Vane squeezes my hand.
“I’d never heard the wind’s rage before. It was a beast, come to devour us. I started to cry, but my dad promised everything would be okay. Then he coiled an Easterly around me and launched me out of the storm.”
“But you ran back in?” Vane asks.
I fight back a sob. “I still wonder if things would’ve been different if I’d stayed where he’d sent me. If he hadn’t had to help me out of the storm a second time. Maybe he . . .”
I can’t say it.
Vane’s gentle fingers turn my face toward him. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re punishing yourself for. You think it was your fault?”
“It was my fault.”
Everything inside me uncoils as the words leave my lips.
Finally. Finally they’re out there.
Tears pour down my face and I don’t try to stop them.
Vane wipes them away, his touch warmer than a Southerly. “You couldn’t have prevented what happened.”
I won’t let him let me off the hook like that. I don’t deserve it. “It was my fault, Vane. All of it. Your parents. My father. Everything. You don’t remember. But you will.”
I stand and put some space between us, keeping my back to him. “I told you. When you held me in the shreds of the storm, when my father was gone and your parents were dead and the world had ended. We clung to each other and cried, and I told you. I told you what I’d done.”
I stop there, needing a breath before I can finish.
“What did you do?” Vane whispers.
I close my eyes as what little is left of my heart crumbles to dust, leaving me cold and empty.
One more deep breath. Then I force the words out of my mouth.
“I killed them, Vane.”
CHAPTER 47
VANE
Her words hang in the air: these ridiculous, impossible things that refuse to make sense.
“You didn’t kill them,” I tell her.
She couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have.
Would she?
No—she couldn’t have.
“Yes, I did.”
“So you started the storm that sucked them up and trapped them in the winds? You aimed the gnarled tree at my mom? That was you?”
“It might as well have been.” Her lips move a few times, like she’s trying to force them to work. “I gave away our location.”
She cries so hard then, I want to rush to her side. Wrap my arms around her.
But I need the rest of the story first.
She chokes back a sob. “I had to save Gavin. He was falling and I didn’t want him to die, so I called the wind. And then I lied to my parents. I could’ve warned them—but I was afraid to get in trouble. So I pretended nothing happened. And then the Stormer showed up and it was too late. I tried to help and only made it worse, and now they’re all dead and it’s my fault.”
I run my hands over my face, giving myself a moment to process.
That’s a lot of information to get in twenty seconds.
My legs shake as I stand, trying to make sense of the chaos in my head. Each detail swims through my brain, latching to a broken memory and tying them together.
I can remember her now. Standing in the field getting whipped by the winds. Her face streaked with tears and dirt and blood. Telling me the same things she just repeated. Shaking. Sobbing.
I do the same thing I did then.
I close the gap between us, pull her against me, and hold her as tight as I can.
Back then I did it because she was all I had left to hold on to. Ten years later I do it for the right reason.
I slide my hands down her back, trying to calm her heaving sobs. “You can’t blame yourself, Audra. You were just a kid.”
“It’s still my fault.” Her voice is hoarse and raw. “I’m so sorry.”
My chest hurts for her. For the scared little girl she was. For the hard, broken girl she’s become. I can’t imagine growing up with that kind of guilt on my shoulders. No wonder she pushes everyone away.
Not anymore.
“Listen,” I say, waiting for her to look at me. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I will never blame you for what happened. The only person who deserves any blame is Raiden—no, don’t shake your head. I mean it, Audra. It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault. Nobody blames you.”
“My mother does.” She says it so softly, I’m not sure I hear it at first.
I tighten my grip on her. “Then your mother’s an idiot.”
I already hate her for denying Audra backup for the battle, and whatever else she said or did to shatter her strong, brave, beautiful daughter. I hope we never meet, because I have a feeling I’ll suddenly have no problem getting violent.
I take Audra’s face between my hands, cradling it like she’s fragile—because she is.
“I mean it, Audra. I’m removing all of your guilt, right now.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Uh—yes I can. They were my parents. I get to blame whoever I want for their deaths—and it’ll never be you. Never.”
Her glassy eyes hold mine, and I want to lean in and kiss all her pain and fear and hurt away. Okay, fine—I also just want to kiss her.
But I won’t take advantage like that.
She has to heal first.
I reach up, fingering a strand of her hair that’s pulled free and fallen in her face. “Will you do me a favor? Will you please take your hair out of this ridiculous braid?”
I know it’s just a hairdo. But it’s also this tight, restrictive thing she does to punish herself. And I’m not going to let her do it anymore.
Her hands reach for the knot at the end and I stop them.
“No. Let me.”
She doesn’t resist.
I help her lower herself to the ground, then sit behind her. In my head, I picture this cool, romantic moment, like something from a movie where violins play in the background and the lighting’s all moody and seductive.
In reality, I kinda botch it, tangling her hair about a million different ways and taking three times longer than necessary. But come on, I’m a guy. I don’t have a lot of hair-unbraiding experience.
Audra turns to face me when the last strands come free.
My breath catches.
This is Audra. Not the fierce guardian always ready to fight. Just the girl from my dreams. Only now she’s right in front of me, and I can reach out and touch her. Grab her. Kiss her.
I sit on my hands and lean back.
I’m not going to force her—even if everything in me is screaming to screw caution and spend what could very well be our last night on earth in a tangle of heat and lips and limbs.
It has to be her choice.
She reaches for me, her soft fingers sliding down my cheek, leaving trails of sparks.
My eyes focus on her mouth as she licks her lips and leans closer.
She’s going to do it. She’s going to kiss me.
I resist the urge to fist pump the sky.
“You’re beautiful,” I breathe instead.
She leans closer. Our noses touch. I stop myself from closing the distance.
It has to be her.
She sucks in a breath and closes her eyes.
“What are you thinking?” a woman’s voice asks. At. The. Last. Second.
“Come on!” I shout as Audra jumps back like I have the plague.
I turn to glare at the woman.
Her long, dark hair is styled in a tight braid and she’s dressed in the same uniform as Audra, but she doesn’t wear the jacket. Only the tank underneath. Gavin sits on her shoulder—and I swear he’s laughing at me with his beady red-orange eyes.
She lets out a slow, dramatic sigh, letting it rock her whole body as she shakes her head and focuses on Audra—who’s busy trying to smooth her hair into some sort of sloppy braid. “No need to put on airs, Audra. I’ve already seen more than enough. But we’ll deal with that later. For the moment, why don’t you introduce me?”
Audra closes her eyes and swallows, “Vane, this is my—”
“Yeah, I know,” I interrupt—because even if I hadn’t seen her in my dreams, the family resemblance is impossible to miss.
Audra’s mother arrives at last.
CHAPTER 48
AUDRA
I want to claw a hole in the ground and disappear into it for the rest of eternity. But I won’t give my mother the pleasure of watching me crumble.
I dust off my pants as I stand. My legs shake and my loose hair blows in my face, making me feel sloppy and weak. But my voice is strong when I ask, “What are you doing here?”
A chilled night wind whips around us and my mother trembles, hugging her arms to her chest and squeezing her eyes shut, like the draft is stinging her skin. Her voice is strained when she finally opens her eyes and asks, “Did you really think I would leave you to take on the Stormers alone?”
Yes.
“Did you really think I wanted my only daughter—my only child—to have to sacrifice herself, if there was a way to avoid it?”
Yes.
“Yes.” The answer comes from Vane, not me.
My mother straightens up, smoothing the fabric of her tank as she turns to face him. “It sounds like my daughter hasn’t given you an accurate picture of me.”
“Actually, the fact that you wouldn’t call for backup said it all.” He sounds colder and harder than I’ve ever heard him.
Her eyes narrow. “That’s because I’d been counting on you to finally become a real Westerly. And I was hoping you’d turn out to be less useless than the others.”
“Hey,” Vane says, the same second Gavin screeches.
“Enough.” I rub my temples and hold up my hands to silence everyone. “Then why did you tell me you wouldn’t fight with me?” I ask my mother.
She sighs. “I thought if I gave you some extra motivation, you’d finally push for the breakthrough the way you should’ve been doing all along. But I always planned to fight by your side if it didn’t work. So here I am. And it appears I arrived in time to spare you from other things as well.”
My cheeks burn. My whole body burns. But some of that is disappointment—much as I hate to admit it.
My mother clears her throat, snapping me away from a mental image of Vane’s lips.
“I’m only going to say this once,” she says, putting her hand on her hip, like she’s reprimanding a couple of toddlers. “I’m willing to pretend I didn’t find you both in such a compromising position when I arrived, but only because it’s never going to happen again, right?”
I say yes at the same time Vane says no.
“What?” he shouts, making Gavin screech again.
My mother strokes Gavin’s feathers and murmurs soft words to calm him. For a second I’m speechless. Gavin’s the only bird my mother never reached out to, blaming him as much as she blamed me for what happened. I don’t know what to feel when he nuzzles against her fingers, completely swept up in her.
“I’m so sorry, Vane,” my mother tells him. “Unfortunately, you’re not free to make that decision.”
She’s using the same soothing tone she used for Gavin, but Vane’s not so easily appeased.
“We’ll see about that,” he snaps back.
He looks at me, pleading for me to say something. But I can only turn away.
With my mother here, I might have a chance to survive this fight. Which means I’ll live to face the consequences of my actions if I bond myself to Vane Weston. The shame. The disgrace. Being removed from the Gales, the only thing that gives my life purpose. And that’s if they don’t banish me for treason.
“So that’s it, then? Mommy shows up and I don’t matter anymore?”
There’s nothing I can say, so I stretch out my arm and Gavin flies to my wrist. I stroke the softer, spotted feathers on his chest, grateful for the distraction.