Let the Storm Break (Sky Fall #2)(30)

I don’t remember tripping. I can’t even feel my feet. But I remember the pain in my head as I fall and the way the light flashes behind my eyes. I try to move, but I can’t—all I can do is watch the spots of red on the snow grow bigger as I count my heavy breaths.

I don’t know how long I lie there, but I know the shivering stops. I feel my heartbeat slow, and I close my eyes and let my mind drift with the icy wind.

“Vane?”

The soft voice feels like a dream. I want to reply but my mouth won’t work. The most I can do is open my eyes.

A dark-haired girl squats in front of me, watching me with dark, worried eyes.

I don’t know her name, but I know her. She lives with the people who dragged us out of our house in the middle of the night. Who told us we had to trust them if we wanted to stay alive. Who ordered us to stay inside and who keep making us move to new houses every few weeks.

I hate that girl—and I hate her parents more.

But as she drapes her jacket over me and presses her warm hand against my cheek, I find the strength to whisper, “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” she whispers back.

And she doesn’t.

She stays by my side, holding my hand and calling for help until her dad finally finds us and carries me back to the cabin. And she keeps holding on as my mom cries and my dad screams at me for running away and everyone wraps me in blankets and bandages my head.

Even when they’re done with me, and lay me down next to the fire, I can still feel her holding my hand.

“Stay,” I whisper, afraid to be alone.

“I will,” she promises, sitting down beside me.

I can still feel her warmth as I drift off to sleep.





CHAPTER 18


AUDRA





I

shouldn’t be doing this.

I should be racing back to the safety of the Gales.

To Vane.

I thought that’s where I was headed. I even passed the first

groundling road that could’ve guided me into the east.

But as soon as it was behind me, the fear Aston planted started to take root, making me wonder if I was turning my back on something crucial. And when a second gray, winding road appeared on the horizon, a swarm of Easterlies tangled around me, pulling me toward the unknown.

At first I tried to resist them, but then I heard the familiar melody of my father’s song in the air. A lyric had been added, singing of bravery and searching for truth and carrying on the fight. But mostly it was about trusting the wind.

So I let the winds pull me east. Leading me to a valley of death. I drift with the Easterlies for most of the journey, but when I pass a glowing tower in a small, sketchy town, I land and send the drafts away. The strange structure is apparently “The World’s Largest Thermometer,” and it has a round, red sign at the base that says

THE GATEWAY TO DEATH VALLEY.

There’s no turning back from here.

I call three Westerlies to carry me for the rest of my journey. If there are Stormers where I’m going, I’ll need to sneak in undetected, and flying with Westerlies will hide my trace. No one can understand their words.

Their peaceful songs steady my nerves as I launch back into the sky, following an empty road into the mountains. The sun starts to rise as I crest the highest peak, painting the stark valley with orange and pink. It should be a breathtaking sight—and in many ways it is. But everything about this place screams Raiden’s name.

The parched, empty dunes.

The erratic flurries in the sky.

There’s no peace here. No calm.

Only an endless struggle to survive.

And it’s massive. Stretching for miles in every direction until the desert meets the dark rocks of the mountains.

I ask the strongest of the Westerlies to blanket me in a shield as I steer toward the nearest peak and touch down by the ruins of a mine, trying to figure out where to start looking.

“Come on, Easterlies—you wanted me to come here. Any help?”

No answer.

A few footprints mark the white, chalky ground, and below me are a couple of crumbling buildings, but it’s obvious no one has come up to this place in a very long while. In fact, I’ve seen none of the groundlings’ disgusting smog machines along the road. No tents or settlements along the trails. It’s like the entire valley has been abandoned—and I can’t say I blame them. Even this early in the day, the heat is almost choking.

I close my eyes and listen to the winds, hoping to find a melody about the sailing stones Aston mentioned. But they sing only of the pounding sun and the quiet emptiness of flying alone. I’m about to move on when I find one draft singing of devils and games.

If there were a way to sum up Raiden, that would be it.

I call it to my side and ask it to take me where it’s been.

The Northerly is weary and reluctant to obey. But I make my request again—firmer this time—and it carries me over stretches of cracked earth and rolling dunes until it sweeps down a row of mountains and sets me in a wide basin of flat white ground. The sharp smell of salt is laced through the air, and I realize I’m in a dried lake bed. A remnant from a time when this valley must’ve been lusher. Friendlier.

Before it all withered away.

It makes me uneasy being below sea level, like I’ve sunk too far from the purer air above. But I suppress an urge to run to higher ground, and make my way across the jagged, salty formations until I reach a sign that tells me where I am.