Author: Shannon Messenger

“You’re lucky you don’t remember.”

“Lucky?”

If I have to hear that one more time . . .

“So I’m lucky your mom stole my memories? Erased the first seven years of my life?”

“In some ways, yes.”

She doesn’t get it—nobody ever has.

“All I’m asking is for you to help me fill in the blanks. If I can’t get my memories back, you can at least share yours.”

I lose track of how many seconds pass in silence. Her voice is cold when she says, “My memories are my own.”

She stalks over to the cracked window and strokes her demented hawk. The one place she knows I won’t go near her. Not that I want to, at that moment.

I know her memories are painful, but with all I’ve been through she could throw me a freaking bone.

Everything goes back to that day of the storm.

I need to know what happened.

CHAPTER 20

AUDRA

It was only a dream, I tell myself. Only a dream.

But I know it’s more than that.

It’s a memory.

The memory. The one I can’t let Vane recover.

Where I told him I killed his family.

It was a foolish, impulsive decision, and the only reason he didn’t unleash any of his rage was because he was too shocked by what happened. I’m lucky my mother had to erase his memories, so I never had to live with the consequences of my confession.

I won’t make the same mistake again.

I won’t tell him. No matter how much he pushes.

My fingers curl into fists and I squeeze, trying to stop the tingling I still feel in my palms from when Vane took my hands.

I finally know what the feeling means.

It’s the same feeling I had when we clung to each other in the rubble of the storm. I forgot that detail, but I remember now—the way the warmth passed between us, radiating through my body.

Guilt.

That’s the only thing I felt as I leaned on the boy whose life I’d ruined. Let him support me. Deluded myself into believing he could forgive me for what I’d done.

White-hot, burning, stinging guilt.

My body’s way of punishing me for my crime.

“So,” Vane says, reminding me I’m not alone. “What are we going to do now?”

I’m honestly not sure. I’d always planned to make him master each language on its own, hoping his increased familiarity with the wind would trigger his Westerly breakthrough.

Now we have eight days—assuming my mother delivers on her promise. Less than eight days, since today is mostly over. We don’t have time for him to master anything.

The smartest tactic would be to trigger his Northerly and Southerly breakthroughs now, and train him in the power of three. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of combined drafts will be more powerful in a wind battle than competency with only one.

But can he really handle three breakthroughs in less than a day?

My mind was nearly overwhelmed when I chose to have my Gale trainer trigger two at once—and I’d been speaking the Easterly tongue for almost my entire life.

Vane’s mind is already taxed with all he’s learned and felt since last night. To add the strain of two more breakthroughs would be a tremendous temptation on his senses—one even experienced sylphs would find hard to resist.

“Uh, you want to clue me in to what you’re thinking about?” Vane asks. “ ’Cause standing in a date grove in the hundred-and-twenty-degree heat getting attacked by flies isn’t really what I had in mind for the rest of the evening.”

I stall for a long breath, forcing myself to admit this is our only option. “The best way to train you is to force your mind to have two more breakthroughs. That’s what we call it when the wind shoves its way into your consciousness and makes a connection, so you can understand its language. I triggered your Easterly breakthrough last night, when I joined the wind and entered your mind. That’s why you could see me in my wind form—and why you can understand the Easterly tongue now.”

“So . . . pretending any of that makes sense—which, by the way, it totally doesn’t,” Vane says, jumping in, “one question: Why do you say that like you’re telling me we need to chop off both my arms, make them into a stew, and feed them to me for dinner?”

I sigh. “Because triggering three breakthroughs so close together is going to be very . . . unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant?”

“Dangerous.”

“Okay, I’m not a fan of that word.”

“If there were any other way—”

“There is. You could call for backup, like you promised last night. What happened to that plan? I liked that plan much better.”

“I did ask for backup.” My eyes drop to my feet. “My request was denied.”

“Denied?”

“Yes.” His tendency to repeat everything as a question will definitely push me over the edge by the end of this.

“But I thought I was the last Westerly. Future king. All that jazz. Doesn’t that make protecting me kind of a high priority?”

“It does. They’re stalling the Stormers as long as they can. And they know I’m one of the best guardians in the Gales.”

“Yeah—and you said last night you’re too weak to fight them on your own—even with my help.”

“Not . . . necessarily. There’s something I can do that will definitely defeat the Stormers.”

“Uh—if it will definitely defeat them, why don’t we just do that?”

“We don’t ‘just do that,’ because it’s the ultimate sacrifice.”

The words slip out before I can stop them.

I feel him watching me, but I refuse to look at him—refuse to face whatever emotions he has written across his face. I don’t know what I want him to feel.

I don’t know how I feel.

“So if I’m understanding this right,” he says after a minute, “these Gales you worship so much—they’ve sent you on a death mission instead of providing reinforcements?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Really. Then what is it like, Audra? ’Cause it seems pretty clear to me. And it’s wrong. They can’t make you—expect you . . .”

His voice trails off, and I can’t help stealing a glimpse of his face.

My heart skips when I see the look in his ice-blue eyes. It’s been so long since anyone looked at me that way, I almost don’t recognize the sentiment.

He cares.

Vane Weston cares about me.

I blink the tears away before they can form.

It doesn’t change anything. “I’ve sworn an oath to protect you with my life, and I intend to keep it. No matter what.”

It’s a simple statement, but the effect it has on Vane is profound.

He steps closer. Close enough that I feel his warmth in the air. Closer than I should let him stand. “It’s not going to come to that,” he says, his voice more serious than I’ve ever heard it. “Trigger the breakthroughs. Whatever it takes.”

I swallow to find my voice. “You understand that the process is going to be very difficult.”

“Yes.”

“Painful, even.”

“I’ll . . . deal with it.”

Who is this boy and what did he do with Vane?

“You’re sure?”

He takes my hands, gently locking our fingers together. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Audra.”

I look away, battling back the explosion of emotions erupting inside me.

My palms tingle so hard from his touch, they practically throb. My burning, scorching guilt, punishing me for my newest crime.

I deserve it. I’m letting Vane risk everything to save me—and he has no idea I’m the one who destroyed his life.

I’ll never tell him, either. It would break his commitment to the mission. Get him captured and me killed, along with thousands of innocent people.

But that’s not the only reason.

Vane’s the first person since my father died to care whether I live and breathe. I can’t give that up.

The guilt burns hotter as I own up to my selfishness, but I bear the pain. It hurts less than the aching loneliness I’ve endured for the last ten years.

So I take a deep breath to clear my head. “You should probably sit down. This is going to be . . . intense.”

CHAPTER 21

VANE

Audra has me sit cross-legged on the pile of palm leaves on the floor, and they’re just as scratchy as they look. I can’t believe she sleeps on these things. She rattles off a long list of instructions I should probably be paying attention to—but I can’t focus. My brain’s stuck on auto repeat.

Intense. Intense. Intense.

I’m pretty sure what she means is intense pain—and I’m not exactly known for having a high tolerance for that.

At least Audra seems pretty impressed that I’m willing to do this to help her—which is crazy. Does she really think I want her to die to save me?

“Hug yourself tighter, Vane. Northerlies are incredibly aggressive winds.”

It’s hard not to groan. “Aggressive” is almost as bad as “dangerous.”

She adjusts my hands and arms, bending me into a Vane pretzel.

“You okay?” she asks when I jump at her touch.

“Yeah, sorry. Just jittery, I guess.”

Doesn’t she feel the way the sparks jolt between us? Now, that’s intense.

The waves of heat make their way to my heart, settling in like that’s where they belong. I know how cheesy that sounds—Isaac would hurl if he knew I was thinking it. But I like it. It feels like she’s becoming a part of me, more and more with every touch.

Makes me want to grab her, pull her against me, feel the warm rush spread as I run my hands down—

“Are you ready?” she asks, ripping me out of my fantasies.

“Yes.” I hate my voice for shaking.

“Okay. Let’s get the most painful part over with first.”

“Sounds awesome.”

Her lips twist into that small half smile she’s becoming famous for. “The only advice I can give you is to not fight back. I’ll command the winds to slip into your consciousness, but you have to breathe them in. Once the gusts are in there, you have to force yourself to concentrate. They’ll feel foreign and unwelcome and your head will probably throb. Just remember that your mind does know how to do this.”

“You kind of lost me at ‘throb,’ but I’ll do my best. Let’s just . . . get this over with.”

She nods. Then she closes her eyes and whispers something that sounds like a snake singing. The winds kick up around her.

A chill settles over us—which actually isn’t so bad after baking in the heat. The gusts wrap around me, crackling the palm branches as they lift me off the ground. The pressure’s much stronger than I expected, and my twisted limbs uncoil until I’m sprawled out flat, rolling with the storm.

“Breathe them in, Vane. Then concentrate on what you hear,” Audra shouts before the roaring air drowns her out. Leaving me alone, shivering in my icy wind cocoon as the drafts hammer my face.

I want to block them, close off everything and hope they go away. But I lock my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering, and the next time a gust comes full force at my face I take a long, deep breath. Instead of flowing into my lungs, the air pushes into my mind. It burns like when water goes up my nose—only a thousand times more painful.

The winds streak inside my head, forming a vortex and slamming me with the most intense migraine ever, like my brain’s being kicked and punched and stabbed and ripped apart. I want to tear off my scalp to let the gusts out.

Concentrate, Audra told me.

How the hell am I supposed to concentrate with a wind tunnel in my head? It’s like standing by a waterfall as a jet engine blows past and a million claps of thunder rumble at the same time.