Aston collapses to his knees, letting out the same wheezy groan I remember making after my friend Isaac accidentally nailed me in the balls during PE.
It’s a pain only guys understand—one I honestly wasn’t sure if Aston could feel, since I had no idea if Raiden had left his dudehood intact. But clearly Raiden did, because Aston’s clutching his stomach and looking ready to hurl.
“This—doesn’t—prove—anything,” he mumbles.
“It does, actually. It proves that if I fight my own way, the violence won’t get to me. I just inflicted a crap-ton of pain on you, and I’m not even queasy.”
“You think Raiden will ever let you get close enough to kick him?”
He hisses a command through his teeth, and a draft coils around my neck, twisting so tight, spots flash across my eyes.
“LET HIM GO!” Solana screams, but her next words sound very far away.
I’m stuck in that weird haze between panic and blacking out, so I can’t really tell what happens next. All I know is that the draft unravels and I get some much-needed air.
When my chest is done heaving, I find Solana and Aston in the middle of some sort of epic stare-down.
“Time to tell your fiancé what we’ve just discovered,” Aston tells her. There’s no teasing in his voice. “Five seconds . . . four . . . three . . .”
“I gave the command, okay?” Solana asks, not looking at me.
“Judging by the idiotic look on your face,” Aston adds, “I’m guessing you have no idea what that means. Think it through. The draft I attacked you with was broken. So the only people who can command them . . .”
I stumble back when I figure out how to finish the sentence.
Solana used the power of pain.
CHAPTER 10
AUDRA
Gus is vomiting blood.
Between every retch he keeps begging me not to worry.
But I doubt he’ll survive another round of Raiden’s torture.
I don’t even know if he’ll survive this one.
I try to convince myself that Raiden won’t let him die—that he needs Gus to pressure me.
But Aston was captured along with another Gale.
Only Aston made it out alive.
Even the Westerly shielding me seems worried. It keeps stretching thin, offering Gus gentle breezes of comfort. But whenever a noise warns that a guard might be approaching, it snaps back to protect me.
I wish it would shield the person braving the torture, not the one standing uselessly by.
But the wind is making its own decisions.
And it keeps choosing me.
So I sing until my throat turns raw and Gus finally falls silent. I can’t tell if he blacked out or fell asleep, but his labored breaths promise he’s still holding on.
I try to do the same.
I’d thought knowing what the guide meant would give me hope. But Aston’s escape plan is far more dangerous than I’d realized. We don’t just have to get out of our cells and through the mazelike fortress and past the myriad of guards—without any useable winds to assist us.
We have to survive the blades of seventeen fans.
There’s also no way to know if Raiden has adjusted the blades since Aston’s escape. And I don’t understand how he found a path through the Shredder—or how he mapped it out ahead of time.
But we have no other options. So the first step will be finding a way into Gus’s cell. I need to study Aston’s exact markings. There’s no room for guesses or errors.
Maybe I can convince the Stormer who helped me today that I need to ensure Gus doesn’t choke on his vomit. He wasn’t necessarily kind, but he seemed afraid of upsetting Raiden. I doubt he wants Gus to die on his watch.
I practice how I’ll ask, choosing each word carefully. But the next Stormer who checks on us is the one who tried to choke me.
I can still feel his sticky breath on my face—his roving hands on my waist.
I pull the fabric of my dress as far as it will cover.
“Believe me, I intend to do all the things you’re imagining right now,” he says as he opens my cell. “But not while you belong to Raiden.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
He sniffs my hair as he binds my arms behind my back, and keeps me pressed against him as he marches us up the stairs. He rests one hand on my shoulder, the other hand gripping my waist. When it slides toward my hip, I kick out his ankle.
He clings to me to regain his balance, but I shake him off, ignoring the tear of fabric as he topples back several stairs.
I run the other way, even though I can see the staircase dead-ends ahead.
A hand drags me through a hidden doorway before my assaulter catches up to me, and I scream until I realize it’s the scarred Stormer from the day before.
He seals the door behind us, and his eyes dart to my chest—then away.
I realize my damaged dress isn’t covering me as much as it was before.
Fury and shame burn my face as he ties the shreds of fabric back into place.
He clears his throat. “Did he . . . ?”
I can’t look at him. “Not yet.”