She sucks in a breath.
“Except what?” I ask, but she’s too busy bending into a position that would make even a yoga master yelp.
Somehow she stretches around her ropes and gets her head close enough to her hands to slip her fingers between her lips.
The high-pitched, shrieky whistle makes my ears ring, and Arella’s practically beaming as she pulls herself back up. “Os always forgets about the birds.”
I glance at Solana, glad to see she looks as confused as I am. I know Arella has a special connection with birds—it’s one of the few things she and Audra share. But I don’t see how that’s going to help us. All a bird is going to do is flap and screech and peck and . . .
“Oh God,” I groan, realizing what her plan is. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A minute later I see dark shapes moving toward us on the horizon, and the blood drains from my face.
Solana laughs. “Are you seriously afraid of birds?”
“Hey, they’ve made horror movies about them for a reason!”
The cloud of birds streaks closer, and I abandon all hope of playing it cool. There are dozens of them—huge black crows and vultures. It’s officially my nightmare come to life. All that’s missing is the screeching violins playing in the background as they dive.
I try to hold still, but there’s so much flapping and cawing, and I can feel their talons digging into my skin as they peck and peck and—yeah, I’m definitely going to be sick.
“Close your eyes,” Solana tells me, so I’m guessing I look as awful as I feel.
I take her advice, but I still hear all the flapping and pecking—and now it makes me imagine they’re stripping away flesh.
“Okay, that’s so much worse!” I yell, ripping my eyes open again.
I’m relieved to see there’s still skin on my hands. But I also have five evil crows perched all over me, and I flail harder than I’ve ever flailed before—which is especially impressive considering how tight my bonds are.
“Stay calm,” Arella orders. “Remember why you’re doing this.”
I try to focus on Gus and Audra as the crows land on me again. But I still flail—it’s a reflex. Creepy birds wanting to peck my eyes out—run away!
I’m trying to come up with a plan C when I hear a familiar screech, and as I turn toward the sound, I see a gray hawk heading straight for me. This time I’m not afraid.
Gavin and I have come a long way since the days when he used to terrorize me if I accidentally wandered too close to where Audra was hiding. I still don’t like him—and I like him even less when he lands on my bad arm and glares at me with his beady, red-orange eyes. But then he goes to work on my ropes with his razor-sharp beak, snapping through the strands like they’re made of paper.
“We have to hurry,” Arella says, slipping her hands from her shredded bonds. “Os could’ve spotted the birds as they swooped in.”
She unties her ankles and rushes over to me, shooing Gavin away as she unravels the last of my frayed ropes.
Gavin screeches and I tell him, “Don’t try to follow us—and don’t go near Os.”
I watch him land among the palms, and our eyes meet for a second.
“I’ll bring her home,” I whisper.
I swear when he blinks, it feels like a nod.
“Come on,” Arella says, ruining the moment.
“Wait for me,” Solana calls, still struggling to break free.
Arella shouts that we don’t have time, but I turn back and tear at Solana’s ropes—not that I’m much help with only one strong hand.
“We don’t need her,” Arella insists.
“Excuse me?” Solana asks. “I’m the one who’s guiding us to Raiden’s fortress.”
“I can do that,” Arella says. “In fact, I’m fairly certain Vane’s the only Windwalker in our world who doesn’t know how to get there.”
“Uh, maybe I would if you hadn’t scrambled all my memories with your little wind tricks,” I grumble. “Especially since you only did it so I wouldn’t remember that you murdered my parents.”
I want to argue more, but now’s not the time to think about the list of Shady Things Arella’s Done. Instead I help Solana pull herself free, and we follow Arella through the vortex of ruined winds. The drafts scrape like sandpaper, and as soon as we cross to the other side, I hear sounds of the Gales crunching through the trees to find us.
Arella sends her creepy birds after them, and I call as many winds as I can find until I have enough to tangle us in the power of four. Then we’re streaking through the blue-white sky, blurring over sand dunes and flattened houses and what’s left of the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm. I don’t dare slow down or look back or even let myself think about what Os is going to do while we’re gone.
I picture Audra and Gus and beg the winds to get us to them as fast as they can.
“I need you to steer us north,” Arella tells me, pointing toward the mountains in the distance.
“Raiden’s fortress is to the east,” Solana corrects.
“I know. But Os took all of our weapons. I keep a stash of replacements at my house.”
I’m not convinced that windslicers will do us any good against the power of pain, but I guess it would be pretty stupid to storm a fortress unarmed. And we already know my wind spikes aren’t very useful.
Arella’s directions take us over a forest of Joshua trees and end at a small, square house in the middle of an endless stretch of barren desert. It looks like the kind of place where a serial killer would hide, which . . . is pretty accurate.
I set us down in the shade of the only tree—a giant oak that should be dead, considering the dry ground all around it. The soft ringing of wind chimes fills the scorching air.
Arella gasps and races toward her house, staring up at the eaves where silver chimes dangle from an intricately carved blackbird. The melody feels haunting and sad as they ping against each other in the late morning breezes.
“Audra must’ve come here,” she whispers, reaching up and removing a black necklace that’s been tied around the bird’s neck. A silver feather pendant dangles from the cord, and I vaguely remember Audra tearing it off her mother’s neck after she realized her father’s death had been Arella’s fault all along.
“That belonged to Audra’s father.” I don’t say it like a question, but Arella nods anyway.
“I found it in the rubble after the storm.” She traces her fingers along the cord. “I’d been holding out hope, refusing to believe Liam was really gone. But then I saw the black, and—”
She chokes back a sob as she clasps the necklace around her neck.
“A guardian exhales a bit of their life force into their pendant,” Solana explains. “As long they’re still breathing, the cord is vivid blue. But once they return to the sky . . .”
Tears stream down Arella’s cheeks, but I stop myself from feeling sorry for her.
It was her fault.
Everything is.
My fingers find their way to the copper compass bracelet Audra gave me, the only thing I have left from my parents after Arella slaughtered them. The needle usually points west, but for the moment it’s just spinning and spinning.
“We need to keep moving,” I say, and Arella nods.
Before she goes inside, she takes down the wind chimes, bringing them with us as we follow her up the weathered porch steps.
I don’t really know what I was expecting Arella’s house to look like—but I definitely would’ve been less surprised by cobwebs and creepy chandeliers than I am by the sparse emptiness. Each room has a couple of pieces of worn, dusty furniture—and that’s it. The rest is bare walls and creaky floors and still, stuffy air. It’s barely better than the burned-down shack Audra squatted in on my parents’ property.
Arella hangs the wind chimes over a plain wooden table in the kitchen and disappears down the hall, promising to be right back.
“Is this where Audra lived?” Solana asks.
&n
bsp; I’m honestly not sure, but I nod anyway. I don’t feel like admitting how little I know about the-girl-I-was-bonded-to-and-am-planning-to-bond-to-again.
But Audra didn’t like to talk about . . . well . . . almost everything. Especially when it came to her past.
Mental note: Ask more questions next time.
I’m studying the depressing rooms, trying to memorize every detail when Arella returns, carrying a silver scabbard and two windslicers.
She’s changed into clean black pants and a tank that probably used to fit better—but thanks to her days in the Maelstrom the fabric hangs off her scrawny shoulders and bunches in weird places.
She hands Solana one of the windslicers and straps the other to her belt.
She gives me the scabbard.
My hand shakes as I slide out the knife and stare at the blade molded from thousands of needles. It’s feather shaped, like a mini-windslicer, designed to shred drafts and skin alike—and there’s a tiny speck of dried red near the hilt.
I hand it back to her as the room starts to spin. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Arella tells me. “There’s no point getting anywhere close to Raiden’s fortress if you’re not ready to kill.”
There’s that word again.
Kill.
I know I can’t avoid it forever. But I’m not sure how I’m going to get through it without shattering to a million pieces.
She’s right though.
If a Stormer spots us during our mission, there’s only one option.
I try to slip the scabbard into my boot, but it doesn’t fit—clearly I shouldn’t take weapon ideas from movies.
Solana shows me how to strap it to my belt.
“I also found this,” Arella says, holding up a silver instrument the size of her palm with cuplike ends dangling off some sort of pinwheel. She nudges it with her finger, making it spin with a soft creak.
“Is that one of the Stormers’ anemometers?” Solana asks, leaning closer.
“I stole it off one of them a while back,” Arella agrees. “Thought it might come in handy someday.”
“What does it do?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. It never seems to respond to the wind. But if Raiden has his Stormers carry them, they must be important.” Arella slips the longer end through her belt, leaving it dangling next to her windslicer as she walks to the window, pulls it open, and traces her fingers across the filthy screen. “We need to figure out our flight path.”
She and Solana start discussing jet streams, but I’m not listening—partially because I don’t know crap about that stuff. But mostly because I keep staring at the fresh welts on my wrists from the ropes I just escaped.
If Os—with his limited experience in the power of pain—could capture all three of us in one fell swoop, it won’t matter how we fly, or what weapons or gadgets we bring with us.
If we have to face off against the Stormers—and let’s be honest, there’s a pretty good chance we will—we’ll need to fight like them if we want to win.
And since none of us want to sink to that level, we need to get someone else on our side who can.
I know a guy for the job—assuming I can find him.
And assuming I can convince him not to kill us.
CHAPTER 6
AUDRA
I try to count my steps and memorize the turns as Raiden leads me to his dungeon, but his fortress is a labyrinth of narrow paths and twisting stairways that take us up and down and every possible direction. By the time we reach the dim, windowless room lined with dark-barred cells, I’m so turned around, I can’t tell if I’m deep underground or high in a different tower.
Raiden shoves me into a cell in the center of the row and locks the barred door behind me. I crawl to a corner, curling my legs into my chest and wrapping my arms around them, trying to preserve what little heat I can.
The cold is different here.
Damp and heavy.
It presses against my skin with a million icy fingers as my breath puffs into clouds that seem to hang permanently in the air.
The gray floor and walls of my tiny cell are bare, save for deep scratches where a former prisoner must’ve clawed at the stones.
“It’s definitely not as nice as your last cell,” Raiden tells me. “But the view is infinitely better.”
He steps to the side, and everything inside me unravels.
“Gus?” I whisper, squinting through the dim light, hoping the crumpled figure on the floor of the opposite cell won’t respond.
For a second he doesn’t move. Then he slowly lifts his head, scanning the room until his pained eyes find mine.
I choke down a sob.
His face is so bruised and swollen I barely recognize him. But somehow he still tries to smile.
“Clearly you two have some catching up to do,” Raiden tells us, and the smugness in his voice makes me wish I could claw off his skin.
I wait until his footsteps fade before I scoot closer to the bars. The damp chill makes my muscles ache, but I refuse to think about the pain. Not when Gus looks like . . .
“So it’s that bad, huh?” Gus asks, studying my face. “I guess this is the end of my Best-Looking Guardian days.”
I force a smile, trying to be brave for him. But as he pulls himself into a sitting position, my eyes brim with tears.
Thick gashes as wide as my fist have turned his broad chest into more wound than skin. Some of the cuts are covered with scabs, and others are still seeping red—but it’s the dark spot on his left shoulder that makes me feel like I’m going to be sick on the floor.
A hole.
Perfectly symmetrical and about as wide as my finger.
Bored through flesh and bone.
Aston had twenty-nine just like it. One for every day he resisted the power of pain, until Raiden found a different way to break him.
“Gus, I’m so—”
“Don’t!” he interrupts, shaking the crusty strands of his long blond hair out of his eyes. “Please don’t apologize—this has nothing to do with you.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because we’re at war. Soldiers get captured and interrogated. It’s as simple as that.”
But it isn’t.
My mother handed us over to Raiden like animals to the slaughter.
And the only reason Gus was with me was because he was trying to guard me, to keep the Westerly language safe—a language I only knew because I broke my oath as a guardian and bonded myself to Vane.
Everything goes back to me.
My mistakes.
My fault.
Gus winces as he reaches to tear a strip of fabric from the end of his pants. I try not to notice that his back looks just as shredded as his chest.
“If you need more bandages I can tear off part of my dress,” I offer.
Gus laughs. “You barely have enough fabric to cover you as it is. Pretty sure Vane would kill me.”
“I don’t care about Vane.”
I didn’t mean the words the way they sounded—or I don’t think I did. But they seem to echo off the walls.
“Is that true?” Gus whispers. “I heard Raiden say something about you breaking your bond. . . .”
I focus on rubbing my hands together, letting the friction warm my fingers.
“Do you really not care about him anymore?” Gus presses.
“I . . . don’t know. My head and my heart don’t match. I still remember everything. But I can’t feel it. I’m just sort of . . . empty.”
Gus nods as he ties the strip of fabric across the widest gash on his arm. “I guess that’s better. Maybe the broken connection will keep Vane from trying to rescue you.”
“Do you really think he’d come after us?” I’m surprised the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
“It’s Vane. He’s the master of taking stupid risks. Besides—he’d do anything for you. Or he would have, before . . .”
“Well,” I say, my voice cracklier than I??
?d expected. “Hopefully he’s over it.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I have to.” It’ll be safer for Vane if he lets me go.
“Wow,” Gus breathes. “And I thought I had it rough.”
“How can you even compare the two?” I wave my arm toward his seeping wounds.
“Uh, I got smacked around a bit. You ripped away half of your essence and gave up the guy you loved. Don’t even try to pretend that wasn’t agony.”
It was.
And the cold hollowness that followed was worse.
“You got more than smacked around, Gus,” I remind him. “You have a hole in your shoulder.”
“Yeah, well . . . it’s only a little hole.” He tries to smile as he traces his fingers along the edges. But I can hear the pain in his voice.
“I have a bandage on my side,” I say, wishing it weren’t such a pathetic offer. “Part of it’s soiled, but Vane’s mom used way more gauze than I needed. It might even have some ointment on it.”
“Not worth it. This is the kind of wound that’s never going to heal.”
He presses his palm over the hole and a hint of fear creeps into his eyes.
“How did Raiden do it?” I whisper.
“You don’t want to know.”
I don’t.
But I’m going to have to see it.
The realization sends me spiraling, and I can’t tell if I fall backward or crawl. All I know is that I’m somehow pressed against the wall of my miniscule cell, gasping for air.
“What’s wrong?” Gus calls.
I try to relax—to focus on slow, deep breaths. But even when my heartbeat steadies, it doesn’t calm the panic.
I close my eyes, swallowing the bile on my tongue as I tell him, “I can’t watch him hurt you.”
“It won’t be as bad as you think.”
“No—it’ll be worse. I saw Aston. One hole is only the beginning.”
All the color drains from his face. But he straightens up, promising, “I’ll be okay.”
“How?”
I trail my fingers along the scratches in the floor, wondering if a prisoner made them while they were being tortured—or a friend who had to sit there and let it happen. . . .
My hands shake with rage, and I’m not sure if I’m angry with Raiden or myself. All I know is: “I can’t do this.”