Let the Wind Rise Page 2

  “You’re also not nearly as strong as you think,” he warns.

  “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

  His fist tightens around his spike, and I brace for him to throw it. So I’m completely caught off guard when he ruins another draft and sends it crashing into me like a semi.

  I skid across the grass, careful to shield my injured arm as I beg my instincts for a command I can use to retaliate.

  Another shattered draft slams into me first, pinning me to the ground and pressing on my chest and throat, closing off my windpipe.

  Voices scream around me—Solana? Arella? I can’t tell. The roaring winds sweep them away as the world turns to a mushy haze.

  Just before the darkness swallows me, the pressure eases enough for me to roll to my side and cough and hack until I’m pretty sure I’m bruised both inside and out.

  Os leans over me as I lie in the dirt like a Vane-crumble.

  “It’s time to admit that your powers are useless, Vane. Dust yourself off and rest up for a long day of training. Every Gale—including you—is going to learn to harness the power of pain.”

  CHAPTER 4

  AUDRA

  The Easterly winds surrounding me have carried a steady stream of whispered assurances.

  Stay calm.

  Have hope.

  Believe.

  But as the final strands of darkness fade to morning gray, their songs change to a verse that chills me far worse than the frigid air.

  He’s coming.

  I barely have time to process the words before the drafts whisk away, vanishing through the invisible cracks they came from and leaving me with nothing but the echoey thud of footfalls climbing the tower stairs.

  I pull myself to my feet, determined to face Raiden from a position of strength and confidence. But I can’t help falling back a step when his tall form appears through the darkness.

  The majority of the tower is taken up by my cell, but there’s enough space beyond the bars for Raiden to stand in his fur-lined white cloak, his long blond hair whipping in the ruined winds, his figure silhouetted by the dawn light as he studies me with an expression that’s more curious than menacing.

  He’s brought no guard and carries no weapon—but he doesn’t need them. One carefully chosen word can make his winds beat me, break me, ruin me a million unimaginable ways.

  I’ve seen the effects of his methods firsthand, and the memory alone of the thousands of holes bored through Aston’s body is enough to make my knees shake so hard I have to steady myself against the icy wall.

  And Aston was simply a captured Gale, not someone Raiden suspected of speaking Westerly.

  I’m stronger than this.

  I am.

  “You look cold,” Raiden says, a hint of a smile playing across his lips. “I can’t say I blame you. You’ve spent how long sweating away in that dusty desert?”

  “Almost ten years.”

  I feel a hint of pride when his smile fades. He must’ve thought we kept Vane on the move, constantly running to stay undetected. But placing Vane with groundlings hid him so well that we never had to take such extreme measures. And Raiden fell for my mother’s trick and believed Vane died in the attack. He only learned the truth four years ago when he broke Aston and Normand during his interrogations.

  He won’t break me.

  “Where’s Gus?” I ask, bracing for the worst possible answer.

  Raiden’s smile returns. “My questions first.”

  He hisses a word, sending a draft rushing toward me.

  I square my shoulders, expecting pain—but the breeze is feather soft and warm as sunlight. It drapes around my body like silk and sinks under my skin, calming my nerves, easing my aches. Even the windslicer gash on my side—a wound left over from my confrontation with Raiden in Death Valley—seems to dull under its bandage.

  A sigh escapes my lips and Raiden’s smile widens. “Better?”

  I give him a nod, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

  The draft is a ruined Southerly, robbed of its will and its voice, and no more than Raiden’s slave.

  I hate myself for drawing comfort from it.

  But it’s so nice to be warm.

  “I’m glad,” Raiden says, and I’m surprised by the sincerity in his tone. “Regardless of what you may think, Audra, I want you to be comfortable here.”

  I want to tell him that he shouldn’t have left me trapped like a flightless bird in a frozen cage. But the words stick in my throat when I meet his eyes.

  He’s looking straight at me, studying me with an intensity that makes my cheeks flame.

  “A short red dress seems like a strange choice for such a fierce warrior.” His gaze travels over my body, making my face burn even hotter. “Dressing to impress?”

  “Are you impressed?”

  I don’t know where the question came from, but I want to suck the words back as soon as they leave my mouth—and kick myself for saying them.

  Especially when Raiden says, “Incredibly. I see so much of your mother in you.”

  He stalks closer, running his hands down the bars. “I don’t use this tower cell often. But I couldn’t lock you away in a dim, filthy dungeon. You’re too . . .”

  “Too what?” I whisper, not realizing I’ve moved forward until I feel my knees graze the frost-coated bars.

  I’m so close now that I can see the blond stubble that lines his jaw, and the blond lashes rimming his ice-blue eyes.

  His features aren’t handsome, but there’s something striking about him.

  Something powerful.

  My hands curl into fists when I realize what I’m thinking, and I shake my head to clear it. But the sweet, soothing wind is making everything spin too fast.

  Or maybe it’s Raiden’s piercing stare.

  “You’re different,” he whispers. “Most prisoners I can read in an instant. But you . . .”

  He licks his lips, and my stomach turns sour even as my heart starts racing.

  I want to look away but I can’t. His gaze is the only thing keeping me from melting with the rushing warmth.

  He reaches through the bars and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. I should flinch away, but I’m rooted to the floor. A tree clinging to the earth as a storm rages around it.

  “If I told you that you belong as a queen, what would you say?” he asks.

  My breath catches.

  I can see myself sitting on a gleaming throne. And beside me stands . . .

  I rub my head, trying to concentrate on the man beside me, but he’s blurry and shifting.

  Old one second.

  A boy the next.

  Blond, then dark haired. Stolid, then smiling.

  A jumble of contrasts I can’t make any sense of—but one feels warm and safe, like the wind whipping around me.

  The other feels empty.

  I don’t want to be empty anymore.

  I try to focus on the man, try to wrap myself in the steadiness of his safety.

  But I can’t forget the boy.

  He materializes in my mind.

  Beautiful.

  Heartbreaking.

  Why can’t he be mine?

  “Perhaps that’s the wrong question,” Raiden says as I back against the wall and let the cold stones press against my skin.

  I try to shove the fog from my thoughts, but it’s too heavy to lift, and my mind keeps drifting with the sweet, soft breeze.

  “You love the wind, don’t you?” Raiden asks.

  “The wind is all I need.”

  I laugh when I hear the words out loud.

  I’ve said them in my head hundreds of times, and at some point I must’ve believed them.

  But can the wind ever really be enough?

  Can the wind fill the space between the things I’ve lost?

  “You miss someone,” Raiden says.

  It’s not a question, but I still answer.

  “Yes.”

  The confession i
s sharp as knives, and I realize that I’ve crossed my cell again. This time I must’ve crawled, because I’m on my knees, clinging to the bars like a child.

  Raiden covers my hands with his. His skin is warmer than I expected. His grip comforting.

  Protective.

  “Who do you miss?” he asks, his voice as soft as his skin. “Who have you lost?”

  “My father.”

  Tears drip off my cheeks, and my hold tightens on the bars.

  I don’t want to cry for my father—not here. Not with the man responsible for his death.

  But is Raiden responsible?

  I thought it was him—but with my head floating and the world spinning, I realize these warm hands wrapped around mine couldn’t belong to a killer.

  A killer couldn’t be so soft.

  “You’ve had to grow up too fast, and you’ve had to do it alone,” he whispers. “But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore, Audra. I can keep you safe.”

  “Safe?” Repeating the word doesn’t help me understand it. “But . . . I’m in a cage.”

  “To shield you from the others. The ones who took away your father.”

  My mother’s face fills my mind. “You can protect me from her?”

  “That’s why I brought you here. Now she can never hurt you again.”

  I close my eyes and lean against the bars, grateful to feel them.

  “You’ll keep her away?” I whisper.

  “As long as you stay here. But I might have to send you off alone.”

  I try to open my eyes but my eyelids feel too heavy. “Why?”

  “Because you’re hiding something from me. The secret I need in order to protect you.”

  “I don’t have any secrets.”

  “That’s not true, now is it?”

  “It is.”

  At least, I think it is.

  It used to be true. But everything feels so faded and blurry I can’t be sure anymore.

  He sighs, slow and sweet. “Don’t you trust me, Princess?”

  “Of course I . . . what did you call me?”

  He leans closer, stroking my cheek. “Tell me what you’re hiding, Princess.”

  I jerk away and crawl backward across the floor.

  My father had a dozen nicknames for me. But he never called me Princess.

  Raiden is not my father.

  The statement feels so glaringly obvious—but it’s earth shattering too.

  Raiden. Is. Not. My. Father.

  Did I really think that he was?

  How could I . . .

  The wind.

  This ruined, Southerly wind.

  It’s clouding my mind somehow and shifting my emotions.

  I pull myself to my feet and press my cheek against the wall, letting the shiver clear my head. “Does that usually work?”

  Raiden sends the wicked Southerly away, stealing the last of the warmth—but I’m grateful for the cold.

  Each shiver makes me me again.

  Even the pain that floods back to the wound on my side is a welcome reality check.

  “Actually you’re the first person I’ve tried it on,” Raiden says. “Your mother taught me the trick while we waited for you and your friend to arrive at the Maelstrom. She claimed it would be the only way to get answers from you.”

  “Leave it to my mother to help you capture me and torture me.”

  Raiden laughs—as bitter and cold as the air. “Actually her method was far gentler than what you’ll face now.”

  I can’t stop myself from shaking. But I force myself to meet his eyes, noting that they’re rimmed with dark smudges. Further shadows line his brow and deepen the creases around his frown.

  He looks tired.

  The realization boosts my confidence as I tell him, “I’ll never give you what you want.”

  “They all say that in the beginning.”

  He snarls a word, and a ruined Northerly coils into a whip and cracks my face so hard it knocks me to my knees.

  Pain stings my cheek. But when I reach up to check for blood, my hand comes away clean.

  Raiden seems as surprised as I am and lashes me again, this time across my chest.

  The force of the blow makes me wheeze, but a second later the pain fades and no marks line my skin.

  My loyal Westerly shield must be strong enough to protect me.

  “I knew you had more to hide!” Raiden shouts, his voice a strange mix of fury and triumph.

  “No—everything’s gone.”

  Everything Vane shared with me.

  Everything that mattered.

  I stripped it and shredded it and scattered it on the wind—whatever I had to do to make sure it was safe.

  “Then why did your friend’s shield abandon him at the first blow?” Raiden asks. “The draft you wrapped around him before we took you both away rushed back to the sky at the first crack of my whip.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am I?”

  He holds his sleeve up to the moonlight so I can see the splashes of red staining the fabric.

  I turn away, trying not to imagine Gus—smiling, handsome Gus—bloody and alone in some dark dungeon.

  “Let him go,” I beg, knowing it’s pointless but needing to try. “He has nothing to give you.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. Your Westerly won’t let me hurt you. But I can hurt him. And I’ll make you watch, until you tell me what I need.”

  CHAPTER 5

  VANE

  I’m starting to worry that Os is right.

  Not for attacking us. Or taking our weapons. And definitely not for tying Solana, Arella, and me to the sturdiest palms in the grove and telling us we can sweat here until we’re “ready to cooperate.”

  But the fact that he was able to do all of that—and create some sort of weird vortex around us that’s spooking all the winds away—makes it pretty hard to argue that the power of pain isn’t more effective.

  Come on Westerlies—time to prove you’re the big, legendary things you’re supposed to be. . . .

  I close my eyes, waiting for my instincts to whisper something that will get us out of this mess. But all I hear is the creaking palms and the chirping bugs and the wails of the ruined drafts whipping past, trapping us with the heat and the swirling sand.

  The sun rose a little while ago, so we’ve lost at least seven or eight hours.

  Looks like I’m failing pretty epically at this “hero” thing.

  “You’re going to tear your elbow out of joint again,” Solana warns as I try to squirm free of my ropes.

  “If that’s what it takes to get out of here, I’ll deal with it.”

  But all I’m really accomplishing is scraping the hell out of my skin.

  I curse my dad for having a stockpile of industrial strength, rampaging-elephants-couldn’t-break-this-stupid-rope in our garage—though I guess I should be grateful Os didn’t use draining winds to bind us instead.

  “Save your energy,” Arella tells me. “This vortex isn’t all that different from a Maelstrom. It won’t kill us—but it is slowly sapping our strength. Os is making sure I have no means of escape.”

  The bitter edge to her voice reminds me that this isn’t the first time Os has held her prisoner—just the first time she didn’t deserve it.

  “Why did you refuse to train with them?” I have to ask.

  She’s sacrificed everything in her quest for control.

  Her daughter.

  Her husband.

  Even her own life.

  And yet, here was a chance to learn this incredible new power, and instead she chose to be tied to a tree.

  Arella stares at the sky for so long I assume she’s not going to answer. But then she whispers, “I could never destroy the wind.”

  Her whole body quivers with the words and I’m . . .

  . . . not sure how I feel about that.

  She murdered both of my parents with a couple of flicks of her wrist. Does she really think t
he wind is more important than them?

  Then again, if even she wouldn’t cross that line . . .

  I honestly have no idea how I feel about Os teaching the Gales the power of pain. I know I could never do it. And part of me wants to drag him underground and never let him near another gust of wind again.

  But another part of me—a part I’m not necessarily proud of—can’t help wondering if it’s the only way we stand a chance against Raiden.

  How else do you win when someone doesn’t fight fair?

  “So what’s our plan?” Solana asks when I finally admit that wriggling out of these ropes isn’t going to happen.

  Arella shakes her head to shoo the gnats away from her eyes. “We wait for Os to come back and convince him to let us go.”

  I snort. “You really think he’s going to do that?”

  “I can be very persuasive.”

  She definitely can.

  She’s fooled me a pathetic number of times—but she’s never managed to convince Os. He was ready to let her die in the Maelstrom. The only reason she’s still breathing is because I dragged her out, needing her alive so she could tell me what happened to Audra.

  What she did to Audra, I correct.

  And now she’s just standing there, waiting for a chance to try to talk her way out of this—after we’ve already lost so much time.

  “That’s not good enough!” I shout, wishing I had a way to fling something at her head. “Don’t you care that Audra’s a hostage right now? That Raiden might be . . .”

  I can’t say it.

  Can’t even think it.

  “Of course I do,” Arella says. “But caring doesn’t change anything. All it does is waste energy.”

  I know she’s right.

  But I hate how calm she is.

  I hate her.

  “This is your fault!”

  “I know.” Her voice hitches, and for a second she sounds like a mother who’s actually worried about her daughter. But her tone hardens again as she tells me, “Raiden left me no choice.”

  She keeps using that as her excuse, but she still hasn’t explained what Raiden threatened her with. Not that it matters—nothing matters except getting to Gus and Audra.

  “We will find them,” Arella promises. “We just have to bide our time. Without the wind I have nothing except—”