Page 81

J ade staggered out of the water, onto the sand, fatigue so heavy that the weight of air on her limbs nearly dragged her to her knees.

Probably would have, had Electra not gripped her arm.

To help? Or to hurry? Jade didn’t much care.

After the hours of swimming without a rest, she was grateful for the assistance.

Electra didn’t exactly look fresh and energized either. Her breath came in huffing gasps, and her steps were every bit as trudging as she hauled Jade out of the surf and into the dubious shelter of a palm tree.

They had outpaced the storm, but not by much. Wind raged. Rain pelted down, though in occasional hisses rather than a downpour. Black clouds clustered on the horizon, churning like daubs of paint under Mama’s brush.

Mama . Yearning ripped through Jade like the wind ripped through the palms, sudden and fierce. This was the closest Jade had been to her family in months, but they were as much beyond her reach as ever.

She sank to a seat on the wet sand, every thought she had the strength to gather aimed heavenward. Perhaps the Triada would impress upon her family how much she loved them. Mama, Papa, Arden. Storm.

Tell them, please , she mentally whispered. Tell them I died loving them. Tell them thoughts of them saw me through. Forgive my sins. Cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Prepare me to meet you, most holy Triada.

She kept her face tilted up, where the spitting rain could renew her baptismal promise.

Electra huffed a breath out, a new one in. Then she shrugged off the bag she’d had strapped to her back and hurriedly unpacked it. A small crystal bowl. A canteen of fresh water. Some sealed, dry food.

The last two she tossed toward Jade. “Here. Drink, eat. You’ll need it.”

They should have stopped for food at the blown-apart waystation. And then at the island that had been unreachable because of the storm. Much as Jade would have liked to refuse on principle, she snatched eagerly for the water first, then the food.

It was doubtful she’d make it off this island alive. But if by some miracle she did, she’d need strength. And if she didn’t…well, dried fish wasn’t exactly the last meal she would have chosen, but it was something.

Electra’s feet dragged as she moved back to the surf to fill the crystal bowl. No wonder, even given her training—she’d not only made the same swim, she’d half-pulled Jade along for the last few hours.

Perhaps it would even the scales, if she attacked.

Perhaps Jade could evade her somehow. Though casting her eyes about didn’t exactly show her any likely salvation.

The island was small, nothing but a dense cluster of palm trees in the center.

She could try shimmying up one, hoping that the mer’s dense body wouldn’t be able to climb so easily, but then it would be a waiting game.

The fish tasted like defeat on her tongue.

Electra trudged back, lowering carefully to her knees so as not to spill the water. She set the bowl in the sand between them and unhooked the knife from her belt, sliding it out of its sheath without any fanfare. She heaved a sigh and held out her left hand. “Best to get it over with.”

Jade didn’t move. Just looked long and hard at the woman who had been her forced companion for months. “How will you kill me? When you see I’m not magical? The trident, or the knife?”

Electra blinked, long and slow. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Jade snorted a laugh. “I know very well that was what Finn meant. I may be a sander, but I’m not stupid.”

“Of course it’s what he meant.” Electra wiggled her fingers in invitation. “It’s just not what I plan to do.”

Jade frowned. And kept her hands to herself. “Why wouldn’t you?”

Electra sighed and lowered her hand. “Because I’m not a monster, Jade, whatever you might think of me.

I tried to talk them out of this scheme to begin with—you think I wanted them to kidnap you?

You think I haven’t thought a thousand times how I would have felt if someone took me from my home against my will and tried to coerce me into helping them? Into marrying someone?”

Jade pressed her lips together.

Electra held out her hand again, met her gaze, didn’t flinch away from it. “I have been helping you as much as I can. And whatever the results of this Ceremony, I don’t intend to take you back down there for my brother and Finn to manipulate. I intend to find a way to get you home.”

The words sounded too good to be true—which meant they had to be a trick. Jade’s gaze dropped to the Blade. “Then why do the Ceremony?”

Electra’s laugh was low, throaty, amused. “Seriously? If you really do have this ‘sky magic,’ if you can control the wind…that changes everything. You may be able to fly yourself home on the storm. I’ll be able to claim you escaped me.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that reasoning that she knew would be moot—but Electra was clearly done giving her time for words.

She reached forward and yanked Jade’s hand up, over the bowl.

Her reaction time too slow from lack of food and water to stop her, Jade could only squeak out a protest as, in one swift motion, Electra brought the Blade over her finger and shook the resulting blood into the bowl.

Wind whipped. Rain flew away from them before it could land. Sunshine slashed through the clouds overhead, spilling enough light that the shadow of the hawk diving toward them was crisp and terrifying.

Electra’s brows slammed together, looking from the bowl, where Jade’s blood had made the same cloud it had when Finn had tried to awaken her beneath the waves, to the wind-wracked trees and the approaching, screaming hawk.

Jade knew exactly how Electra felt. For one strange, eternal moment she thought that the cloud in the bowl must be a lie, that Jade had been wrong about it being Arden, that sky magic must show up differently—because the wind, the hawk!

It must be true, she must have this power that no one on earth had ever seen before, because clearly magic was at work around them now.

But she felt nothing within herself. Only the bite of air on her flesh.

Then she looked up as the hawk—her hawk?—swooped over their heads. Something brown and gold and white flipped away from the bird. Jade had to look away given the sudden gust of wind. What had fallen? A feather? Had another bird been flying with it and then broken away?

The wind halted as quickly as it had kicked up, and Jade surged to her feet.

Not a feather. Not another bird. “Arden!” As she ran the three steps to where her sister stood, the proof that she’d been right settled like sweet relief.

Arden, whose mother had appeared from who-knew-where and who had vanished the day Jade was born. Arden was the one who had always been light as a feather. Arden was the one more at home on a rooftop deck than anywhere else.

Jade’s arms closed around her sister as Arden’s did around Jade, both of them laughing and sobbing and clinging. She couldn’t have said what words babbled from her mouth, any more than she could make sense of the sounds that came from her sister’s.

Because words didn’t matter. Arden was here. Somehow, Arden was here.

After another moment, Electra’s loud throat-clearing pulled them apart. Arden pushed Jade behind her, as if the fitted leathers she wore could protect them both from Electra’s trident if she chose to wield it.

“Careful,” Jade whispered, squeezing Arden’s hand. “She’s a general.”

Electra clearly heard her, given the quirk of her lips. “I am. But I’m no threat. You’re the Wind Rider.”

Her sister went stiff. “How…?”

Wind Rider? Jade’s gaze flew upward, to the hawk still soaring overhead, in circles. Had…Had Arden been on it? Riding it?

Electra didn’t reach for her trident. In fact, she left her hands deliberately at her sides, held out enough from her body to show she wasn’t going for any weapon.

“Kiyana would refer to you as nothing else—I thought she was being vague. But I see where she got the name now.” The general chuckled, shaking her head.

“Librus is going to have a stroke. He stole the wrong sister.”

The clouds crowded together overhead, but Arden held up a hand, and a blast of wind blew up. The sunshine lit them again, a beam of it glaring down at Electra brightly enough to make her wince away from it.

Jade could only stare. Her sister was doing that. Arden. Arden was controlling the wind. Jade shifted to the side a bit so she could see her face, at least in profile.

Then her fingers alerted her to something else, there where they held onto Arden’s long, slender ones.

Her sister—the same sister who had never worn a stitch of jewelry unless Jade and Mama all but held her down and forced a necklace or bracelet onto her—was wearing a ring.

On her left ring finger. A silver-toned band with diamonds studded around it.

“Arden?” She lifted their joined hands, holding them so that the ring was on full display, stones glinting in the sunlight. “What is this ?”

Arden glanced to her, then back to Electra. “You’re Kiyana’s source? Librus’s sister, cousin of the royals? She made it sound as though it was some commoner who worked in the palace.”

Electra tilted her head. “Clearly she was protecting us both. And herself in the process. Kiyana and I have been friends for a decade.”

Jade could see the thoughts storming Arden’s mind. Ignoring her own question for now, she asked, “Who’s Kiyana?”

“A woman who has been feeding me information to pass along to Seidon about what was going on among the mer while the wall was up. Including where you were being held and when they would bring you to the surface.”

Jade’s chest went tight. Someone had been doing that, all this time? Which meant she’d never really been alone, not as much as she felt. She too looked back to Electra. Not her enemy, if that was true.