I have no idea what he’s thinking, but he looks as scared as he should be.
I breathe a sigh of relief when he finally asks the right question.
“So where do we start?”
I lower the windslicer. “Take a seat.”
He drops to the dusty ground, scooting to the far edge of the floor, against one of the walls. Keeping a safe distance from me.
Good.
I sink to my knees in front of him, placing the windslicer between us. “Rule number one—the most important rule for our training sessions: Never speak to the wind in anything other than a whisper—is that clear?”
“What does that even mean?”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to agree. Until the Stormers find us, you cannot do anything other than whisper to the wind. We don’t need the breezes telling them more than they already know.”
I wait for him to agree.
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”
I roll my eyes. He has to be difficult. “Hold out your right hand, palm facing me, and spread your fingers like mine.” I stretch my fingers wide, curling the tips like I’m gripping an invisible sphere. “Memorize that position. It’s the easiest way to feel for the nearby drafts.”
He copies my position. “Okay. Am I supposed to be feeling something?”
“You tell me. What do you feel?”
“Besides feeling like an idiot for sitting in a burned-down house at five-freaking-a.m., holding out my hand like it’s some sort of deformed claw . . . not a whole lot.”
I grit my teeth, but I refuse to let him get to me again. “Then maybe you should try actually paying attention. Close your eyes.”
He heaves a heavy sigh but does as I ask.
“You should be able to detect any movement in the wind within at least a twenty-mile radius—and be able to tell where it’s coming from. Focus on the way the air hits your skin. You’ll feel something like an itch wherever the wind stirs.”
He opens his mouth—probably to complain again. But then his hand twitches and his jaw falls slack. “My thumb itches. Like . . . something moving across my nerves, tugging at me.”
I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. His senses are strong. Really strong. That draft barely tickles the base of my thumbnail, and it’s at least thirty miles away.
Maybe this task won’t be as impossible as I thought.
“There’s a weak Easterly stirring over there,” I explain. “That’s what your thumb is telling you.”
He drops his hand, shaking his fingers hard. “That’s really freaky. I don’t like it.”
“Well, get used to it. It’s part of who you are. And it’s an amazing thing. Groundlings would kill to do the things we can do. Maybe you should try being grateful for your gifts.”
“Groundlings?”
“Humans. We can have a vocabulary lesson another time. Right now I’m trying to teach you how to call the wind—another one of those ‘freaky’ things Windwalkers do, so brace yourself. We’ll start with the most basic call. It’s one you heard me use yesterday, and it will be the one you use most often. Repeat after me. ‘Come to me swiftly.’ ”
He shakes his head like he doesn’t understand, and I know he’s struggling with the language shift. I switched to the Easterly tongue. I repeat the phrase, waiting for his mind to translate.
“Come to me swiftly,” he finally says, his tongue fumbling with the swirling intonations of the words.
I grab the windslicer and point it at his throat. “I told you to whisper—it’s a good thing the wind needs a complete command to respond, otherwise you could’ve just given away our exact location.”
“Hey—you didn’t whisper!”
“I was testing you to see how well you were paying attention earlier. You failed.”
“Because you set me up for it.” His hands clench into fists and he looks like he wants to pummel me. But his gaze settles on the windslicer. I have him right where I want him—and he knows it.
“Try it again. Focus on the draft you’re feeling—and whisper this time,” I order, setting the blade back on the ground between us. “Come to me swiftly.”
“Come to me swiftly.”
It’s actually quite impressive the amount of disdain he slipped into his whisper.
I smile at his pettiness. “Carry no trace.”
“Carry no trace.”
“Lift me softly.”
“Lift me softly.”
“Then flow and race.”
“Then flow and race.”
The Easterly rushes through the half room, stirring the leaves and cooling the sweat pooling at my hairline before it whisks away.
Vane’s eyes widen. “Cool.”
“Memorize those four phrases. They will save your life a thousand times over.”
He doesn’t say anything, too busy staring at the giant grasshopper that jumped onto the flat edge of the windslicer.
I snatch the disgusting insect and toss it at his head. “Pay attention, Vane. What did I just tell you?”
He shrieks, waving the now flying creature away from his face. “Memorize the spell. Got it—no need to get psycho with the bugs.”
The grasshopper lands on his shoulder and he flails to shoo it away, fixing me with a glare that would’ve been evil if he weren’t blushing so bright red. It distracts me from what he said, but only for a second.
“Wait, did you say ‘spell’?”
“Spell. Command. Whatever you want to call this crap.”
My mind spins with the implications of his words.
“I’ll ignore for a second that you just referred to the single most valuable element of our heritage as ‘crap’—though you can bet we’ll get back to that. Do you think I’m teaching you . . . magic?”
I feel crazy even saying the word.
“You control the wind. What else am I supposed to think?”
He has a point—from a human standpoint, at least. But he’s still wrong.
“We control the wind through words, Vane. We ask the gust to do what we want and convince it to obey. It’s a simple communication—no different from what you and I are doing right now.”
“We talk to the wind? Like it’s alive?”
“In a way. Each of the four winds has a language. Only sylphs can understand and speak the languages because we’re part of the wind ourselves. But there’s no magic or spells. Just a simple dialogue between wind and Windwalker.”
I should’ve realized he was confused. It explains why he isn’t taking this as seriously as he needs to. “I can’t believe how little you know about your heritage. I know your mind was wiped, but I thought some things were just . . . instinctive.”
I realize my slip a second too late.
“What do you mean my mind was wiped?”
“Nothing.”
“Like hell it’s nothing.” He scoots closer, the windslicer no longer intimidating him. “Tell me what happened to me. Now.”
I want to be angry with him for once again interrupting this very important lesson—and as his trainer I should demand he pay attention, and whip him around with some winds if he refuses.
But I can’t.
I feel sorry for him.
Sorry for what I know.
Sorry for what I’ve done.
“You have to understand,” I tell him, trying to sound calmer than I feel. “When the Stormer attacked it was like the world ended. Everything gone, destroyed, sucked up, or broken and left in splinters. My mother found us huddled on the ground, sobbing. She didn’t have any choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“No one can hide from Raiden—not for long. We had to make him think we were dead. My mother and I could disappear easily enough, but you were too important. The only place we knew Raiden would never look for you was with the groundlings, and the only way to hide you there was if you didn’t know who or what you are. Humans don’t know we exist—and we couldn’t risk that you would tell them.”
“So she wiped my mind?” His hands tear through his hair, like he’s trying to feel for a wound or injury. “What the hell did she do to my brain?”
“She called a Southerly and sent it deep into your subconscious. The wind did the rest.”
I can still remember the way his skinny, bruised body collapsed to the ground as she wrapped the draft around him and sent it into his mind. My mother didn’t explain what was happening. So he turned his wide, terrified eyes to me, silently begging me to help him.
Vane watches me now, looking so much like the little boy that day it nearly takes my breath away. I owe him the truth. As much as I’m willing to tell, at least.
“You said it felt like a million butterflies were flapping around in your brain,” I whisper. “I held your hand and told you to close your eyes. When you woke a few hours later, you didn’t remember much of anything. The wind wiped all your memories away.”
Vane doesn’t speak—doesn’t move. I take his hand, stunned at the overwhelming urge I feel to reach him. Comfort him. Try to make it right.
He jerks away. “How do I get them back?”
I can’t blame him for asking. But I need him to forget. One memory at least.
“You can’t, Vane. They’re gone. Forever.”
He closes his eyes, looking fragile. Crushed.
Hopeless.
I close my eyes too.
Wishing on every star out there that the words I just said were true.
Hoping even harder I’ll never have to tell Vane they aren’t.
CHAPTER 13
VANE
I’m speechless—probably for the first time in my life.
My memories were stolen.
Not repressed.
Stolen.
I’ve lived the last ten years with a black hole for a past—not the easiest way to grow up. And apparently that’s all I’ll ever have.
I want to throw something. Or maybe pick up that crazy needle-sword thing and see what kind of damage I can do to the walls with it.
But another piece of me—a tiny, much quieter piece—is relieved that I didn’t forget my parents.
I’m not the horrible, selfish jerk who erased his family because it hurt to remember them. It wasn’t my fault. Audra’s mother stole my memories while Audra held my hand and promised I would be okay.
Which at least explains the only memory I have. Audra leaning over me, staring at me with those dark, haunted eyes, until a breeze whisks her away. That was real. I just don’t remember the rest because the memory was swept out of my mind by the wind.
How does it even work? How does a gust of wind steal my memories?
“I know this is hard to understand,” she says quietly. “But we had to keep the fact that you survived top secret so Raiden wouldn’t come searching for you. That’s why we let the human authorities run you through their adoption system. We kept watch, to make sure you were okay, but we needed you to disappear, stay off the grid—as you call it. And that wouldn’t happen if you were running around talking about sylphs and Stormers and the four languages of the wind. I’m not sure which would’ve been worse: what the humans would’ve done to you or what would’ve happened when Raiden found you. And he would have found you.”
“He found me anyway, didn’t he?” I’m surprised at the growl in my voice. “And how is that, by the way? I’m guessing he didn’t just wake up and think, ‘Hey, I bet Vane’s in the crappy Coachella Valley.’ ”
Her shoulders sag. “No. I . . . made a mistake.”
“So it’s your fault.”
She shrinks even more, like she’s trying to hide from the words. But she doesn’t deny them.