“Let’s stick with you for now, shall we?”
“But I’ve answered all your questions. Shouldn’t you have to answer at least one of mine? It’s only fair.”
“Ah, so you still foolishly believe that the world we live in is fair?”
“No. But you eased my pain.” I nod toward my seaweed-wrapped wrist. “So I’m assuming you have some sort of moral compass.”
He’s quiet for so long that I worry I’ve crossed a line. But when he speaks again he says, “Pick a different question and I’ll answer it.”
Hundreds of options swarm my mind, but I pick something easy. Something that might earn me another.
“Where am I?”
“A cave.”
He laughs when I scowl.
“Fine. Fine. Apparently you want questions and quality answers. Such a demanding prisoner. I believe the precise name is the Lost Coast. The groundlings decided it was too difficult for their clunky, land-bound bodies to get to, so they all but abandoned it years ago. Which makes it an excellent place to hide.”
So he’s hiding from someone.
Working alone.
That doesn’t sound like a Stormer.
But he fights like one. . . .
“Your turn,” he says, interrupting my musings. “And since these questions are costing me now, I’m skipping to the more interesting ones. How did the Gales convince you to join the guardians?”
“I volunteered.” At the time I thought I was making amends for causing my father’s death. Plus he’d begged me with his final breaths to take care of Vane.
If I’d kept that promise and stayed to do my job, I wouldn’t be here.
“You volunteered?” he repeats, stepping from the shadows near the entrance. Even though a dark cloak completely covers his face, I can feel his eyes boring into mine. “I thought your kind were supposed to be peaceful. And how did you keep yourself hidden all these years? Last I heard, all we had left was a boy.”
I bite my lip.
He must think I really am a Westerly—which may actually work in my favor. Better that he doesn’t know how much easier I might break.
“It’s supposed to be my turn to ask a question,” I remind him, avoiding all of his.
He grins. “There’s fire in you. Fight. You would’ve run me through on the beach with that pathetic little wind spike if you could have, wouldn’t you?”
I’m still trying to figure out how to respond when a cold wind whips my cheek, stinging like the edge of a blade. I choke down the pain, refusing to let him see that he can hurt me.
“See? Fire.” He moves closer, his steps so light they don’t leave impressions in the sand. It’s unnatural the way he moves—almost a slither—and when he calls a draft to his side, I can’t understand the words. “You’re different from the others,” he whispers.
I stare at the wind coiled around his wrist. It’s turned sallow and dull. Sickly.
“The others,” I whisper. “You mean the other Westerlies you killed?”
“No—I mean the Westerlies who chose to die. The Westerlies who lay down and let the life be stripped out of them instead of standing up and fighting back.”
His anger makes no sense.
Raiden was furious when the Westerlies wouldn’t share their language—and he killed them in retribution. But he never wanted them to fight back. That’s what the Gales wanted—what they’re still hoping for with Vane.
“Who are you?” I ask, wishing my hands were free so I could throw back his hood and see his face.
“I told you I’m not going to answer that question!”
He holds up the sickly draft to threaten me, but if he’s who I think he is, I don’t believe he’ll hurt me.
Everyone assumed the two guardians Raiden captured were killed when he was done with them. But what if they survived?
I search my brain, trying to find their names—but the memory is buried too deep, filed away with all the other bits of our brutal history that I didn’t want to remember.
A haunting melody snaps me back to the present. Whispered words with a series of dark hisses that slice through the heavy air.
I can’t understand what he’s saying, but the song crawls beneath my skin, sinking into the deepest parts of me and humming with a new sort of energy.
The shift starts in my gut. A brewing storm that surges with every sound, like the words have brought some unknown part of me to life. And now that it’s been activated, it wants control.
Pain laces through my body, a ripping, tugging sensation that makes me feel like I’m being pulled apart—and I’m horrified to realize that I am. I know this feeling—I’ve lived it twice now. Both times I’ve shifted to my wind form.
“Stop!” I scream, shaking my head to try to break free of the melody’s hold. But the song is inside me now, raging and roaring and building to a crescendo.
If it triggers the shift, it will end me.
Our wind form cannot be merged with anything that’s tied to the earth, and I haven’t deprived myself of food for long enough to truly be able to separate. Parts of me will crumble and scatter to dust. The rest will float away.
The singing continues and I close my eyes, bracing for the coming breakdown. But just before the pain boils over, he falls silent and the breaking urge recedes, leaving me cold and trembling on the sand.
“You’re an Easterly!” he practically growls. “Your essence never would’ve responded to that call if you weren’t.”
He grabs my shoulders, squeezing so tight it feels like he’ll crush me. “Who taught you the fourth language? Was it the boy? Has he had the Westerly breakthrough?”
Vane’s face fills my mind, and I feel my panic calm as I stare into his imaginary eyes.
“So it was the boy.” He laughs darkly, shaking his head. “Apparently, all Raiden needed was a pretty face and the right curves. Someone will have to tell him.”
He releases his hold and I collapse, earning yet another mouthful of sand. I spit out the grains and pull myself back up. “Why don’t you tell him yourself? You could send him a message right now.”
He doesn’t accept my dare.
“You can’t get anywhere near Raiden, can you?” I ask quietly.
“I can if I hand-deliver you.”
“Could you? Or would he take me and still kill you, to punish you for escaping?”
His grabs my shoulders again. “Whatever you think you know—”
“I do know. I know everything. Everything except why you never came back. The Gales would’ve understood—”
“Would they?” He drops me again and stalks away, staring at the sky. “You really think the Gales would’ve accepted the traitor who gave away their most protected secret?”
“You were tortured—”
“You know the oath we swore. ‘Sacrifice before compromise.’ ”
I find myself repeating the words.
I remember swearing them four years ago, crouched in the shade of the lone oak outside my mother’s shack, when I became the youngest guardian in Gale history. They’d been reluctant to appoint me before, but after the betrayal of—
“You’re Aston, aren’t you?” I whisper.
Aston and Normand—those were their names. But Aston was younger and stronger, and famous for his skill in a fight.
“That name belongs to another life,” he whispers. “A life that ended the moment Raiden ripped Normand apart piece by piece until I told him what he wanted to know. I thought he would finish us both, but he kept me alive. Told me he ‘saw potential’ in me.”
My mind flashes back to the assault on the beach—the way Aston dominated every move I made—and I know what Raiden saw.