DEVEN
Opal’s wing flyer banks east, out of range from the deafening winds.
Thank the gods. Kali got away.
The driving rains drench me. Anjali hovers before us, the wind tunnel of hailstones whipping around her. While Rohan runs for the second wing flyer, Brac sends a heatwave at her from behind his boulder. The rainy gales extinguish his fire to smoke. Anjali’s relentless wind pushes aside my brother’s safe cover. He sprints to Mother and me and ducks beside us. Anjali pummels our boulder with gust after gust. I crouch over Mother, our heads bowed, while the hail thrashes against our backs. I have been trained for battle, but my sword is useless here. I have no way of defending my family against these higher powers.
Something darkens my side vision—Rohan is airborne in his wing flyer. Anjali harnesses her ripping winds and thrusts them full force at him. He twirls, trapped inside the vortex.
“Help him,” I command Brac.
He throws several fire blasts in a row at Anjali, each weaker than the last. Nothing slows her. Brac’s hands are barely glowing.
“Deven, you aren’t going to like this,” he says and then grasps my face. A sudden hold comes over me, and the light inside me jerks. He pulls at my soul-fire, drawing it out like a loose thread. He lets me go, and the strength in my bones goes too. I drop to my side in the mud.
“What did you do?” Mother demands.
“I borrowed his soul-fire.” Brac’s hands glow bright again. The gods created all mankind with fire in their soul—and my brother has stolen mine.
He leans around the boulder and tosses a ribbon of flame into the air. I watch his fire—power he parched from me—careen toward Anjali. She redirects the stream of heat away with a gust and directs it at Rohan. The wing flyer catches on fire and free-falls. The smoking wing tip spirals near the overhang, reeling toward the valley below. Rohan leaps from his flyer at the ledge and rolls behind a rock. The wing flyer disappears and crashes below with a bang.
Anjali chases Rohan with another flurry. He lies on the ground and shields his head with his arms. I spring up to go to his aid, but rocks and dust bombard him and barrel onward to us, forcing me to hunch down again. Without warning, the howling winds and rain die to a startling halt.
Yatin peers over the top of his and Natesa’s boulder. “She’s leaving.”
I push myself up onto shaky legs. Anjali has veered her wind tunnel east. My heart pitches.
“She’s following Kali.” I stumble to the edge of the cliff. Rohan runs to my side. I pick up a rock the size of a melon. “Can you give this a boost?”
“Throw it,” he replies.
Anjali pulls farther away. I take aim and hurl the stone. Rohan flings his winds behind the rock, and it arcs across the sky. I lose sight of our weapon in the dark, and then Anjali’s twisting winds fail, and she plunges to the valley. A plume of dust mushrooms when she lands. Sudden quiet rushes in around us.
Rohan tilts his ear to the sky. “She’s breathing.”
“You can hear that?” Natesa asks doubtfully.
“I can hear her and another,” Rohan replies. “She had an accomplice driving the storm, an Aquifier. Their heartbeats sound like crickets in the night. The Aquifier is riding to her on a horse.”