Let The Wind Rise (Sky Fall, #3) (7 page)

My mouth tastes of iron as I bite my tongue.

But Gus is still staring at me. Still pleading with me to keep going.

Raiden gives the command, and I curse the wind for obeying—for blasting Gus so hard he goes silent.

I don’t realize I’m sobbing—or that I’m digging my nails into my hands—until the Stormers at Gus’s side declare him alive.

“You’re both stronger than I thought,” Raiden says, ordering his Stormers to haul Gus away. “But don’t worry, the strongest things are the most fun to break.”

“Then take a turn on me!” I shout.

“I intend to. But for you it needs to be
special
.”

He stalks away then, leaving me to imagine the horrors he’ll dream up as the Stormer with the scars hauls me down the stairs.

Another Stormer is waiting for us in the courtyard, and he strips off my coat, sending sharp pain shooting through the wound on my side. I suck air through my teeth, trying to keep it together. But when he shoves me again, I heave more bile, not sorry at all when most of it ends up on his shoes.

He pins me against the wall, proving he’s less disciplined than the others.

I can use that.

I spit accidentally-on-purpose onto his coat, and he grabs my hair, yanking my face closer to his.

“You’ll have to do something to make that up to me,” he growls.

“We need to keep moving,” the Stormer with the scars warns him. “Raiden ordered us to take her straight to the hold.”

“Raiden’s not here right now,” he argues, sliding his hands to my waist.

I knee him as hard as I can.

I only manage to hit his thigh, and he grunts and grabs my throat.

The scarred Stormer pries him away and shoves him into the snow. “Get down there and cool off! I’m not facing the Shredder over you.”

The other Stormer snarls threats, but doesn’t follow as I’m dragged away.

“Thank you,” I mumble, tripping over my shaky feet.

“I didn’t do it for you,” the scarred Stormer says.

I follow his eyes to his marked hands, where the pale lines almost glow in the dim light.

“You’ve faced the Shredder before?” I guess.

He doesn’t answer. But the set of his jaw tells me all I need to know.

I probably shouldn’t ask my next question, but . . . I have to.

“What did it feel like?” I whisper.

“How do you think? The Shredder has seventeen fans, and each one carves different edges into the drafts. So when the wind hits, it’s like having seventeen spinning blades liquefying your insides.”

If my stomach weren’t so empty, I’d vomit again.

Instead, I let out a sob for Gus—but only one.

I spend the rest of the walk trying to compose myself. Which is why I don’t realize the crucial information I’ve been given until I’m locked away in my cell.

Seventeen
fans.

Now I know what Aston meant about the fortress having more security than anyone could ever need and none all at the same time.

Aston escaped through the Shredder.

F
lying with Aston sucks.

Actually, “sucks” isn’t a strong enough word—but breaking my parents’ Language Rules feels like admitting that I’m really not planning on seeing them ever again.

It’s not just the scratchy broken winds Aston uses, or the way they turn the world into a blurry mess.

It’s that Aston’s, well . . .
holey
.

He’s still wearing his cloak, but he has the hood down and his sleeves keep blowing back. And when you surround any of his skin with a ton of rushing wind, it makes this constant
screeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaach
.

I lose track of how many hours I spend gritting my teeth through the nails-on-a-chalkboard whistle, but my jaw is aching when we set down in the middle of a field with long, swooshing grass and one of those round, silver windmills with the fin sticking out of the back.

“Why are we stopping?” I ask.

“I know I may ooze power and prestige,” Aston says. “But I do occasionally need to rest.”

The confession reminds me how long it’s been since the last time I slept. Raiden spent weeks using his shattered winds to torment me with nightmares—and now I can’t sleep. Not when Gus and Audra are . . .

“What time is it?” I ask.

Arella glances at the sun. “Looks like it’s getting close to noon.”

“NOON?”

“Oh, spare us the freak-out,” Aston tells me. “We’re losing time as we head east.”

“How does that make it better?” I ask.

Aston shrugs. “If you want to move faster, we’ll have to ditch some dead weight.”

His eyes dart to Solana, and she gives him a glare that practically shoots ice beams.

“You call
this
‘dead weight’?” She stretches out her arms, and all the nearby breezes sink under her skin.

“You do realize that windcatching is essentially the worst thing you can do when you’re facing the power of pain, right?” Aston asks. “What do you think will happen to all of this”—he waves his hands in front of her, outlining her curves—“if I shatter those drafts you’ve tucked away?”

The color drains from Solana’s face. “Can you really do that?”

Aston pulls aside his cloak to reveal a long row of perfectly round holes, piercing through skin and bone. “Anything can be broken.”

“Well, he won’t break me,” Solana says, calling more breezes and soaking them up.

Aston shakes his head and growls a scratchy word.

A grayish draft tangles around her, but Solana absorbs it like the others. “You were saying?”

“That is . . . unexpected,” Aston says.

He studies her so closely that Solana starts to fidget.

I save her by getting back to the much more important subject. “I think we should use pipelines for the rest of the journey.”

I hadn’t suggested the rapid wind tunnels before, because they can be unstable and deadly. They also suck worse than traveling with Captain
Screeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaach.

But we’re wasting too much time.

“We’re moving faster than you think,” Aston promises. “We’ve already made it to that middle part of the country where there’s far too many cows for my liking. Kansas, is it? Or Dakota something?”

“Nebraska,” Arella murmurs.

The name feels fuzzy in my ears, matching the memory that resurfaces with it.

A hazy afternoon—the sun so bright it whites out the blue. I follow a dark-haired girl as she finds the tallest tree and climbs. I can’t see what’s in the nest, but I’m mostly there for the songs. Her voice makes me forget that I’m supposed to be afraid.

I close my eyes, trying to remember more, but my past is still too jumbled up.

Audra’s a part of it, though.

And she’s still a part of me—even if the ache I’m clinging to is growing fainter every hour.

“Are you okay?” Solana whispers, resting her too-warm hand on my shoulder. “Isn’t this where your family . . .”

I nod.

Arella clears her throat. “Actually, we’re a little to the north. But it does look the same.”

I study the field we’re standing in—rolling waves of grass and wildflowers as far as the eye can see.

It’s pretty, I guess.

But it makes me uneasy.

There’s too much sky. Too much wind. Too few places to hide.

It feels like the last place on earth for a family of sylphs to be when they’re trying to hide from Raiden—which was probably why Arella chose it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she tells me, scratching at her arms. “If I could undo it, I would.”

“Oh please.” I kick a clump of wildflowers, sending their yellow petals scattering. “All you regret is that your husband sacrificed himself to save me.”

She doesn’t deny it.

“Well then,” Aston says, “this seems like a fitting time for my afternoon fix.”

He tangles Arella in ruined drafts, soaking up her pain as she sinks to her knees. Solana covers her ears—but I memorize each one of Arella’s screams.

“Look at you,” Aston says. “I must say, this is the darkest side I’ve ever seen in a Westerly. You’re almost smiling.”

“She deserves it.”

“Ah, yes. Pain for pain. Does that make it all better?”

It doesn’t. Just like whatever he’s doing to Arella doesn’t make his holes disappear.

But it
helps
.

Aston smiles. “You definitely got some of your girl’s fire when you bonded, didn’t you? Might keep you alive—if we learn to use it. So why don’t you make one of those fancy wind spike things and we’ll see what you’ve got?”

“We don’t have time to play around,” I argue.

Aston points to where Arella lies curled up in the long grass. “She won’t be up to traveling for a bit. And I’m not getting you anywhere near Brezengarde until I know you can defend yourself. So be a good boy and make a wind spike.”

He claps his hands like I’m some puppy he’s teaching a new trick.

I hate myself for obeying.

As soon as I form the spike, Aston snatches it away—but I shout,
“Come,”
in Westerly and the spike snaps back to my hand.

“I bet you think that gives you an advantage, don’t you?” Aston asks.

Before I can respond, he grabs my spike and gags me with one of his ruined winds.

“
Now
try to call your weapon back.” He points the wind spike at my heart. “Oh wait, you’re dead. Pity.”

For a second I wonder if he’s really going to impale me. Solana must be worried too, because she drags Aston back.

“Oh, relax, Princess. If I wanted him dead, he would be. I’m merely trying to show him how pointless his little tricks are against Raiden’s methods.”

He hisses another command and my gag unravels.

“Let’s assume for a moment that you manage to hold on to your weapon and get close enough to actually have a clear shot at one of the Stormers.” He hands me back my wind spike. “Could you kill them?”

“Is it necessary?” I ask.

“It’s always necessary.
They’re the enemy.
”

“Right, but are they actually, like, threatening me?”

“Fine, let’s make this easier and say they have their weapon pointed at your true love—and they’ve been murdering kittens all day.
Now
could you destroy them?”

“Of course.”

The squeak in my voice says otherwise.

“Stop thinking like a Westerly! You need to channel some of that inherited darkness.” He grabs my wrist and drags me closer to Arella. “There she is—the woman who murdered your parents and betrayed your beloved. Stab her.”

“What?”
Solana and I ask as he pins Arella with sickly winds and silences her screams.

“I don’t mean anywhere fatal,” he says. “I need her around for my pain doses, after all. But why not take a bit of revenge? Slice off a finger or something. She doesn’t need all ten.”

Arella twists in her bonds, but Aston has her held fast. “I’d stay still if I were you. He might chop off something
important
.”

“Vane?” Solana asks from somewhere behind me. “You’re not going to do it, right?”

“Quiet, Princess,” Aston tells her. “We’ll get to your problems next.”

“I don’t have any problems.”

“Oh, trust me, you do. But first we need Loverboy to prove he can actually hurt his enemies.”

“I’ve already proven that,” I argue. “I killed two Stormers.”

The guilt and grief of it almost shattered me—and probably would have if Audra hadn’t bonded with me afterward—but Aston doesn’t need to know that.

“That could’ve been a fluke,” Aston says, leaning close to whisper in my ear. “This isn’t hard, Vane. Think about your parents’ faces—their screams. The splash of their blood as she murdered them. Or if that doesn’t get your anger flag flying, think about your girl locked away in Raiden’s dungeon. Shall I describe what it’s like down there? The kinds of things Raiden likes to do?”

He drops his cloak, revealing the full horror of his wounds.

“And let’s not forget that I’m not a gorgeous young girl with deliciously pouty lips. How long do you think it’ll be before he—”

“STOP IT!” I scream, covering my ears.

Don’t picture it.

Do. Not. Picture. It.

“Leave him alone,” Solana says, trying to take my hand.

Aston blocks her. “Not until he proves that his life is worth all the guardians who’ve died to save him. Come on, Vane—what’s the big deal? A few minutes ago you were reveling in her pain. All I’m asking you to do is take the next step.”

My grip tightens on the wind spike, and I raise it over Arella’s hand.

She won’t die if I stab her pinky . . . and she’s done a million worse things.

“And still, you hesitate,” Aston says. “Behold, the worthlessness of the Westerlies.”

I reel around, pointing the spike at his head.

“Go on, then,” he says. “I’ll even make it easy for you.” He holds his palm in front of the wind spike, wiggling his pinky. “Slice away.”

I’m tempted.

I really am.

But I can’t do it.

Aston shakes his head, disgusted. “Here you are, racing across the country, pretending you’re willing to do whatever it takes. But your instincts will always slow your hand, won’t they? And when they do, your little girlfriend will die.”

“Shut up!”

“You can’t stop me,” Aston says. “And you can’t stop Raiden. He’ll break your girl down piece by piece. And when she finally takes her last ragged breath, she’ll do it knowing the boy she sacrificed everything for—the Westerly she spent her life protecting—couldn’t find the will to save her.”

“THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!”

“Prove it, then. Hurt me. Or hurt her.” He points to Arella. “Show me you can inflict some pain.”

“You want pain?” I ask, squeezing my wind spike so hard the winds feel ready to unravel.

“I want you to prove you have the stones to do what needs to be done.”

“Fine.”

I take a deep breath.

Then I kick him in the nuts.

Aston collapses to his knees, letting out the same wheezy groan I remember making after my friend Isaac accidentally nailed me in the balls during PE.