Shannon Messenger - Let the Storm Break

I stare at the wind coiled around his wrist. It’s turned sallow and dull. Sickly.

“The others,” I whisper. “You mean the other Westerlies you killed?”

“No—I mean the Westerlies who chose to die. The Westerlies who lay down and let the life be stripped out of them instead of standing up and fighting back.”

His anger makes no sense.

Raiden was furious when the Westerlies wouldn’t share their language—and he killed them in retribution. But he never wanted them to fight back. That’s what the Gales wanted—what they’re still hoping for with Vane.

“Who are you?” I ask, wishing my hands were free so I could throw back his hood and see his face.

“I told you I’m not going to answer that question!”

He holds up the sickly draft to threaten me, but if he’s who I think he is, I don’t believe he’ll hurt me.

Everyone assumed the two guardians Raiden captured were killed when he was done with them. But what if they survived?

I search my brain, trying to find their names—but the memory is buried too deep, filed away with all the other bits of our brutal history that I didn’t want to remember.

A haunting melody snaps me back to the present. Whispered words with a series of dark hisses that slice through the heavy air.

I can’t understand what he’s saying, but the song crawls beneath my skin, sinking into the deepest parts of me and humming with a new sort of energy.

The shift starts in my gut. A brewing storm that surges with every sound, like the words have brought some unknown part of me to life. And now that it’s been activated, it wants control .

Pain laces through my body, a ripping, tugging sensation that makes me feel like I’m being pulled apart—and I’m horrified to realize that I am. I know this feeling—I’ve lived it twice now. Both times I’ve shifted to my wind form.

“Stop!” I scream, shaking my head to try to break free of the melody’s hold. But the song is inside me now, raging and roaring and building to a crescendo.

If it triggers the shift, it will end me.

Our wind form cannot be merged with anything that’s tied to the earth, and I haven’t deprived myself of food for long enough to truly be able to separate. Parts of me will crumble and scatter to dust. The rest will float away.

The singing continues and I close my eyes, bracing for the coming breakdown. But just before the pain boils over, he falls silent and the breaking urge recedes, leaving me cold and trembling on the sand.

“You’re an Easterly!” he practically growls. “Your essence never would’ve responded to that call if you weren’t.”

He grabs my shoulders, squeezing so tight it feels like he’ll crush me. “Who taught you the fourth language? Was it the boy? Has he had the Westerly breakthrough?”

Vane’s face fills my mind, and I feel my panic calm as I stare into his imaginary eyes.

“So it was the boy.” He laughs darkly, shaking his head. “Apparently, all Raiden needed was a pretty face and the right curves. Someone will have to tell him.”

He releases his hold and I collapse, earning yet another mouthful of sand. I spit out the grains and pull myself back up. “Why don’t you tell him yourself? You could send him a message right now.”

He doesn’t accept my dare.

“You can’t get anywhere near Raiden, can you?” I ask quietly.

“I can if I hand-deliver you.”

“Could you? Or would he take me and still kill you, to punish you for escaping?”

His grabs my shoulders again. “Whatever you think you know—”

“I do know. I know everything. Everything except why you never came back. The Gales would’ve understood—”

“Would they?” He drops me again and stalks away, staring at the sky. “You really think the Gales would’ve accepted the traitor who gave away their most protected secret?”

“You were tortured—”

“You know the oath we swore. ‘Sacrifice before compromise.’ ”

I find myself repeating the words.

I remember swearing them four years ago, crouched in the shade of the lone oak outside my mother’s shack, when I became the youngest guardian in Gale history. They’d been reluctant to appoint me before, but after the betrayal of—

“You’re Aston, aren’t you?” I whisper.

Aston and Normand—those were their names. But Aston was younger and stronger, and famous for his skill in a fight.

“That name belongs to another life,” he whispers. “A life that ended the moment Raiden ripped Normand apart piece by piece until I told him what he wanted to know. I thought he would finish us both, but he kept me alive. Told me he ‘saw potential’ in me.”

My mind flashes back to the assault on the beach—the way Aston dominated every move I made—and I know what Raiden saw.

“He kept me for two years after that. Taunting me with freedom and then punishing me to make sure I knew my place.” He shudders. “I obeyed just enough to earn a window to escape. Then I ran. Holed up here in this forgotten place, trying to finish my days. But then I heard you. ” He reels around. “I heard you shout at the west wind and watched it obey. I thought you were a long-lost Westerly, a valuable tool to trade with the Gales. But you’re more of a traitor than I am.”

“How do you figure that?”

I can’t see him smile, but I can hear it in his voice when he asks, “So you’re not bonded to the betrothed king?”

The question hits harder than anything he’s thrown at me.

And my reaction gives me away.

“How did you know?” I whisper.

He shakes his head, turning away and moving toward the cave’s exit. “You still haven’t figured out Raiden’s secret, have you? How he dominates the winds?”

I rack my brain, trying to guess what clue I could have missed—but nothing he’s said has made sense.

Not until he unfastens his cloak, letting the silky fabric slide to the ground.

Pants cover his legs, but the rest of his body is exposed.

What’s left of him, anyway.

He steps into the moonlight, giving me the full effect, and I can’t stop myself from gasping.

Pricks of light leak through his skin—a million tiny holes that make him more empty space than person.

I want to gag, cry, run away from the horror.

But his eyes hold mine—sad and vulnerable as he whispers, “There’s much more power in pain.”

This place is messing with my head.

I’m so fre’aking tired, but every time I close my eyes, my mind floods with all the doubts I’ve been trying to deny. All the questions I’ve been trying not to ask.

I never realized how much the pain of my bond calmed me. Gave me something to hold on to—something to prove that my connection to Audra is real . Now that it’s gone, it’s like all my pathetic insecurities are feeding off one another, leaving me needy and desperate and tempted to do something really stupid, like wake Arella up and ask her if she thinks her daughter loves me.

I know I’m being crazy. Audra told me she loved me before we kissed—and I made sure the whole thing was her choice.

But she’s been gone so long.

Twenty-four days may not sound like a lot. But considering we were only together for five days—and most of the time she spent fighting with me or accidentally almost killing me—it’s a long time. Enough to make me seriously wonder if she’s really coming back.

I hold my right arm up to the dim candlelight and focus on the braided copper bracelet Audra gave me.

I can almost feel the sparks of her touch from when she latched the band around my wrist. She found it in the ruins of the storm that killed my parents and held on to it for ten years so that I’d have something that belonged to them.