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ONE

Wren

Within the protective embrace of my Air Elemental I hover above the broken dome of the Conduit Chamber, the jagged glass glinting in the light of the full moon like the fanged mouth of a beast. I don’t want to look down—not at the shattered dome and the two people below it: my love and my enemy.

Is my love now my enemy?

But I have to look. I have to see if Lee is still there. Still with Celeste. My gaze lowers and I breathe out a long sigh that I’m not sure is relief or disappointment. Lee and Celeste are gone. All I see are the statue-like figures of the other Elementals, dozens of them, seemingly frozen, a forest of specters in a strange landscape of questions without answers.

I shake my head as if trying to wake from a dream that will not release me. My gaze lifts and I meet the Air Elemental’s amber eyes. He has one arm around my waist, steadying me as we float high in the night sky. Slowly, he lifts his other hand and wipes away a tear tracking down my cheek.

“Wren.”

His voice is the same, familiar but odd, like it has to struggle to reach me—a pixelated version of communication. Hidden within the hood of the dark robe that swirls around him, his face is almost impossible to see. Except for his amber eyes, it’s just a shadowy form, but in those eyes I see compassion. It’s the compassion that holds me, steadies me, allows me to take a few deep breaths and look down again, searching for Lee.

Beneath us my gaze is pulled to Crossroads Courtyard, the main campus courtyard—the meeting place for students—where Lee and I waltzed under the moonlight just hours ago, where my best friend Sam died holding my hand, her body shattered and bloody.…

There are students and teachers in the courtyard, though they all avoid the dark liquid stain in the middle of the circle of cobblestones where Sam’s body had been. As I watch, the group shifts and turns. I recognize the man who hurries from the others, clutching an ancient leather-bound book to his chest. Dean Rottingham rushes to someone carrying a limp body whose long hair is streaked with white and whose cloak glints with the shimmer of stars.

I jolt as I realize it’s Lee and Celeste.

Oh god, Wren! What happened? What did you do?

Lee’s stunned voice echoes in my mind. I’ll never forget his face, devastated and accusatory, looking up at me as he gathered Celeste with her self-inflicted wound into his arms.

“Don’t believe her, Lee.” I whisper the words like a prayer through my cold lips. As Dean Rottingham takes Celeste from Lee and shouts for the healers, Lee’s face lifts. I feel his gaze. “Please don’t believe her,” I beg, even though he’s too far away to hear me.

“Wren!” My name explodes from Lee. He’s shouting. The dean has taken Celeste from him and given Lee the book. With one hand he holds the leather tome against his chest. With the other he points up. Up. At me. It’s like his voice is the bow and his extended hand is the arrow that pierces me.

Rottingham turns with Celeste still in his arms. His head snaps back and now the dean is also staring at me.

But I’m no longer looking at Lee or Rottingham. Celeste raises her head from the dean’s shoulder. Her eyes are open, glowing with reflected moonlight as her lips move. Suddenly, adult-sized shapes fly up through the broken glass of the dome. The other Elementals, released from their frozen, statue-like state, dart from the Conduit Chamber where Celeste, the leader of our Lunar Council, just tried—and failed—to kill me. Where she also tried to make it look to Lee like I’d stabbed her. With that, she’d succeeded.

The cloaked shapes speed toward us, eyes glowing with malevolence. My Elemental doesn’t hesitate. He wraps his cloak around me and my vision goes black as we soar up above the flock of swarming Elementals. We catch an air current that carries us away from the school so swiftly that my stomach flip-flops and my mouth fills with saliva as I battle not to puke.

Just as I know I’m losing the puke war, we descend. My Elemental places me gently on the mossy forest floor. I’m shaking and my legs are noodles. I drop to my knees, head bowed, gulping air while I try to convince my stomach to retreat from my throat.

“Wren?”

His voice brushes against me like a warm breeze and I lift my hand, making what I hope is the universal just give me a second gesture as I continue to tremble and not puke.

“Doncella?”

Doncella —maiden. I understand more now. I know the Elemental isn’t just calling me a generic term for a young, unmarried woman. I’m the maiden. The first of the three: maiden, mother, elder. The book that started it all and ended it all, the ancient leather tome Rottingham has given to Lee, explained it. Maya, Lee’s sister, her life was taken after she read the book. Sam, my best friend, was killed earlier that night after she read the book.

And now me. I read the book. Not all of it. I hadn’t had time. But I read enough to understand that Sam was right. She’ll kill you if she can.… I can still hear Sam’s broken words, stuttering from her broken body as the last thing she did in this life was warn me about Celeste, warn me that the leader of the Lunar Council would try to kill me.

The book. I need it. Now that I know the key to understanding it—that it must be read in the light of the moon—I have to get it. I have to finish reading it and figure out how to fix this mess.

My body hurts. My heart feels shattered. I force myself to my feet, wincing at the pain in my back. My Elemental’s questioning amber gaze meets my eyes. “We have to go back. I have to get that book.”

My Elemental doesn’t speak. He paces back and forth across the mossy forest floor, ferns bowing and pine needles rustling with each pass.

“Please,” I say. “You have to take me to campus.”

He whirls around to face me. His cowl slips and I can glimpse the suggestion of a jawline and dark hair, but if I stare too long my vision blurs. “Danger!” This time the pixilated voice pushes against me with more force. Not a warm breeze, but a whipping wind—cold and final.

“I know!” I shout into the wind. “But it’s all I have. All we have to get us out of this mess.” And that is the absolute truth. I don’t have Sam anymore. Sam, who was a Taurus moon, gifted with computer-level intelligence and an eidetic memory, is dead. Broken by Celeste because she knew too much. I don’t have Lee anymore. Lee… my other best friend and an Aquarius moon, a healer who was also so much more to me. The memory of him shielding Celeste from the shards of glass that fell from the shattered dome is permanently burned into my mind, as is the expression on his face when he looked up at me.

He believed Celeste.

No. I don’t have Lee anymore.

I plead with the Elemental. “The book has information we need. We can’t fight against what’s going on at the school unless we understand exactly what’s going on at the school .”

He stares back and I see something flicker across his amber eyes.

“What? Do you know what’s going on?” A spark of hope lights within me. “Whatever you know you have to tell me. It’s just the two of us now.” I take a step closer to him. The Elementals are mysterious and dangerous and I don’t know much about them other than they’re ancient, as old as this island, and this one particular Elemental has saved me—three times. I suck in a breath. “Wait, were you there ? At the beginning when Celeste and her people shipwrecked here and made a deal with all of you, all of the Elementals?”

“Betrayal!” The word bursts from him. He continues to hold my gaze as he speaks, but his words are muffled, as if he’s shouting at me from underwater. I can’t understand anything he’s saying.

I fling up my hands in frustration. “I can’t understand you!” And then I wince as the movement tugs at my back, which stings and burns. Grimacing, I reach around my shoulder and gingerly touch the slash across my upper back. Celeste cut me. My T-shirt is wet and my fingers come away tipped in blood. “Damn Celeste! Damn whatever is wrong with her and damn whatever is wrong with that school!”

My Air Elemental is by my side in a breath. He reaches to lift up the back of my tee to expose the cut, but I sidestep. “Um, no. I’ll be okay.” Like I want him to lift my shirt up? I’m basically wearing my pj’s, which means I have on no bra and very little dignity. “When you take me back to campus I’ll grab some antibiotic cream or whatever, which is another reason we need to go and—”

He raises a long-fingered hand that looks too skeletal for comfort and points at himself. “Aquarius moon.”

I sigh and nod. “Yeah, you’re an Air Elemental attached to Aquarius Hall because Aquarius is an air sign. I get it but—”

With an abrupt motion he cuts me off again. “Aquarius moon!” His long finger taps his chest as he enunciates carefully, meeting my eyes, clearly trying to tell me something.

I almost throw my hands up again in frustration, but the pain in my back stops me, so I settle for sighing and shaking my head. “I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.” My shoulders slump and I have a strong urge to plop down on the moss, put my face in my hands, and snot cry. I stare down at my feet and mutter, “I wish there was some way I could understand you, could hear you better.”

His dark robes swirl into my vision and I look up to see that he’s standing directly in front of me, so close that I can feel the warmth of his body. His amber eyes capture mine. He speaks one word that I hear as if he’s shouting it against a gale-force wind.

“Trust?”

No, it’s not just a word. It’s a question. I don’t hesitate with my answer. He’s saved my life more than once. He’s all I have. I nod. “Yes. I trust you.”

His gaze doesn’t leave mine as he cradles my face in his hands. They’re warm and strong and I’m surprised at his gentleness as he cups my cheeks. He tilts my face up and bends. I should want to bolt. I definitely don’t want to kiss him. Even now, even after seeing Lee holding Celeste, believing Celeste, I don’t want to kiss anyone who is not Lee, but the Elemental’s gaze has me trapped. No, not trapped, mesmerized.

When his lips are less than an inch from mine I feel him draw a deep breath. I open my mouth to ask What is going on? and he blows that breath between my lips. The warmth of it fills me. He smells like the night and the forest, piney and rich. It makes my head hum, reminding me of the time Lee and I walked through a field of beehives and I could hear the steady, engine-idling sound happy bees make. My body tingles, little pinpricks like when I sit on my foot so long that it falls asleep. And I’m warm—from the inside out.

Then all of that is replaced by a deep voice sounding clearly in my head.

Hear me now, Little Bird?

I gasp and for a moment I can’t speak. No one has called me Little Bird since Dad died five years ago in the same terrible accident that took Mom from me and irrevocably changed my life.

I clear the grief from my throat and answer, “Y-yes! I hear you in my head! How?”

He releases my face. I shared wind with you. Without his touch, my cheeks are cold.

“Shared wind with me? I don’t understand.”

Wind. Is there. He makes a wide gesture, as if to collect the soft breeze that blows around us. Then he points to his chest. Is here. He points to my chest. Now also there.

I feel a little dizzy and disoriented, which makes sense because, well, I can hear an ancient Elemental inside my head. “Thank you?” I realize the words come out as a question, but I’m being honest. I’m not sure what he’s done to me. Wind is inside me? What does that mean?

The Elemental makes a sound like a breeze rustling through a fall vineyard and I realize he’s laughing.

I smile in response, though it feels odd to be smiling when my world has frayed. I clear my throat again and ask, “What’s your name?”

Call me Viento. He pauses and then adds, I help your back. I am Aquarius moon. Let me? He speaks slowly, as if it’s a struggle for him to find the right words, which come out rough and choppy beneath the weight of his thick accent. Not Spanish, but something ancient.

I nod.

Gently, he takes my shoulders in his hands and turns me so my back is to him. Then he hesitates. Inside my head his deep voice softens. I must uncover your wound.

I nod again and quickly, before he can lift my shirt, I reach back and drag up the back of the tee, surprised by how blood soaked it is. Some of it is stuck to the wound and I hiss painfully as it pulls free. I feel the warmth of new blood drizzle down my back. It’s really tender and hot and I shiver as the cool breeze touches my torn skin. I’m definitely glad I can’t see it.

Wounded Little Bird…

His words brush against my mind and then the cool night air isn’t gentle or cool anymore. I suck in a breath as a line of hot wind blows over the long knife wound. It tingles, a lot like how I felt when Viento blew into my mouth only more concentrated, more uncomfortable. Just when I can’t take any more the forceful wind stops.

Is well now.

Tentatively my fingers search my back. Just moments before there had been a long laceration, but now there is only a slender line of newly healed skin, sensitive, but not painful. I pull the blood-damp tee down and turn. “Thank you.” I roll my shoulders. “It feels a lot better.”

Viento nods his head once.

“You have to take me back now,” I say.

He turns away from me. Too dangerous.

“I know! But I have to get that book. I’ve read enough of it to know about how all this started. About how a Spanish ship wrecked hundreds of years ago and how the island’s Elementals saved some of the passengers, making a deal with three of the women.”

Deal broken!

I wince as his voice blasts inside my head. “Uh, yeah. That’s my whole point. I’m going to un-break that deal.”

He turns to me and I wish I could see him clearer. His eyes seem guarded, almost angry, more like they were on the first night I arrived at the Academia de la Luna when he sniffed me and hissed, Elegida!, or chosen , at me. And suddenly I want to smack myself on the forehead. Viento, my Air Elemental, has called me chosen from day one. He’s been helping me and giving me clues since then. Is he better than a magick book?

I take a step toward him. “Viento, you were there when that deal was made, and broken, all those years ago?”

Yes. The voice inside my head is flat.

I bounce up and down on my toes. “Then I don’t need to go back for the book! You saw what happened. You can tell me what I have to do to complete the ritual and fix what Celeste, or rather Selene, messed up.” I don’t wait for him to respond but barrel on. “From what I read I know that there were three women chosen to represent humanity, a young girl, a mother, and an older woman. So, a maiden.” I grin and point my thumb at my chest. “Which is me. And then Celeste, who is definitely old, but who looks like someone’s mom. That’s two. We’re missing the old woman. Um, the book called her Elder.” I stop pacing and look up at him. “Seems logical that I need to find an elder to represent her, somehow grab Celeste, and then complete the ritual. Right?”

He stares at me so long that I think he’s not going to answer. And then the words, Not any elder. Must find—

Pain knifes through my mind. Viento and I fall to our knees. He is bent at the waist, his cowl touching the forest floor. I hold my head between my hands, like I can keep it from exploding. It’s a white-hot pain that fills me, making speech impossible, making any thought at all impossible. Time passes, but I have no idea how long it lasts until gradually the agony dissipates. My hands fall from my head and I stagger to where Viento is still bent over the ground.

I touch his shoulder. “Are you okay?” Under my hand, he is frighteningly still. I don’t even think he’s breathing. I shake him. “Viento!”

He gulps a giant inhale and lifts his head from the ground, slowly straightening. He doesn’t stand but sits beside me. For a moment the pupils of his amber eyes glow red, and then he shakes his head and the color fades.

“What was that? What happened?” I ask.

I am bespelled, his words sound gravely inside my head. Cannot speak of it. She…

A thread of pain needles my right temple, like the beginnings of a nasty headache. At the same moment I feel it, Viento flinches. Quickly, I shake my head. “Don’t say it. I get it.” And I do. As his gaze meets mine I finally understand. “It’s Celeste. She’s put some kind of gag spell on you so you can’t help any of the maidens figure this thing out.” He starts to nod and flinches again as another stab of pain flashes through us. “Okay, okay, we need to change the subject.”

He nods wearily and we just sit together for a little while, breathing as the wind plays around us. My gaze goes up to the moon. She’s full and fat and slipping down the sky toward a distant light that reflects up into the night.

The school. The Academia de la Luna. The place that should have begun an entirely new future for me—for Lee and me. But that didn’t happen. Instead, it broke both of my best friends—shattering the life of one and my future with the other.

But I’m not going to let it shatter me. I’m not going to let Celeste and Rottingham win. Sam’s death won’t be for nothing. My losing Lee won’t be for nothing. And maybe, maybe if I figure this out, if I complete the ritual, it’ll expose the rot that is at the heart of this school and Lee will see the truth, will see that everything I’ve done is for us, for all of us. I stand. “We have to get back. Now. If I’m going to make this right I need that book.”

Reluctantly, Viento stands and holds out his arm to me. Come, Little Bird.

I step within his embrace. With a whoosh we lift into the sky, riding a current of air that carries us toward the distant lights.