She still doesn’t look my way, but her whole body goes rigid as she mumbles something I can’t hear over the squealing.
“What’s that noise?” Vane asks, making me realize the sound is more than the pressure in my head. “Is that the Stormer’s gadget?”
My mother nods and holds up a silver spinning anemometer. “It sprang to life when you led the army this way. That’s how we knew to be ready.”
“The Stormers use them to keep track of each other,” Vane explains to me. “So when it goes off, we know they’re close.”
“How many Westerlies can you gather?” Aston asks Vane.
“I feel three,” he says.
“There’s a fourth one if you stretch your consciousness closer toward the mountain,” I tell him.
That earns me far more attention than we have time for, so I head off their questions with a quick “Yes, Gus and I had the fourth breakthrough. Once we get somewhere safe I’ll explain how it happened.”
There’s something sad about Vane’s posture as he nods, and I wonder if he’s bothered we share his language.
But I don’t have time to consider such trivialities. I’m helping Vane gather the Westerlies when the sky goes still and the winds holding us waver and fade.
We barely manage to stay airborne as Raiden shouts, “You’ll never leave this mountain!”
His voice is everywhere and nowhere. A ghost of shadow and flame.
“Surrender now,” he snarls, “or experience a new realm of pain.”
“I think we’ll go with option C!” Vane shouts back.
Only two Westerlies manage to break through whatever wall Raiden has created, and it doesn’t feel like enough. But Vane weaves them around us anyway.
“You’ll regret leaving,” Raiden warns us. “You have no grasp of the price you’ll pay.”
“Grasp this!” Vane shouts, ordering the Westerlies to rise.
Aston launches another firewhirl as the winds blast us away—the forest blurring with sparks and smoke as we streak through the sky.
I’d feel more triumphant if Gus weren’t coughing and sputtering.
“We need to slow down!” I shout. “The speed is tearing him apart.”
“If we do, they’ll be on us in seconds,” Vane argues, pointing to the anemometer, which is still squeaking, warning us there are Stormers on our tail.
“Maybe not,” Aston says, testing the air with his fingers. “I don’t feel any Stormers nearby.”
“But I still feel the chill,” my mother whispers.
Gus coughs again and Aston’s eyes widen and he shouts a dozen curses as he grabs my mother’s needled blade and swipes it toward Gus’s throat.
“What are you doing?” I scream.
“Trying to save him.”
He slashes Gus’s neck before I can pull away.
The blow barely grazes Gus’s skin, and there’s so much shouting and squealing and flailing, I can’t figure out what anyone is saying, until my brain catches two words: Suicide draft.
“NO!” I scream. “GET RID OF IT!”
Aston slashes again.
But the windslicer does nothing.
Neither do any of the commands Aston and Solana shout.
And Gus keeps choking harder and harder, right up until the moment his neck snaps and his body goes limp and cold.
CHAPTER 33
VANE
Gus is . . .
I can’t.
CHAPTER 34
AUDRA
I failed.
CHAPTER 35
VANE
I don’t understand.
How can Gus be—
A sharp sting across my cheek knocks me back to reality.
“Finally,” Aston says, and I realize he slapped me—and that I’ve lost control of the winds.
“I need you to set us down,” he tells me. “Can you handle that?”
I try.
It’s a bumpy landing, but the snow softens it—mostly.
I sink into the cold, letting the numbness take over. It helps me face the question I don’t want to ask.
Was there something we could’ve done?
I try to search for warnings we might’ve missed, but nothing stands out—except Raiden’s last threat about the price we’d pay if we escaped.
“Where’s Audra?” I ask, flailing to sit up.
“She’s fine,” Aston promises. “You all are. The anemometer’s been silent, ever since . . .”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. But his eyes dart to where Audra sits half buried in the snow, clinging to Gus’s body.
Gus’s body.
My stomach heaves, and I have to crawl away and puke into some bushes.
I keep gagging long after I run out of bile. And even when that stops, I can’t seem to get up.
“Come on,” Solana says, her voice thick with tears as she grabs my good arm and tries to pull me to my feet. “The storm’s getting worse.”
I hadn’t noticed the wind, but she’s right. It’s tearing branches off the trees. And the thunder sounds like a war zone.
“You need to get inside,” Arella tells us.
“Inside?”
I thought we were in the middle of a forest. But I turn to where she’s pointing and see we’re actually in the middle of . . . I’m not sure.