Water's Wrath (Air Awakens Series Book 4) (8 page)

“She’s awake,” a man called.

Vhalla stopped moving to spare her energy, convincing her eyes to focus. She was rewarded with marginal success as a hazy blob transformed into a Western man. The swaying of the animal she’d been tied to, however, reduced him once more to a sickening blur.

Her throat was dry. Her lips were cracked. Her wrists were heavy. She felt ropes around her waist and shoulders, tying her upright to a saddle. Vhalla tried to flex her fingers, the sunburn agonizing. Easterners had a tendency to tan before burning, so if she was reddened, she must’ve been exposed to the harsh Western sun for some time.

A horse rode up beside her, and Vhalla felt tugs on the ropes that bound her. She struggled to piece together what was happening, her circumstances coming back in a hazy blur. Another Western man came into focus beside her as panic slowly bubbled up within her.

He noticed her attention and patted her head. “Good morning, oh great lady.”

Vhalla went to swat away his hand only to find her wrists tethered together. She looked down and felt sick all over again. But it wasn’t the same nausea as before. It was a cold and crawling dread that felt like glass against her bones, which made her skin prickle and her shoulders quake.

Locked firmly around her wrists was a familiar pair of shackles. Shimmering unnaturally around their circumference were crystals. They pulsed with magic-blocking power. She remembered them being snapped over her wrists by Schnurr.

“For our safety.” The man tapped on her shackles. “We can’t have—”

Vhalla shrieked in anger and swung her whole body. She brought the irons—
hard
—into the side of the man’s face. The ropes binding her bit into her skin and drew blood at the motion, but Vhalla ignored it. Raw instinct took over, and she swung again with murderous intent before the man could completely recover—his nose shattered.

“Get it under control!” a voice demanded.

Another horse rode up beside her. Vhalla snarled like an animal, barring her teeth dangerously, ready to fight for her life. This man, well-armored and clearly well-trained, didn’t hesitate to go right for his sword.

“I’ve seen you fight.” She stilled as he held his sword at her throat. “You may be made of wind, but steel will cut you.”

Vhalla panted, straining against the ropes. She clenched and unclenched her fists over and over, trying to summon magic that wouldn’t come. The shackles seemed to glow brighter, fighting against her magical struggle.

“We won’t kill you,
yet
, but we can make you hurt a lot more than you currently do.” He waited until she eased away, panting in the saddle. “Good girl.”

“Where are we headed?” she demanded.

The man glanced forward, and Vhalla followed his stare. At the head of the small caravan was a bushy-mustached man.
Major Schnurr
.

“You may tell her,” Schnurr called. “It will change little now.”

“We are going to use you as the tool you were born to be.”

Vhalla attempted a bold laugh to sell her lie. She’d known what they sought for weeks, more or less. “You all are larger fools than I thought. I can’t manage crystals any better than any other sorcerer.”

The Knight actually seemed doubtful for a moment.

“Don’t listen to her.” The man immediately in front of her shook his head. “All Windwalkers are the same; not one was ever found who couldn’t manage the crystals.”

“I can’t,” Vhalla insisted. “I can’t, and you are all going to face Imperial judgment for this as I am a Lady of the Court. High crimes for no returns!”

The two men exchanged a look.

“Ignore the Wind Demon’s lies,” Major Schnurr scolded. “She’d say anything to save her skin, and the Empire hunts her presently for justice, not us. We’d be heroes for turning her in.”

“But, sir—”

“If she can’t manage crystals, her skin would’ve already begun to turn to leather and her eyes red with taint from carrying the axe as long as she has.” The major patted his saddlebag and returned his attention forward, talking with another man. There were six Knights in all. Two in the front, the two talking to Vhalla, and two behind, one of whom was nursing his wounded face.

“Are you mad?” she screamed. The desert was vast and empty. She saw nothing but sand for miles. She didn’t even know how they were making headway. Roads were nowhere to be seen. But if someone was close by, she’d cry loud enough that they would certainly hear. “The Crystal Caverns have only ever spelled disaster!”

“Our forefathers were close to unlocking their secrets,” the man beside her proclaimed arrogantly.

“They would have unleashed a new reign with the Sword of Jadar, were it not for the Ci’Dan bitch,” the other snarled.

Ci’Dan bitch?

“This is insanity. What do you hope to accomplish?” Vhalla cried to the major. “The last time people went to the caverns they unleashed the taint that started a war!”

“Do not lump us in with Southern fools.” Major Schnurr had finally decided she was worth his attention. “We have centuries of studying your kind.” He chuckled. “A war is just what we want to start, and the Emperor was so ready to be rid of you he delivered you right into our hands.”

The ropes dug into Vhalla’s shoulders as she strained against them.

“Solaris is getting old, losing his edge. Who would have thought he would get so worked up over the son of the Ci’Dan whore finally finding something to squeeze beneath the sheets,” one of the men near her sneered.

“The time to strike is near,” another Knight agreed.

Vhalla stared at nothing, trying to process an escape, a solution,
something
. She’d tried to stop the Knights and only gave them what they wanted. She’d led Jax to his death in the process. The horse swayed and it caused the ropes to dig further into her slumped shoulders. They rode the entire day and into the first part of the night before stopping. Vhalla spent it in silence, keeping company with the shade of her friend.

As the other men dismounted, Vhalla was left strapped in place. They sparked a campfire—at least one of them was a Firebearer—and broke out rations, laughing and joking as though she wasn’t there, as though they weren’t on a fool’s mission.

Eventually, Major Schnurr stood and strolled over to her. He wet a cloth and held it up for her to suck upon. Vhalla scowled at the demeaning suggestion.

“It’s this or we tie you down and pour water over your mouth and nose until you have no choice but to drink.” His tone implied he didn’t much care either way.

She scowled. “That sounds like a waste out here in the desert.”

“We’ll reach the Southern forest by tomorrow night, the day after, maybe. We have supplies and Waterrunners.” The major shrugged. “We can’t have you dying on us.”

Vhalla stared at the dirty cloth another moment. Her throat practically screamed for the moisture that darkened it. But the last thing she wanted to do was give the Knights the satisfaction of lowering her further. The major waited just long enough, as if he could sense her breaking point nearing. Vhalla took the cloth from him, awkwardly with her shackles, and tried not to seem desperate as she sucked the sour liquid from it.

“You have been a hard one to catch, surprisingly so for a once-library girl.” The major placed his hands on his hips as though appraising a prize buck that he had shot down. “Our comrades in the Senate tried to snag you right off, but the Emperor was too fascinated by your power.”

Vhalla hadn’t even known who the Knights of Jadar were at the time. It had gone overlooked for months. But she suddenly remembered the senator who had demanded she be given to the Knights because they would “
know what to do with her
” on the day of her trial.

“Then we thought the march would be the moment for us to ensnare you; after all, you came right through the Crossroads. We worked carefully with the North after the Night of Fire and Wind to hide our movements. It was easier to let them create chaos, to let them capture you and throw Solaris and Ci’Dan off our trail. But they didn’t seem to quite grasp the idea of needing you alive.” Vhalla shifted the rag in her mouth, letting Schnurr ramble on his self-serving tale. “The two at the Crossroads quite missed the mark.”

Vhalla stilled. It was the second time the major had mentioned the Northerners who had attacked her the last time she was at the Crossroads. The night Larel Neiress had died was burned upon Vhalla’s heart.

“We couldn’t make a move ourselves, not then. The Knights haven’t survived centuries by being reckless. But the Crossroads served us well enough when it became clear that we needed to remove the son of the Ci’Dan slut to get to you.” He sighed dramatically. “And the North couldn’t do that right either, even when we fed misinformation to lead the army right into their attack at the Pass.”

Larel, then Aldrik in the Pass.

“We were at a loss when you arrived in the North. I never even contemplated the Emperor would be the one to push you away after he had you in his hands. Then again, I’ve never seen the whore’s son so taken with anyone. Power, or the loss of it, makes men quite illogical.”

“You’re one to talk.” Vhalla spit out the rag, letting it fall to the sand below the mount. “You were going to kill me for power, for the Emperor’s favor.”

“I would’ve made quite the show of seeming to do so.” The major stroked his mustache with a wicked smile. “It’s a special skill to carve a human carefully enough that nothing vital is damaged beyond repair while still having them appear to be quite deceased. It would’ve been my honor to see your corpse carried away only to have my men put you back together.”

“You’re disgusting,” Vhalla muttered caustically.

“You don’t get to say that.” The man’s eyes gleamed with dark pride. “You’re less than human. You’re nothing more than a tool. And it’s been a frustrating century and a half trying to hunt you down in the East.”

“Hunt
me
down?”

“The East has become quite good at hiding creatures like you; they don’t even speak of magic any longer. It’s been nearly twenty-six years since we got our hands on the last one. But we won’t mess up this time.” The major ran his hand up her thigh. “Not with you.”

Vhalla shivered as he left her, despite the residual heat of the desert still hanging in the air. She’d been hunting for connections, to see the bigger picture between seemingly unrelated events.
But was she ready to see what was bubbling to the forefront of her mind as truth?

Why was everyone so ready to believe that no Windwalkers were being born when it made so much more sense that the East had simply perfected the art of hiding them? The laws following the Burning Times, the outlawing of all magic, the urge to forget, it was all to hide people like her.

She stilled, and the pain of her bindings was ignored for the briefest of moments. Vhalla suddenly had a thousand questions she wanted to ask her own father. How determined he was to go fight in the War of the Crystal Caverns, how outspoken he had been about sorcerers tampering with the crystals.

Vhalla remembered her mother instilling a fear of magic in Vhalla from a young age. A distaste for it that ran so deep Vhalla had never questioned or thought twice about it. She remembered the first time she’d fallen off the roof after climbing up fearlessly,
unharmed
. The argument of her parents she had overheard. She had never thought of it before, it seemed so normal. Her parents had been afraid for her wellbeing. They believed in fearing magic like the rest of the East; they’d never think their daughter was a sorcerer.

The shackles around her wrists suddenly felt heavy, and Vhalla blinked at them bleary eyed. What if it hadn’t been as normal as she thought?
What if she had been hidden?

The thought echoed in her mind through the long ride the next day, sobering her to a withdrawn silence. The Knights made jokes about clipping the Windwalkers wings and how easy she’d been to break. Schnurr made it a ritual to impart knowledge of the twisted practices of the Knights of Jadar. He told her of the experiments conducted on Windwalkers with such detail that it soured her stomach and stilled its growling.

They never untied her from the saddle, never removed her cuffs. Someone could cut off her feet and Vhalla doubted she’d be able to tell. Her lower body had gone numb from the ropes long ago.

The Knights had the arrogance to think they were breaking her, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Every waking hour, she plotted. She wiggled, tugged, and worked at her ropes. She watched as Schnurr checked his saddlebag every morning and night, leaving Vhalla no need to guess where the axe and key to her shackles were hidden. If she could remove her shackles, she would have her wind and her Bond with Aldrik—she could make them suffer.

But how to get the key?

Vhalla settled on biding her time. The only plan she could think of was trying to launch an attack during one of his brags—if she could get her ropes loose enough. But she suspected he kept the key in the same saddlebag as the axe, and he never let it go far from his side.

The smell of the Southern forest nearly overwhelmed her with nostalgia when they’d crossed into it from the Western Waste. They made headway into the mountains without roads and pushed onward and upward until dusk began to settle. The nights were already cooling, and it made a stark contrast with the heat of the desert.

A year had passed, Vhalla realized with the changing seasons, since she had met Aldrik and everything began.
A year that felt like a lifetime.

“We’ll stay there tonight.” Major Schnurr pointed to a windmill fashioned of stone and wood.

It sat high on the edge of a small town. She suspected the cluster of homes to be the town of Mosant or one of its outskirts. If Vhalla and her captors had progressed as the crow flew from the Crossroads straight for the Crystal Caverns, it would put them right in Mosant’s path.

A generally noteworthy town, Vhalla stared at the houses down the mountainside from the windmill as they made their way toward it. If she screamed, would her voice carry far enough? Could she slip away in the night? Even if she could slip away, it didn’t solve the issue of the cuffs. Vhalla had a suspicion that a blacksmith couldn’t just break off magically enhanced shackles. If she drew attention to herself, the Knights would certainly overwhelm any villagers who came looking, forcing them to flee before more could follow.