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T hey flew straight for the storm. Arden watched the roiling clouds with her eyes, tracking the way they built and rolled, darkened with rain, rushed on the air currents spiraling high above them. She saw the rain lashing the sea miles away, noted the way the waves stacked, grew, tumbled.

But mostly, she felt the wind. She felt it on each hair follicle, against each inch of skin. More—in each cell. She heard it and tasted it and knew its name.

Salvation . That was what she’d call this storm. That was what she’d name this wind. Salvation .

The closer they flew, the more she felt Ora strain and struggle beneath her. But though Arden reached toward the great spiral of wind, she didn’t calm it. Didn’t direct it away from them. Not yet.

First she had to feel it in all its force. Let it in, let it saturate her being, let herself become part of it.

Eyes closed, hawk beneath her, leathers blown flat against her skin, Arden wasn’t just the Wind Rider. Wasn’t just the Wind Wielder.

In that moment, Arden was the wind itself.

She felt it singing in her veins like blood.

She tasted it, cool and crisp as mint, on her tongue.

She saw it, pure white and driving darkness, behind her closed eyes.

She heard its song, tumbling harmonies and melodies, in her ears.

She smelled it, rain and oxygen and ozone, in each flared nostril.

And she soared. Not against it, but with it. Not apart from it, but a part of it. Arms flung wide, face tilted back, every muscle somehow fluid but taut.

She danced. Not in a ballroom or even on a palace balcony with the man who had filled her heart, but with the Creator who had filled her soul.

Had she ever understood the Triada before? Had she ever known how real he was? Had she ever truly had faith that he heard her prayers? Perhaps, in part. In a mirror, dimly.

But now it was full—that faith, that knowledge, that understanding.

Now she knew beyond any shadow that it was his hand that cupped her like the wind, there on the edge of a hurricane.

His voice that sang all around her. His breath, divine and eternal, that built and caressed and roared over his creation.

So often she’d fought. Cried out. Railed. Begged.

Now…now she surrendered. She reached for the wind, and instead of asking anything, she gave. Gave herself to it. Gave it, gave the Triada, all she was. Gave him her fear for Jade. Her hope for a future. Gave him her worry for her parents. Her love for Seidon.

Gave him the tiny life within her that she could barely wrap her mind around but loved so fiercely already. The life she wouldn’t even have known about without the Triada-given gifts of her husband. The life she would sacrifice anything to protect—anything but this connection to their creator.

She gave every hope and desire and prayer, until there was nothing left but the wind. Until every sense was blinded by it, consumed by it, overwhelmed by it.

The wind replied.

Not in the roar of air speeding by, not in the thundering sea beneath her, not in the flash of lightning so close she should have jolted back in panic.

It whispered. Whispered deep inside her, in the place where she’d been learning to speak to it. It whispered lyrics that were not words in a melody that had no notes, and it resonated so deeply, so long that every cell in her body vibrated with it.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the wind had caught her, held her a few feet above where Ora still flew, suspended in perfect harmony with it as well. She saw the night-dark thunderheads, the blinding flashes, the lashing rain.

She curled a finger, and the wind danced in reply. She lifted a palm, and the wind surged toward heaven. She flipped it over, pressed it down, and the sea beneath her rippled and raced away from the column of air.

She was the hurricane, and the hurricane was her. Hers to command. She gathered it up in her palms, all those miles of wind and fury sprawling out to the south, to the east.

And she bade it follow her. To spread. To focus.

To drive the creatures beneath the waves exactly where she needed them to go.