“What does it do?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. It never seems to respond to the wind. But if Raiden has his Stormers carry them, they must be important.” Arella slips the longer end through her belt, leaving it dangling next to her windslicer as she walks to the window, pulls it open, and traces her fingers across the filthy screen. “We need to figure out our flight path.”
She and Solana start discussing jet streams, but I’m not listening—partially because I don’t know crap about that stuff. But mostly because I keep staring at the fresh welts on my wrists from the ropes I just escaped.
If Os—with his limited experience in the power of pain—could capture all three of us in one fell swoop, it won’t matter how we fly, or what weapons or gadgets we bring with us.
If we have to face off against the Stormers—and let’s be honest, there’s a pretty good chance we will—we’ll need to fight like them if we want to win.
And since none of us want to sink to that level, we need to get someone else on our side who can.
I know a guy for the job—assuming I can find him.
And assuming I can convince him not to kill us.
CHAPTER 6
AUDRA
I try to count my steps and memorize the turns as Raiden leads me to his dungeon, but his fortress is a labyrinth of narrow paths and twisting stairways that take us up and down and every possible direction. By the time we reach the dim, windowless room lined with dark-barred cells, I’m so turned around, I can’t tell if I’m deep underground or high in a different tower.
Raiden shoves me into a cell in the center of the row and locks the barred door behind me. I crawl to a corner, curling my legs into my chest and wrapping my arms around them, trying to preserve what little heat I can.
The cold is different here.
Damp and heavy.
It presses against my skin with a million icy fingers as my breath puffs into clouds that seem to hang permanently in the air.
The gray floor and walls of my tiny cell are bare, save for deep scratches where a former prisoner must’ve clawed at the stones.
“It’s definitely not as nice as your last cell,” Raiden tells me. “But the view is infinitely better.”
He steps to the side, and everything inside me unravels.
“Gus?” I whisper, squinting through the dim light, hoping the crumpled figure on the floor of the opposite cell won’t respond.
For a second he doesn’t move. Then he slowly lifts his head, scanning the room until his pained eyes find mine.
I choke down a sob.
His face is so bruised and swollen I barely recognize him. But somehow he still tries to smile.
“Clearly you two have some catching up to do,” Raiden tells us, and the smugness in his voice makes me wish I could claw off his skin.
I wait until his footsteps fade before I scoot closer to the bars. The damp chill makes my muscles ache, but I refuse to think about the pain. Not when Gus looks like . . .
“So it’s that bad, huh?” Gus asks, studying my face. “I guess this is the end of my Best-Looking Guardian days.”
I force a smile, trying to be brave for him. But as he pulls himself into a sitting position, my eyes brim with tears.
Thick gashes as wide as my fist have turned his broad chest into more wound than skin. Some of the cuts are covered with scabs, and others are still seeping red—but it’s the dark spot on his left shoulder that makes me feel like I’m going to be sick on the floor.
A hole.
Perfectly symmetrical and about as wide as my finger.
Bored through flesh and bone.
Aston had twenty-nine just like it. One for every day he resisted the power of pain, until Raiden found a different way to break him.
“Gus, I’m so—”
“Don’t!” he interrupts, shaking the crusty strands of his long blond hair out of his eyes. “Please don’t apologize—this has nothing to do with you.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because we’re at war. Soldiers get captured and interrogated. It’s as simple as that.”
But it isn’t.
My mother handed us over to Raiden like animals to the slaughter.
And the only reason Gus was with me was because he was trying to guard me, to keep the Westerly language safe—a language I only knew because I broke my oath as a guardian and bonded myself to Vane.
Everything goes back to me.
My mistakes.
My fault.
Gus winces as he reaches to tear a strip of fabric from the end of his pants. I try not to notice that his back looks just as shredded as his chest.
“If you need more bandages I can tear off part of my dress,” I offer.
Gus laughs. “You barely have enough fabric to cover you as it is. Pretty sure Vane would kill me.”
“I don’t care about Vane.”
I didn’t mean the words the way they sounded—or I don’t think I did. But they seem to echo off the walls.
“Is that true?” Gus whispers. “I heard Raiden say something about you breaking your bond. . . .”