I hold out my arm and call Gavin to my side.
For a second he ignores me. Then he spreads his strong gray wings and dives, landing on my wrist with an earsplitting shriek. His talons cut in just enough to let me know he hasn’t forgiven me, but not enough to draw blood. A happy truce I’m willing to accept as I
reach up and stroke the silky feathers along his neck.
“A storm is coming,” I tell him, beginning to understand why
Vane had to warn his friend. “You have to get somewhere safe. Head
as far south as you can and don’t return until the skies clear.” Gavin screeches again, and his wings don’t budge. But when I
repeat the command with a plea, he nips my finger gently and takes
off, sweeping toward the south like I’d asked.
“It’s hard to believe we’re really going to get through this, isn’t
it?” Gus asks as he picks up a wind spike, testing its weight in his
hands.
He steps back, squatting into a sparring position before he
launches into one of the Gale’s advance practice routines. The way
he moves is flawless. No wasted energy. Every swipe precise and perfect. I’ve seen Gales with decades more training fight with less ease. And Vane trusts him.
And he kept our secret—without my even asking.
“Come,” I say in Westerly, and the wind spike shoots out of
Gus’s hand, midslice.
He glares at me as I catch it. “No need to rub it in.” I hold his gaze and repeat the word again, slower this time.
Making the syllables easier to understand.
His eyes widen. “Are you . . . trying to teach me?”
I nod, relieved when a wave of nausea doesn’t hit.
“Will that even work if I haven’t had the breakthrough?” “It did for Vane as a kid. He used a command he’d heard his
parents say, even though he didn’t know what it meant. It’s how he
saved my life.”
“Wow, you guys have a ton of history, don’t you?”
“We do.”
I repeat the word again, breaking down the intonations. Gus
repeats it, fumbling over the sleepy hisses in the second part. But
after four tries the spike launches into his hands.
“That is so freaking awesome.”
He flings the spike toward a palm and hisses the command,
snapping it back toward him like a boomerang.
“So I don’t get to know what I’m saying?” he asks as he catches
it one-handed.
“It’s safer for you if you don’t.”
Breakthroughs are complicated things. Most of the time they
require extreme measures to trigger. But it always comes down to
learning one word and having all the pieces snap together. Sometimes just hearing it is enough.
Gus goes back to practicing slashes with his spike. He moves so
fast his arms turn to a blur as he whips the sharp edge at a strange
angle that ripples the air.
“I guess it would be a pretty big responsibility,” he mumbles.
“You just jumped to the top of Raiden’s Most Wanted list.” “Second to the top,” I correct, trying to copy his motion and not
coming close. “Vane’s still the only actual Westerly.”
“All the more reason why you’ll be at the top. Who’s Raiden
going to want more—the guy whose kinsmen have been resisting his interrogation methods for decades, or the first non-Westerly to have
the fourth breakthrough?”
I slash again, still failing to copy Gus’s skill. “Both.” “Maybe.” He comes up behind me, grabbing my arm and guiding me through the motion. Halfway through the thrust, he slides
his fingers to my wrist, showing me how I need to twist it at the tail
end of my swipe. It’s the same way all my trainers worked with me
when I was learning blade technique, but it feels strangely uncomfortable this time. Probably because Gus still has no shirt on and I’m
stuck in this ridiculous dress.
Gus must feel the same way because he clears his throat and
steps back, raising his spike to challenge me to a spar instead. “All I’m
saying is, be ready. If I were Raiden—and I knew there was a chance
I might only be able to grab one of you—I know which one I’d make
my priority.”
I raise my spike to accept his challenge. “If that’s the case, it’s a
good thing. Of the two of us, I’m far more ready to face down Raiden
than Vane is.”
“Well, that is definitely true.”
Still, Gus manages to knock my spike out of my grip in only
three thrusts—and when I challenge him to a rematch I barely last
five minutes before he knocks me to the ground and sends my spike
skidding out of my reach.
“My gift lets me pull strength from the wind,” Gus explains, and
I’m sure that’s part of my problem.
But the bigger issue is that every time I go for a deadly swipe, a
rush of dizziness weakens my arm.
Gus helps me to my feet, and I can feel him studying me as I
dust the sand off my shaky legs.