“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?”