Let the Storm Break (Sky Fall #2)(82)

Os rolls his eyes. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to remember your training and get ready to fight for your life. We’ll take care of the Storms.”

“But—”

“Did you honestly think we were counting on you to save us? Perhaps that had been our hope a few weeks ago. But then we saw how seriously inadequate your fighting is—not to mention your crippling aversion to violence. Why do you think we’ve all pushed so hard to have you share your knowledge? We knew it was useless in your unskilled hands. So I built today’s strategy without any consideration at all for your gifts.”

“Is that true?” I ask, glancing between Gus and Audra.

Audra thinks before she nods. “His battle plan doesn’t rely on Westerlies. That surprised me, actually. But it seems like that was the right call.”

“Of course it was the right call! You forget that I’ve been fighting Raiden longer than you’ve been alive. We all have.” Os points to the group of Gales, most of whom have gray in their hair.

And they’re not looking at me with that desperate you are our only hope look I got so used to seeing. If anything they look . . . unimpressed.

I know I should probably be insulted, but it actually feels like: giant, suffocating weight on my shoulders—gone!

“Don’t misunderstand, I still have high hopes for the power of four,” Os adds when the next horrible howl fades. “And I still hope that you will grow to be a great king, despite everything.” He glances at Audra and shakes his head. “But for now I won’t put the fate of our world in the hands of a stubborn teenager.”

I’m so relieved I could kiss him.

Well . . . maybe I would fist bump him instead.

“So what’s the plan then?” I ask, picking up a wind spike and feeling ready for anything.

Os grumbles about my missing his first run-through before he repeats their strategy. It sounds like a smart plan—though the only stuff I know about battles comes from the few times Isaac made me play one of his gory war games. The only question I have is “How do we keep the Storms out of the valley?”

Os doesn’t answer. And none of the Gales will look at me. The taste in my mouth turns sour.

“You’re not going to keep them out of the valley, are you?”

“Sometimes we can’t protect everyone,” Os says quietly. “And I fear today will be one of those days.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“Excuse me?” Os asks, stepping into my personal space. “You dare to criticize me for something you’ve already admitted you can’t accomplish?”

“I never said I wasn’t still going to try.”

“And I never said that either.”

“You didn’t have to. Your plan is for us to move to our base and wait for the Storms to come to us. I get that you want the home court advantage, but we all know they’re going to destroy the whole valley before they get there.”

“And what would you have us do, charge blindly toward the mountains?”

“It’s better than standing back and doing nothing.”

“I think it’s too late,” Gus says, and when I turn and follow his gaze, I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.

A dark funnel tears over the crest of the mountains in the distance. Followed by another. And a bunch more after that.

From this far away they look like normal tornadoes—though in Southern California tornadoes are hardly normal. But even from here I can tell that they’re moving like soldiers. Straight lines. Evenly spaced. Marching into the desert on a mission to destroy.

I shout for any nearby Westerlies, relieved when two drafts answer my call.

“Don’t,” Audra begs, grabbing my arm as I tangle one around me and order the other to form a shield.

I’m tempted to snatch her up and race away to safety—or at least pull her close and kiss her until the world ends.

But this is my fault, and if I don’t try to stop it, I’ll never be able to live with myself.

I order the Westerly to blast me away before I can change my mind.

The nervous draft can’t spin fast enough to completely hide me in the sky—but no one’s looking my way anyway. People are jumping out of their cars to stare and snap pictures of the strange storms, and I want to scream at them to get somewhere safe.

But where are they supposed to go? Californians don’t have basements or tornado shelters. We have earthquake drills and fire alarms.

“Are you crazy?” Audra shouts as she tackles me in midair.

“Are you?” I shout back.

“You can’t do this, Vane.”

She orders my wind to turn us around.

I order it to hold its course, adding a command for the draft to ignore anything else she says. It works like the Windwalker equivalent of jinx times infinity, and I can’t help grinning at Audra as she realizes it.

“This is pointless,” she says as she crawls to the front of me, clinging to my chest. “You don’t even have a plan.”

“Actually I do.”

Making it up as I go along is a plan. I just never said it was a good one.

“I know this is crazy,” I tell her. “But I can’t stand there and watch people die.”