Let the Sky Fall (Sky Fall #1)(36)

“Show-off,” I grumble.

She holds out her hand for the sword and I readily hand it over. Holding it makes me queasy. She inspects the blade, probably making sure I haven’t somehow damaged it in the five minutes I held it. “Why were you looking for me?”

“Why were you hiding up in a tree, crying?” I counter.

For a second she looks thrown. Then she says, “I needed the wind to restore me,” and cuts through the grove, heading back to her house.

I follow, waiting until she’s put the deadly weapon away and turned to face me before I press for an answer that isn’t a total load of crap. “Okay, that explains why you were in the tree. What about the crying?”

I stare her down, daring her to deny it.

“That’s none of your business.”

She tries to move past me but I block her path.

“You can trust me, you know,” I tell her, my voice a little heavier on the emotion than I mean it to be. “I know you’re used to doing everything on your own. But we’re in this together now.”

She doesn’t say anything. Just stares at the ground, like the ants scurrying across the dirt are the most fascinating things in the world.

I move closer and take her hands—thrilling to the strange zings that shoot through me the second we touch. “Let me help you.”

The air feels charged between us as she considers my offer, and for a second it looks like she might take me up on it. Then she shakes her head and slips her hands out of my grip. “I just had a bad dream. That’s all.”

“About what?”

She turns away. “About the day my father died.”

Her voice is barely a whisper, but the words hit me like a stone.

Her father died saving me.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, hoping she knows how much I mean it.

She turns back, and when our eyes meet, I see a slight shift. Like a tiny piece of her iron guard just cracked. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I shrug, wondering if that’s really true. “Either way, I’m still sorry it happened.”

“Me too.”

She leans against the wall, into the tiny patch of shade it creates. From her pained expression I can tell she’s reliving every moment of the storm in perfect detail.

I want to crawl inside her head, watch the replay—even if it’ll hurt.

“What was it like?” I whisper.

“The storm?”

“Yeah. How did it all . . . go down?” I can’t think of a gentler way of saying it.

She stares at me like I’ve just massacred half a dozen kittens. “You want me to tell you the gruesome details of your parents’ murders?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I swipe my hands through my hair, trying to find the words to explain it. “For the last ten years of my life I’ve had hundreds of people ask me what happened—and do you know how they look at me when I say ‘I don’t know’? Like I’m brain damaged. ’Cause wouldn’t I have to be, to not remember the single most defining moment of my life?”

“You’re lucky you don’t remember.”

“Lucky?”

If I have to hear that one more time . . .

“So I’m lucky your mom stole my memories? Erased the first seven years of my life?”

“In some ways, yes.”

She doesn’t get it—nobody ever has.

“All I’m asking is for you to help me fill in the blanks. If I can’t get my memories back, you can at least share yours.”

I lose track of how many seconds pass in silence. Her voice is cold when she says, “My memories are my own.”

She stalks over to the cracked window and strokes her demented hawk. The one place she knows I won’t go near her. Not that I want to, at that moment.

I know her memories are painful, but with all I’ve been through she could throw me a freaking bone.

Everything goes back to that day of the storm.

I need to know what happened.





CHAPTER 20


AUDRA


It was only a dream, I tell myself. Only a dream.

But I know it’s more than that.

It’s a memory.

The memory. The one I can’t let Vane recover.

Where I told him I killed his family.

It was a foolish, impulsive decision, and the only reason he didn’t unleash any of his rage was because he was too shocked by what happened. I’m lucky my mother had to erase his memories, so I never had to live with the consequences of my confession.

I won’t make the same mistake again.

I won’t tell him. No matter how much he pushes.

My fingers curl into fists and I squeeze, trying to stop the tingling I still feel in my palms from when Vane took my hands.

I finally know what the feeling means.

It’s the same feeling I had when we clung to each other in the rubble of the storm. I forgot that detail, but I remember now—the way the warmth passed between us, radiating through my body.

Guilt.

That’s the only thing I felt as I leaned on the boy whose life I’d ruined. Let him support me. Deluded myself into believing he could forgive me for what I’d done.

White-hot, burning, stinging guilt.