It’s pretty, I guess.
But it makes me uneasy.
There’s too much sky. Too much wind. Too few places to hide.
It feels like the last place on earth for a family of sylphs to be when they’re trying to hide from Raiden—which was probably why Arella chose it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she tells me, scratching at her arms. “If I could undo it, I would.”
“Oh please.” I kick a clump of wildflowers, sending their yellow petals scattering. “All you regret is that your husband sacrificed himself to save me.”
She doesn’t deny it.
“Well then,” Aston says, “this seems like a fitting time for my afternoon fix.”
He tangles Arella in ruined drafts, soaking up her pain as she sinks to her knees. Solana covers her ears—but I memorize each one of Arella’s screams.
“Look at you,” Aston says. “I must say, this is the darkest side I’ve ever seen in a Westerly. You’re almost smiling.”
“She deserves it.”
“Ah, yes. Pain for pain. Does that make it all better?”
It doesn’t. Just like whatever he’s doing to Arella doesn’t make his holes disappear.
But it helps.
Aston smiles. “You definitely got some of your girl’s fire when you bonded, didn’t you? Might keep you alive—if we learn to use it. So why don’t you make one of those fancy wind spike things and we’ll see what you’ve got?”
“We don’t have time to play around,” I argue.
Aston points to where Arella lies curled up in the long grass. “She won’t be up to traveling for a bit. And I’m not getting you anywhere near Brezengarde until I know you can defend yourself. So be a good boy and make a wind spike.”
He claps his hands like I’m some puppy he’s teaching a new trick.
I hate myself for obeying.
As soon as I form the spike, Aston snatches it away—but I shout, “Come,” in Westerly and the spike snaps back to my hand.
“I bet you think that gives you an advantage, don’t you?” Aston asks.
Before I can respond, he grabs my spike and gags me with one of his ruined winds.
“Now try to call your weapon back.” He points the wind spike at my heart. “Oh wait, you’re dead. Pity.”
For a second I wonder if he’s really going to impale me. Solana must be worried too, because she drags Aston back.
“Oh, relax, Princess. If I wanted him dead, he would be. I’m merely trying to show him how pointless his little tricks are against Raiden’s methods.”
He hisses another command and my gag unravels.
“Let’s assume for a moment that you manage to hold on to your weapon and get close enough to actually have a clear shot at one of the Stormers.” He hands me back my wind spike. “Could you kill them?”
“Is it necessary?” I ask.
“It’s always necessary. They’re the enemy.”
“Right, but are they actually, like, threatening me?”
“Fine, let’s make this easier and say they have their weapon pointed at your true love—and they’ve been murdering kittens all day. Now could you destroy them?”
“Of course.”
The squeak in my voice says otherwise.
“Stop thinking like a Westerly! You need to channel some of that inherited darkness.” He grabs my wrist and drags me closer to Arella. “There she is—the woman who murdered your parents and betrayed your beloved. Stab her.”
“What?” Solana and I ask as he pins Arella with sickly winds and silences her screams.
“I don’t mean anywhere fatal,” he says. “I need her around for my pain doses, after all. But why not take a bit of revenge? Slice off a finger or something. She doesn’t need all ten.”
Arella twists in her bonds, but Aston has her held fast. “I’d stay still if I were you. He might chop off something important.”
“Vane?” Solana asks from somewhere behind me. “You’re not going to do it, right?”
“Quiet, Princess,” Aston tells her. “We’ll get to your problems next.”
“I don’t have any problems.”
“Oh, trust me, you do. But first we need Loverboy to prove he can actually hurt his enemies.”
“I’ve already proven that,” I argue. “I killed two Stormers.”
The guilt and grief of it almost shattered me—and probably would have if Audra hadn’t bonded with me afterward—but Aston doesn’t need to know that.
“That could’ve been a fluke,” Aston says, leaning close to whisper in my ear. “This isn’t hard, Vane. Think about your parents’ faces—their screams. The splash of their blood as she murdered them. Or if that doesn’t get your anger flag flying, think about your girl locked away in Raiden’s dungeon. Shall I describe what it’s like down there? The kinds of things Raiden likes to do?”
He drops his cloak, revealing the full horror of his wounds.
“And let’s not forget that I’m not a gorgeous young girl with deliciously pouty lips. How long do you think it’ll be before he—”
“STOP IT!” I scream, covering my ears.
Don’t picture it.
Do. Not. Picture. It.
“Leave him alone,” Solana says, trying to take my hand.
Aston blocks her. “Not until he proves that his life is worth all the guardians who’ve died to save him. Come on, Vane—what’s the big deal? A few minutes ago you were reveling in her pain. All I’m asking you to do is take the next step.”
My grip tightens on the wind spike, and I raise it over Arella’s hand.
She won’t die if I stab her pinky . . . and she’s done a million worse things.
“And still, you hesitate,” Aston says. “Behold, the worthlessness of the Westerlies.”
I reel around, pointing the spike at his head.
“Go on, then,” he says. “I’ll even make it easy for you.” He holds his palm in front of the wind spike, wiggling his pinky. “Slice away.”
I’m tempted.
I really am.
But I can’t do it.
Aston shakes his head, disgusted. “Here you are, racing across the country, pretending you’re willing to do whatever it takes. But your instincts will always slow your hand, won’t they? And when they do, your little girlfriend will die.”
“Shut up!”
“You can’t stop me,” Aston says. “And you can’t stop Raiden. He’ll break your girl down piece by piece. And when she finally takes her last ragged breath, she’ll do it knowing the boy she sacrificed everything for—the Westerly she spent her life protecting—couldn’t find the will to save her.”
“THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!”
“Prove it, then. Hurt me. Or hurt her.” He points to Arella. “Show me you can inflict some pain.”
“You want pain?” I ask, squeezing my wind spike so hard the winds feel ready to unravel.
“I want you to prove you have the stones to do what needs to be done.”
“Fine.”
I take a deep breath.
Then I kick him in the nuts.
Aston collapses to his knees, letting out the same wheezy groan I remember making after my friend Isaac accidentally nailed me in the balls during PE.
It’s a pain only guys understand—one I honestly wasn’t sure if Aston could feel, since I had no idea if Raiden had left his dudehood intact. But clearly Raiden did, because Aston’s clutching his stomach and looking ready to hurl.
“This—doesn’t—prove—anything,” he mumbles.
“It does, actually. It proves that if I fight my own way, the violence won’t get to me. I just inflicted a crap-ton of pain on you, and I’m not even queasy.”
“You think Raiden will ever let you get close enough to kick him?”
He hisses a command through his teeth, and a draft coils around my neck, twisting so tight, spots flash across my eyes.
“LET HIM GO!” Solana screams, but her next words sound very far away.
I�
��m stuck in that weird haze between panic and blacking out, so I can’t really tell what happens next. All I know is that the draft unravels and I get some much-needed air.
When my chest is done heaving, I find Solana and Aston in the middle of some sort of epic stare-down.
“Time to tell your fiancé what we’ve just discovered,” Aston tells her. There’s no teasing in his voice. “Five seconds . . . four . . . three . . .”
“I gave the command, okay?” Solana asks, not looking at me.
“Judging by the idiotic look on your face,” Aston adds, “I’m guessing you have no idea what that means. Think it through. The draft I attacked you with was broken. So the only people who can command them . . .”
I stumble back when I figure out how to finish the sentence.
Solana used the power of pain.
CHAPTER 10
AUDRA
Gus is vomiting blood.
Between every retch he keeps begging me not to worry.
But I doubt he’ll survive another round of Raiden’s torture.
I don’t even know if he’ll survive this one.
I try to convince myself that Raiden won’t let him die—that he needs Gus to pressure me.
But Aston was captured along with another Gale.
Only Aston made it out alive.
Even the Westerly shielding me seems worried. It keeps stretching thin, offering Gus gentle breezes of comfort. But whenever a noise warns that a guard might be approaching, it snaps back to protect me.
I wish it would shield the person braving the torture, not the one standing uselessly by.
But the wind is making its own decisions.
And it keeps choosing me.
So I sing until my throat turns raw and Gus finally falls silent. I can’t tell if he blacked out or fell asleep, but his labored breaths promise he’s still holding on.
I try to do the same.
I’d thought knowing what the guide meant would give me hope. But Aston’s escape plan is far more dangerous than I’d realized. We don’t just have to get out of our cells and through the mazelike fortress and past the myriad of guards—without any useable winds to assist us.
We have to survive the blades of seventeen fans.
There’s also no way to know if Raiden has adjusted the blades since Aston’s escape. And I don’t understand how he found a path through the Shredder—or how he mapped it out ahead of time.
But we have no other options. So the first step will be finding a way into Gus’s cell. I need to study Aston’s exact markings. There’s no room for guesses or errors.
Maybe I can convince the Stormer who helped me today that I need to ensure Gus doesn’t choke on his vomit. He wasn’t necessarily kind, but he seemed afraid of upsetting Raiden. I doubt he wants Gus to die on his watch.
I practice how I’ll ask, choosing each word carefully. But the next Stormer who checks on us is the one who tried to choke me.
I can still feel his sticky breath on my face—his roving hands on my waist.
I pull the fabric of my dress as far as it will cover.
“Believe me, I intend to do all the things you’re imagining right now,” he says as he opens my cell. “But not while you belong to Raiden.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
He sniffs my hair as he binds my arms behind my back, and keeps me pressed against him as he marches us up the stairs. He rests one hand on my shoulder, the other hand gripping my waist. When it slides toward my hip, I kick out his ankle.
He clings to me to regain his balance, but I shake him off, ignoring the tear of fabric as he topples back several stairs.
I run the other way, even though I can see the staircase dead-ends ahead.
A hand drags me through a hidden doorway before my assaulter catches up to me, and I scream until I realize it’s the scarred Stormer from the day before.
He seals the door behind us, and his eyes dart to my chest—then away.
I realize my damaged dress isn’t covering me as much as it was before.
Fury and shame burn my face as he ties the shreds of fabric back into place.
He clears his throat. “Did he . . . ?”
I can’t look at him. “Not yet.”
He mutters something I don’t catch before he says, “I’ll escort you to Raiden.”
We walk in silence for several minutes, weaving through another tangle of corridors. Eventually I have to ask, “Why do you serve him?”
I don’t understand how someone who appears to possess a few shreds of decency could choose Raiden’s side over the Gales.
“The better question is: Why do you resist?” he asks. “Our people have been forced to the fringes of this world while the groundlings poison our sky. Raiden’s only trying to reclaim what should be ours.”
“Well, I guess that’s the difference between us. I want no part of whatever world Raiden claims.”
“Keep refusing to cooperate, and Raiden will grant that request.”
He ends the conversation there. But when we reach a narrow staircase, he tells me, “You’re not a fool, Audra. You’re not like the others I’ve delivered. Give yourself a chance to see the value of Raiden’s methods before you throw your life away.”
He doesn’t allow me to reply. Just pulls me to a rusty door at the top and gives the broken command to open the lock.
Please let Gus still be safe in his cell, I beg as I wade into the waist-high snow. The sky is the same dull gray, swirling with snowflakes that stick in my eyelashes while my teeth chatter as loud as my heartbeat.
The courtyard seems smaller.
Less wind—though I can hear soft chimes tinkling a quiet song.
Or maybe I’m imagining them.
I forget my name again and lose my grasp on anything I’m seeing. The dome of black metal we stop in front of seems familiar, but I can’t figure out what it is.
“She’s not good in the cold,” a voice says beside me.
A figure in white seems to melt out of the snow. “Yes, I’m noticing that.”
Someone drapes scratchy fabric across my shoulders, and as my head slowly clears, I realize I’m standing near a large birdcage housing two ravens. They eye me with a stern sort of wariness I’m not used to seeing from birds.
“If I’d known you were this weak,” Raiden says, “I would’ve given you warmer clothes.”
I should’ve guessed he’d be the figure in white at my side.
His cloak is feathered this time, plucked from soft, downy doves.
No wonder the ravens look wary.
“Of course, then I wouldn’t get to watch your lips tinge with blue,” Raiden says.
“You’re not the only one watching her lips,” the scarred Stormer mumbles.
He’s no longer wearing his jacket, and yet his huge, muscled arms show no sign of shivers.
Raiden’s eyes narrow. “You doubt my security?”
“Of course not, my liege.” The Stormer dips a deep bow.
Raiden waves his hand to dismiss him, and the Stormer turns to leave. But he only makes it a few steps before he pivots back and drops to one knee.
“Forgive my boldness,” he says, his words hasty and jumbled, “but I know you value whatever bond remains between her and the Westerly.” He pulls back my coat and points to the torn sleeve. “I’d hate anything to damage that connection. Or anyone.”
A bond can never form through force.
Still, the point gives Raiden pause.
“Tell Nalani she has a new charge,” he tells the Stormer. “And to bring an extra uniform to the dungeon.”
The Stormer stands and offers a salute, raising his arm straight in front of him and sweeping it toward his forehead in a wavy motion.
“I keep hoping you’ll prove to be worth all of this hassle,” Raiden says when we’re alone. “And yet I fear I’m setting myself up for another disappointment. Still . . .”
He re
aches for my cheek, his fingers grazing the breeze of the Westerly instead of my skin.
I jerk back.
Raiden laughs. “You have many reasons to fear me, Audra—but that is not one of them.”
“Hard words to believe coming from the mouth of my torturer.”
“Ah, but you haven’t been tortured yet, have you?”
“Only because the wind protected me.”
“Is that what you think?” He laughs and reaches for my torn sleeve. “The wind can only do so much. Surely you realize that.”
Shame and rage burn my cheeks, and I refuse to meet his eyes, searching the courtyard for the source of the music I hear.
Small silver wind chimes dangle from the top of the birdcage, swaying in the gentle breeze.
“I see no reason to destroy you, Audra,” Raiden whispers. “Why else would I try your mother’s mind trick to interrogate you?”
“Do you think I only count what happens to me? Gus is—”
“Your friend is a separate matter,” Raiden interrupts. “He challenged my authority.”
I feel my lips smile as I remember that day in Death Valley. The look in Raiden’s eyes—the shock and fury after Gus’s wind spike hit its mark.
A teenager made him bleed in front of his army.
Proved he isn’t the invincible force he claims to be.
And I realize.
Gus will never get out of here alive.
“My patience is wearing thin,” Raiden tells me. “That’s why I’ve had you brought here. One final attempt to make you see reason.”
He steps closer to the cage, slipping his hand through the bars. The closest raven nips gently at his fingers.
“Your mother trained these birds. They were our messengers.”
I meet the ravens’ beady eyes, surprised to find my mother’s connection in their gaze.
No one is ever the same once they trust my mother.
“I . . . don’t understand.”
The whole reason she came up with her bird-messenger system was so Raiden couldn’t read the coded messages she sent to the Gales—unless that was another of her brilliant lies. . . .
A tempest swirls to life inside me as questions and theories crash together. I don’t want to hear the answer, but I have to ask, “How long has she been helping you?”
“Helping me,” Raiden repeats, his laugh as frosty as the wind. “Surely you know better than anyone that your mother is always the eye of her own storm.”
Let the Wind Rise Page 6