Author: Shannon Messenger

Please let him feel it. Please let there be hope.

I send the silent plea into the night, wishing the winds could hear it and grant my request. But it isn’t up to them.

It’s up to Vane Weston.

Everything comes down to him.

CHAPTER 27

VANE

I want to feel that freaking Westerly so bad.

Not because I’m expected to. Not because I can hear Audra holding her breath beside me, hanging the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I need to know. If I really am a Westerly. If I have any chance of saving us—of stopping Audra from sacrificing herself to protect me. Of stepping into the role everyone expects me to fill.

So I concentrate on the windmill until it feels like the world disappears. All sound. All thought. It’s just me and that draft, straining to make contact.

But I can’t feel it. No itch in my palm. No pull in my fingers.

If it weren’t for the spinning blades right in front of me, I’d have no clue the wind’s even there.

Epic Vane fail.

I glance at Audra and watch the disappointment flicker across her face like shadows.

She forces a smile. “I didn’t expect that to work.”

“I wish—” I start, but she waves my apology away.

“Don’t worry. I have a plan for how to trigger the breakthrough.”

I turn back to the Westerly whipping the windmill at a brisk, steady speed.

I do feel . . . something. An ache deep, deep inside. Almost like hunger.

My body craves that wind—in a way I don’t crave any of the others. Like it’s a part of me, and I’ll never be complete until I let it fill me, wrap around my mind, and sing its song, tell me the long history it carries.

Just like that first night in the sky with Audra, I know.

I’m a Westerly. A broken, defective one, but still a Westerly. And I need to have a breakthrough to my heritage, or I’ll never be complete.

So I let myself hope Audra will find a way to make her fake promise come true.

Because seriously, she’s not that great of a liar. I can see the hesitation in her eyes. The doubt. The fear. Like now. As we watch the elusive Westerly, I know what she’s thinking. I feel the same way.

The draft is racing away, taking our safety with it.

Audra clears her throat. “We’ll worry about the fourth breakthrough later. Tonight we’re here to train you to protect yourself.”

I can’t tear my eyes away from the Westerly. It’s so close. I just need one word. One tiny clue to its secret language. I can almost . . .

The sound of a roaring windstorm snaps me back to reality.

I turn to find Audra standing in front of a spout of swirling gusts soaring at least a hundred feet into the sky. The winds feed off each other as they spin, stretching the funnel higher with each passing second.

Audra makes sure I’m watching her, then steps through the winds.

My jaw drops as her shadowed form shoots up the wind spout and rockets out the top. She hovers in the sky, a dark angel at home with the stars. Then she’s falling, fast and hard.

She barely blinks.

I hear her whisper, “Catch me gently, hear my call. Sweep me softly before I fall,” and a Southerly uncoils from the funnel—at least, I think it’s a Southerly. It feels warm, but it’s hard to tell. The breeze wraps around her waist and sets her safely on the ground.

“Whoa.”

Audra smiles her small half smile as she whips the windslicer from her scabbard and slices the funnel to shreds. The winds howl as they unravel and streak away, tearing at my clothes and hair. I cough as sand peppers my face.

Okay, maybe windslicers are more powerful than I realized.

She sheaths the blade, dusts off her hands, and turns to me. “Your turn.”

“Good one.”

“I’m serious.”

“You expect me to fly up a giant funnel and hope I’m fast enough to call a draft to catch me—and avoid all these blades of doom all around us?”

She nods, and that kind of kills my laughter.

“Okay, you’re starting to scare me, because I don’t think you’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

I cough. “Need I remind you that the last time I ‘practiced,’ I knocked myself flat on my back—and all I was doing was standing there?”

“Do you ever pay attention?” She points to the shadowed space between us. “Do you see a funnel? Am I asking you to step into it and shoot into the air right now?”

“I . . . guess not.”

“Exactly. First you have to create the funnel. And believe me, if you can master the skill to create it, you’ll be able to catch yourself when you fall.”

Somehow I find that hard to believe, but I’m willing to see where she’s going with this.

“Okay. You need to learn how to make what we call wind melds—specific groups of drafts woven together in a specific order. Making them is like following a recipe. You have to do it precisely in order to get the right result.”

I resist telling her that the few times my mom’s tried to teach me how to follow a recipe, the only thing I made were inedible black lumps.

“The funnel I just showed you is called a pipeline. It’s a rapid method of transport, and it’s an important skill for you to master, because you can use it offensively, to hurl your enemy away from you, or defensively, to quickly escape a dangerous area. You can bend them in any direction you need to go. And it’s a basic formula, so even you should be able to complete it.”

I want to protest her whole “even you” thing. But I have a feeling I’m going to suck at this.

“Okay, the formula for a pipeline is three Northerlies blended with two Southerlies. Once they’re combined, you add four Easterlies one by one, and when that’s done you say the final command and jump back as the funnel expands. Memorize that.”

Yeah—I’m going to need that written on my hand or something.

Mental note: Bring a Sharpie to training next time.

“Start by calling the Northerlies and Southerlies to your side, so you can tell them what you want them to do. You’ll have to call each draft on its own, so the faster you get at calling winds the better. And each type of wind has its own call. I’ve already taught you the one for Easterlies. To call a Northerly you say, ‘Obey my command. Follow my voice. Race to my side and surrender your choice.’ ”

Her voice sounds like a sharp hiss—almost a snarl—and it takes a second for my brain to translate the words into the Northerly language. Making my mouth replicate the sounds is even harder. My tongue doesn’t want to bend the right ways. But I reach toward the Northerlies she’s shown me earlier and concentrate on the pins and needles in my palm as I whisper the call. After two tries I finally say it right, and a Northerly sweeps to my side, the cool air licking my skin.

“Cooooooool.”

“Not bad,” Audra agrees as I call two more Northerlies to join the other. “Now you need two Southerlies. Their call is, “ ‘Sweep to my side, please don’t delay. Share your warmth as you swirl and sway.’ ”

The Southerly tongue is sleepy, and the words flow into each other, almost like the command is one long sigh. I get it right on my third try, and make two Southerlies streak toward me. They feel like a hair dryer blasting my face.

“How do I make them stay?” I ask as the Northerlies push forward, ready to break free.

“You don’t want to make them stay. You want to make them merge.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“The wind doesn’t care what you meant. It’s extremely specific, and very literal. It won’t make assumptions, or read between the lines and figure out what you need. You have to be clear and precise. Give the exact command, or it won’t cooperate.”

“Fine, whatever.” I wish she’d lecture me another time. The Northerlies have tangled around my legs, trying to knock me over.

“You want the drafts to merge, so you need to command the Northerlies. They’re conquering winds. They want to dominate. They won’t merge unless you force them to. You have to tell them, ‘Yield.’ ”

I hiss the strange Northerly sound, and the drafts bend around each other into a small funnel.

“I did it.” I bounce on the balls of my feet. I can’t believe I made a tornado. A really tiny, wimpy one—but still. A tornado!

“You did it,” she repeats, and the surprise in her voice makes me meet her eyes. There’s a shine to them, a light that hasn’t been there before.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “It’s just . . . that’s not an easy thing to do. I was lying earlier when I said it’s a basic formula. I figured if you knew how hard it was, you wouldn’t even try.”

“Hey, I’m not that stubborn.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not,” I insist.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is you did it.” She grins at me through the darkness. Not quite a full smile, but much, much closer than she normally gets. “You’re very talented, Vane.”

My cheeks get hot. That might be the first compliment she’s ever given me. “What do I do now?”

“You need to add four Easterlies one by one. You already know how to call them. And to combine them, you say, ‘Connect.’ Make sure you count to five between each draft.”

I do as she says, and with each draft I add, the funnel in front of me grows, until I have a narrow cylinder of force shooting into the sky almost as high as Audra’s did.

So awesome.

“Now you concentrate on all the winds under your control. And you whisper ‘Amplify’ to the Northerlies. Then you jump back as far and fast as you can, or you’ll be in for the ride of your life.”

I jump back as the command is still leaving my lips, and the funnel triples, stretching wide enough to suck up a car, and soaring at least a hundred feet high.

“Holy crap, I can’t believe I did that,” I breathe.

“I can’t either.” But she doesn’t say it meanly. She looks at me and laughs.

Laughs.

It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.

And then she has to kill the buzz and say, “Now step into the funnel.”

My insides bunch up. “You’re still serious about that?”

“You need to get used to keeping your bearings in a windstorm. And stopping yourself from falling is pretty much the most important skill you can master.”

“Yeah, but isn’t there a way to help me master it that doesn’t involve a hundred-foot free fall from the top of a cyclone?”

“Nothing will motivate you more to get it right. Come on. You can do this, Vane. Do you remember the command I used to call the Southerly to catch me?”

I have a feeling it’s only going to make her more gung ho with her make Vane step into the giant vortex of death plan, but I love seeing her so confident in my skills. So I tell her, “Catch me gently, hear my call. Sweep me softly before I fall.”

“Perfect. Wait till you’re actually falling before you whisper the command. But don’t wait too long, or it won’t have enough time to slow your landing.”

I stare at the funnel.

“Want me to push you in?” she offers.

Stepping into a tornado screams This is the dumbest thing you will ever do. But I’m finally impressing her.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and kind of walk/fall into the funnel.

The roar of the winds drowns out my scream as the gusts shove me skyward so fast I’m certain I’ll throw up. As soon as my stomach returns to its rightful place in my body, that is.

The winds tug at my skin, making it ripple from the force, and for one brilliant second, I’m weightless. Not flying. Not falling. Just floating above it all, nothing but me and the sky. Then I start to drop and can’t—for the life of me—remember a single word of the command I need.