I know time is counting down quickly, but it gives me goose bumps to hear just how little we have left.
“So what’s your mom’s name?” I ask, partially to get my mind on something else, but mostly because I have to know if the name I heard in my dream is real.
“Arella.”
“Arella.” That explains why she’s the one who told my father we had to move again. She must have caught the Stormer’s trail early.
It also means Audra lied to me when she said my memories were gone forever. I figured as much. But now I know for sure.
I need to know why.
So far none of the fragments I’ve recovered give me any clue. And I’d barely begun a dream tonight when Audra ripped the sheets off me and dragged me out of bed. Which was actually pretty sexy. She can—
“Did you hear me?” Audra asks.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“I said the Gales will send reinforcements if you have the fourth breakthrough tonight.”
“Oh, sure. Send help after I have the breakthrough that makes me invincible or whatever. Why bother protecting me now, when I’m vulnerable? Idiots.”
She sighs.
“It’s true, and you know it. Do you really expect me to believe you don’t mind that they’d rather let you sacrifice yourself to save me than send you some backup?”
“They just believe in me. Believe that I’m strong enough to handle this.”
“Even if they do, they’re still gambling with your life. And mine.”
She can’t argue with that.
“And how exactly does it help me if you sacrifice yourself? Even if you take out the Stormers, all that does is leave me here like a sitting duck, no way to contact the Gales, just waiting for Raiden to send someone else to come get me. Brilliant plan, guys.”
“It wouldn’t be like that. My mother would know what happened and send for the Gales immediately.”
“So why not just do that in the first place? Why let her daughter die first?”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. What kind of people expect someone to sacrifice their life to save someone else, when they could send help?”
“Because the Gales are under constant attack from Raiden. They can’t spare anyone right now just to save my insignificant life.”
“You’re not insignificant,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
She clears her throat. “Besides, you wouldn’t be defenseless. I’d pass my gifts to you. Give you my knowledge and skills by letting you breathe me in.”
“Why does that sound creepy?”
“I assure you, it’s not. You just don’t know how the ultimate sacrifice works.”
She takes a breath before she continues. “We have two forms. Our earthly form and our wind form. Our wind form is infinitely more powerful. We’re almost invulnerable to injury, and it gives us a whole other arsenal to fight with. If you have no ties to the earth, you can shift between the two. Like what I did in your room a few nights ago. It’s rarely attempted and hard to achieve and quite painful. But possible.”
“And if you have food or water in your system?”
“Then the parts of yourself that were bound to the earth will crumble and drop away in the shift, and you won’t be able to reclaim them. That’s why the water weakened me so much. I’m grounded until the last drop is gone.”
It’s way too late at night for my brain to understand crazy concepts like this. “But if that happened, you wouldn’t really be dead. You’d just be wind, right?”
“Yes. But you’ve permanently sacrificed your earthly form. Life as you know it is over. And the ultimate sacrifice requires you to sacrifice your wind form as well. I don’t know that much about it—it’s only happened one other time, besides my father.”
Her voice catches and she clears her throat before continuing. “As I understand it, you let the winds rip you apart and tackle the storm piece by piece in a unified, mass bombardment. Your consciousness stays with you long enough to let you whisper thousands of commands that shred the storm and destroy anyone inside it. But you scatter with the winds. And there’s no way you can put yourself back together before your consciousness fades away.”
My grip tightens on the steering wheel.
No way I’m letting her do that.
“But as you surrender yourself, you can send your gifts to someone else. So the talent isn’t lost. My father—” Her voice catches again and she pauses for another breath. “My father sent me his gift when he sacrificed himself. It’s why I can walk so easily on the winds. Why I’m a guardian so young. And if I have to sacrifice myself, I’ll send it to you.”
“I don’t want it.” My hands shake so hard we swerve toward the shoulder. “I don’t want your talent. You’re not doing that, Audra. I don’t care how bad it gets. Promise me that.”
“I’ll only do it as a last resort. But I will make the sacrifice if need be. And there’s nothing you can say or do to stop me.”
My palms throb from squeezing the steering wheel so hard.
She’s wrong. There is something I can do to stop her.