about how I feel?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “As I said, it is to protect us from you.” He sighed. “I fear I have approached this entirely wrong. I ignored the questions you asked, because I never thought for a second that…”
Hadrian trailed off and shook his head and scrubbed his face with his hands. I thought he was going to close up again, but then he looked up and met my eyes. If I’d ever wondered what Atlas felt like when he was tricked into holding up the world, I imagined his expression would have been like Hadrian’s.
“I was ordered not to answer any questions of yours until Vitae arrived, but I will answer some.”
I scrutinized him. “How many questions?”
“Three.”
“Small number.”
He smiled weakly. “But better than one or two.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. I gave myself a mental slap for letting that slow smile curl into my heart again.
“Fine. I’ll ask three questions, but first you have to tell me who Vitae is. It sounds like a woman’s name, but I want to make sure if I have to deal with Bitchy McBitcherson before she shows up.”
Hadrian smirked. “Is this your first question?”
“No. Nice try.”
He shrugged halfheartedly. “All right. Yes, Vitae is the woman you saw. I’m going to advise you not to call her Bitchy or any other variation of the word. She won’t take it kindly. And since you may as well know, the man you saw is named Zephys. He is my closest friend, and as the expression goes, the biggest pain in my ass.”
“He seems okay to me.”
“You have not known him as long as I have.”
I wanted to laugh, but then I went still, remembering something that his friend– Zephys– said. “Are you really a hundred years old?”
Hadrian shook his head. “I am older.”
A cold tingle crept up my spine. When I first met him, I knew that Hadrian was older than me, but I would have pegged him for twenty-five, at most. I was going to ask the most basic question, but I stopped. If I was going to peel information out of him, I had to do it carefully. I didn’t think Hadrian was stupid enough not to know what I was doing, but he was being generous for now. I had to take advantage of it.
“You look good for… however old you are.”
He smiled. “That is polite for you to say, considering I do not remember how old I am.”
“Wow. Guess it’s a good thing you’re not senile.”
A little warmth crept into his face. “Not even remotely.”
That last word drew up another question to my mind. “Where am I?”
The smile tilted into a frown. “Loxahatchee Road Prison. It is emptied of prisoners, and survived most of the Centennial Storm.”
That made a little more sense. The government and the Storm Protection Union both agreed that prisons would be effective safe houses and shelters capable of withstanding the worst of the Centennial. However, that had meant transferring prisoners into other, already overpopulated jails. The last I heard, Loxahatchee had been emptied, but there had been no time to refurbish it for the Centennial. I wondered how Hadrian and his people were keeping it to themselves, but I didn’t want to use up my last question. Maybe it wasn’t the most useful one I could have asked in my situation, but I needed to know.
“Are you going to let me go home?”
Hadrian hesitated. That told me every crushing detail I needed to know. I’d eaten
almost all of my food and drank one of the bottles of water, but suddenly I wasn’t hungry. I sighed and pushed it to the side, figuring maybe I could eat it later. I took the pillow and hugged it to my chest. It made me look like a child, but I was cold and defeated. The pillow was the only thing I could take comfort in.
“Ava, I…” Hadrian began. He drifted off, then suddenly stood up and closed the chair. I figured he was going to leave me to wallow in confusion alone, but instead he stood off to the side. Less than twenty seconds later, Vitae walked in.
She’d changed into plain black clothes like Hadrian, but she was wearing a tight tank top that showed off her toned arms and flat stomach. Her stern eyes riveted to me, then snapped to Hadrian.
“How much have you told her?” she demanded.
“Very little,” he replied, his back ramrod straight against the wall of my cell. “You did not specify what you wanted her to know. I can begin patrols with Zephys.”
“No. Stay here. This concerns you as much as it does her.”
Hadrian looked like he wanted to bolt. Instead, he nodded and stood in place.
Vitae walked closer to me. This time I clutched the pillow like it was a shield. The fluffiest, most pathetic shield in the world, but it was better than sitting exposed in front of her.
“Tell me true, Wild One. Do you know what you are?”
“No,” I emphasized. “I don’t know what you think I am. I don’t know who you people are. I don’t know why I did those things, or why someone else I knew could do them. I don’t know what a Guardian is. I’ve never heard of tethering. I don’t even know why your psycho friend stabbed me.”
Vitae and Hadrian’s expressions froze. “What psycho friend?” she asked.
Ah. Finally. I might have the upper hand. “Let me go and I’ll tell you.”
Something like sympathy filled Vitae’s eyes. It didn’t last very long. “I am beginning to understand that this is different for you. But you attacked one of my soldiers. Nearly consumed him. I cannot release you until I know you will not do so again.”
My face went slack with horror. I shot a glance to Hadrian. “Are you okay?” I rushed out.
He nodded. “You didn’t hurt me, Ava.”
“I… But, your wrist…”
He held it up. There were some pink, half moon marks from my claws, and I had to squint to see them. He wasn’t even bandaged.
“That was nothing. I have been hurt much worse. Believe me.”
My mind snapped to the memory of our fight with Declan and his new freaky friends. The shrapnel in Hadrian’s back that I’d been forced to pull out.
“Your back–”
“– is completely healed. Our gifts make us capable of accelerated healing. I am fine, Ava.”
He smiled, but I was still shocked. My eyes went to his wrist again. I couldn’t believe how casual he was about the wound I gave him. That he could even be in the same closed space as me after I ripped open his wrist and almost did that “consuming” thing Vitae mentioned. And for what?
I could scarcely remember.
Vitae took another step closer to the bed and knelt down to meet my eyes. She seemed much more relaxed now. Approachable, even. I wondered if that was because she finally believed I didn’t know what was going on, or if she was trying another tactic to get information out of me.
“The answers will come, Ava. But first, you must tell us about the man you saw. We can answer your questions once we know the circumstances.”
Made sense. There was no point in hunting for answers when I didn’t know how they would affect me.
So I told them. I explained how I ended up in the middle of the hurricane. What I saw the Stormkind do and what it looked like. I described the man with the crystal knife that he plunged into my heart, and how I’d seen him with Ferno in a dream-induced memory. I told them how they were trying to determine something from me, evaluating the sensations of my pain, that I would be the first of many.
Vitae’s face became grimmer with every word. Hadrian balled his fists at his side. He looked furious.
But not at me.
“Mortis,” he grated out.
Vitae sighed. “So it seems.”
“Who is Mortis?” I asked.
“Our enemy,” she replied. “It seems you have been caught in the middle of our conflict, Ava. For that, I am truly sorry.”
Vitae sounded entirely sincere. That made me alarmingly nervous.
“Who are you people? Why are the Stormkind afraid of you?”
She exhaled heavily. “For that, I fear I must tell you a very, very old story that no human has ever heard.”
Vitae stood up and looked at Hadrian. He was still tense with anger, but he handed over the folding chair. Their eyes locked for a moment longer than necessary, something unspoken passing between them. Vitae unfolded the chair and sat in front of me. Hadrian folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
“Has Hadrian told you how old we are?”
“He said he doesn’t remember, but I know he’s older than a hundred.”
Vitae’s smile was small, but it lit up her face and almost made me forget the hostility she had shown me.
“Much older. We were born shortly after the first storms were created, made by the Primordials.”
I stared at her, eyebrows shooting up my forehead.
“The Primordials were the elemental beings that formed with your earth. They shaped it, drew power from it. When they used their powers, they left refuse. What you know as storms. After a time, the Primordials grew bored and began to experiment with the refuse. They condensed the power of a storm into different shapes until they held. Added some of their sentience to them. Those shapes became the Stormkind.”
My eyebrows rose to an almost painful degree. This was definitely a different version of the creation myth I’d grown up with.
Vitae didn’t appear to notice my astonishment, and continued her story.
“But all that concentrated energy was volatile for the Stormkind. It corroded their minds and turned them mad. They needed to balance it, so they sought other energy sources. The Primordials had yet to notice, too infatuated with creating new creatures of flesh and blood. They did not realize the Stormkind were out of control until the dinosaurs were extinct.”
My eyebrows couldn’t go any higher up my head, but my jaw could drop pretty damn far.
“The Stormkind killed the dinosaurs?”
Vitae nodded grimly. “During that catastrophe, humans were being created. The Primordials decided these new beings needed to be guarded, so they divided their energies one last time. Half of their powers went into the Guardians, flesh and blood warriors that would share the gifts of the Stormkind, to a lesser extent, in order to protect humanity from them. We are capable of controlling certain storms for a time. Some of us can manipulate ice or water, others can manipulate wind and dust. The more powerful of us can use both. For example, Hadrian has mastered control of ice and cold, though he is incapable of creating a blizzard. We must draw our strengths from our tempest-blades.”
At my confusion, she added, “The Primordials created weapons for us that were capable of holding a limited amount of power. They help energize our gifts and make it easier for us to fight. Tempest-blades can only be passed down from Guardian to Guardian, are energized by the tethers, and can never be broken.”
“What’s a tether?” I remembered how seriously important that seemed to be.
“Tethers are what allow us to connect with our charges– the Stormkind. While we are capable of restraining the Stormkind, every hundred years, they are released from their cages. Their hunger simply becomes too insatiable for us to control. So they break free, and fall to earth for the event you call the Centennial Storm.”
Understanding hit like a painful fist. “Like a stick of dynamite.”
Vitae nodded. “An adept analogy. We use our tethers to find the Stormkind we are charged with and rely on tempest-blades to overcome
them. We work as fast as we can, but the Stormkind are quite dangerous the more power they absorb. We try to stop them from attacking humans and consuming them, but… We cannot always succeed. That is why some storms last as long as they do– hurricanes, floods, tornadoes– and others merely last hours instead of the full day.”
“Why do they want to consume us? I don’t understand what we have to offer them.”
Her cool eyes met mine levelly. “Yes. You do. You experienced it when you attacked Hadrian.”
I flinched at the bluntness of her statement, even though I knew that Hadrian was okay.
Then I remembered the feel of his skin, the warmth that poured through me like the sun coating a sandy beach. The strength and pleasure of it. How it was a drug I didn’t know I craved, and would never be able to get enough of. I recalled the desperation that filled my heart and warped my mind until I was mutilating him, grabbing him and trying to absorb it from his mouth–
Hadrian held up his wrist again, showing me the small pink marks on his skin. “It does not hurt, Ava. Be still.”
That was when I heard the chains on my wrists rattling. I was shaking.
Vitae and Hadrian waited patiently as I calmed down. It took way longer than I wanted to admit.
“What did I–” I closed my eyes and reconsidered my question. “What do they take from us?”
Vitae didn’t look like she wanted to answer me. “Life force, Ava. They steal the very energy you were created with to feed themselves.”
My chest knotted. Our lives were vacuumed out of our very bodies to feed creatures that were millions of years old. I could barely wrap my mind around the concept. I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.
“Now you understand why they are so rampant with destruction when it is time for the Centennial,” she said softly. “We are forced to starve them for a hundred years.”
That revelation left me torn. On one hand, I knew the Stormkind were literally life-devouring monsters that used their power to destroy the world I loved. On the other, I couldn’t help but pity them. They were wild animals that managed to see freedom once every hundred years, if only because they became too dangerous to control.