“What about you?” he asks.
I look away, afraid he’ll see more on my face than I want him to. “All you need to know is that you’ll be safe. The Gales will take you to their fortress and train you to be ready to fight.”
“Whoa—hang on. So basically my options are: prisoner of Raiden or prisoner of your army? Please tell me there’s a secret option number three, because—no offense—those options suck.”
“No one is a prisoner of our army. And certainly not you. You’re our future king.”
He stops walking. “King? As in, a crown and a scepter and everyone calling me Your Majesty?”
“Not exactly. But yes, king. After you defeat Raiden, you’ll be given the throne.”
For a second he just stares at me. Then he laughs. “The throne? You guys have a throne?”
“Of course. We’re a scattered race, but we still have order. We still have laws and a ruler—or, we did, before Raiden usurped the kingship. But when we take our capital city back, you’ll be the one to restore the royal line. Everything’s already been arranged. We just need your help to overthrow the tyrant.”
He runs his hands through his hair. “That’s . . . crazy. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t want to know what to do with that.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but this is the life you were meant to live.”
“I already have a life. What’s the plan for that, by the way? I just disappear in the middle of the night and my parents never see me again? What about school? What about my friends?”
“Those are . . . human things, Vane. They’ve only been a part of your life because we needed to keep you hidden. But the secret’s out. No matter what, you need to come back to your own kind. Put all the rest of this stuff behind you.”
“Stuff? You’re talking about everything I care about—you can’t expect me to just walk away from it all.”
I do expect that. Everyone expects that.
But there’s no point in saying that. He isn’t ready to hear it.
So I stand beside him, watching the heat waves swirl from the ground and listening to the dry desert breeze creak through the palms. It’s a Southerly, singing a slow, melancholy song. Vane can’t understand it, which is better. Southerlies are the sad winds, speaking of loss and unwanted change. Of the fleeting summer they’re always chasing.
The Gales worried that Vane would have a hard time adjusting when the time came to separate him from his “other life”—even with the bright future they’ve planned for him. But worry doesn’t change anything. Vane’s caught between two worlds, and the only way to fix that is to rip one away.
I know how much it will hurt him, though, when the time comes. I know how it feels to lose a parent.
Vane has already lost two. Now he’ll lose two more.
“Is there any other way?” he whispers.
There isn’t.
But he’s asking for a lifeline. And I know he needs it to get through the next few days. So I take his hand, touching him only to convince him—not because I want to—and say, “Maybe.”
Another lie shoved between us.
But it works. He squeezes my hand harder and looks at me with those striking eyes of his. “Let’s hope.”
Hope.
Such a funny, fickle thing. We need a lot of it right now.
“Yes, Vane,” I whisper. “Let’s hope.”
CHAPTER 15
VANE
My room is exactly the way I left it—no sign my parents noticed I was gone—and I can hear my mom watching some lame infotainment talk show thing in the living room, like she does every morning after my dad leaves for work. I sneak down the hall to the bathroom and turn on the shower to buy myself a few minutes before I have to see her.
I haven’t figured out what I’m going to say. It feels too weird. I feel too weird.
I knew they weren’t my biological family—and that never felt awkward before. But knowing I’m not even their species forms this, like, giant gap between us. I mean, what would they say if they knew their son’s a mythical creature?
Pretty sure they’d freak. And I can’t blame them.
I strip off my filthy clothes, coughing when I get a whiff of them. Audra’s right, my pits are hummin’.
My back aches from where she smashed me into the wall, and I feel the tender spot, where there’ll be a bruise later. More proof all of this is real.
It really is, isn’t it?
I’m not Vane, the unmotivated student who’s cursed around girls anymore.
I’m Vane Weston: The Last Westerly.
Great—it sounds like something out of an anime cartoon.
I jump in the shower and let the streams of hot water beat against my skin, calming the shiver that creeps up my spine as I think about the stories Audra shared. Or the evil-looking weapons the warriors will use when they come. Or what’ll happen if we lose.