Watching someone hurt her is like drowning in boiling oil. I wake up screaming and soaked in sweat and it takes forever to convince myself it wasn’t real. Especially since I can’t hold her or see her to know she’s really okay. The pull of our bond tells me she’s alive, but it can’t tell me if she’s safe. For that I have to feel her trace. And that’s not easy to do, considering my uptight new guardian, Feng—I call him Fang to annoy him—thinks the only way to protect me is to never let me out of his sight.

He’s seriously insane—and I’d probably be going insane too if it weren’t for Gus.

I glance at the clock, grinning when I see it’s 3:32.

Gus is supposed to take over Fang’s stand outside vane’s window like a stalker shift every night at three thirty, but I swear he shows up late just to drive Fang crazy.

Tonight he waits until 3:37.

Fang screams at him so loud it scares Gavin—Audra’s stupid pet hawk—out of his tree. But when I glance out my window, Gus is totally unfazed. He winks at me as Fang paces back and forth, waving his burly arms and shaking his head so hard his dark, scraggly braid keeps whipping him in the cheek. The tirade goes on at least five minutes before Fang switches to the nightly update.

I stop listening.

It’s always vague reports from other bases with weird names and weirder army terms, and the few times I’ve asked anyone to translate, it turned into yet another lecture on Why I Need To Teach Everyone Westerly. It’s just not worth the fight.

I switch to sit-ups, trying to keep my energy up, and I’ve done 314 before Fang finally flies away. Physically, I’m rocking at my training. It’s the memorizing a billion and a half wind commands that’s killing me. That, and covering for Audra—though hopefully she’ll be home soon and I won’t have to worry about that part anymore.

If she—

I stop the thought before I can finish it.

She is coming back—and when she does, I can think of all kinds of awesome ways to celebrate. In the meantime I settle for making sure she’s okay.

I stand and stretch, throw on the first T-shirt I find, and climb quietly out my window.

Well . . . I try to climb out quietly.

I can’t help yelping when I scrape my arm against the pyracantha, and spend the rest of my sprint across the yard cursing my parents for planting thornbushes outside my bedroom.

“What are you laughing at, Legolas?” I ask when I make it to Gus. He doesn’t get that I’m teasing him about his blond, braided hair, and I’ve never explained the joke. Probably because he somehow makes the girlie hair work. That, and his biceps are bigger than my head.

“Just wondering when you’re going to figure out how to jump over the plants, not into them.”

“Hey, I’d like to see you do better—on zero sleep,” I add when Gus raises an eyebrow.

Gus is, like, Captain Fitness, and he has a special Windwalker gift that lets him channel the power of the wind into his muscles. If he weren’t such a nice guy, I’d probably hate him. A lot of the other guardians seem to, which is probably why he got stuck covering the late shift watching me. Rumor has it I’m not the most popular assignment. Apparently I can be difficult.

“Maybe you should try wearing the Gale uniform,” Gus tells me, pulling at the long, stiff sleeves of his black guardian jacket. “It would save you a lot of scrapes.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I’m not wearing thick pants and a coat in the desert. Even in the middle of the night, this place feels like living inside a blow dryer.

Plus, I’m not a Gale.

I’ll train with them and let them follow me around. But this isn’t my life. This is just something I have to deal with.

“Off for another mystery flight?” he asks as I stretch out my hands to feel for nearby winds.

Gus never asks me where I’m going, and he’s never tried to stop me.

“Make sure you stay north and west,” he warns. “They’re running heavy guard patrols in the south. Feng told me the Borderland Base had a disturbance yesterday.”

I freeze.

“Disturbance” is the Gale’s term for “attack.”

“Everyone okay?”

“Three of them survived.”

Which means two guardians didn’t—unless Borderland is one of the bigger bases, where they keep a crew of seven.

“Don’t worry—there’s no sign of Stormers in the area. They’re picking off all the fringes. Trying to leave us stranded out here.”

Yeah, because that doesn’t make me worry.

My voice shakes as I call three nearby Easterlies to my side, but I feel a little better when I hear their familiar songs. The east wind always sings of change and hope.

“Still don’t trust me enough to use Westerly?” Gus asks. “You know I won’t understand it.”

I do know that.

And I trust Gus way more than I trust anyone else.

But I’m still not risking it.

My parents—and every other Westerly—gave up their lives to protect our secret language. And not just because they were brave enough to stand in the way of Raiden’s quest for ultimate power.

Violence goes against our very being.

I’ll never forget the agony that hit me when I ended the Stormer who’d been trying to kill Audra. Even though it was self-defense, it felt like my whole body shattered, and if Audra hadn’t been there to help me through, I’m not sure I would’ve pulled myself back together. I can’t risk letting the power of my heritage end up under the control of anyone who doesn’t understand the evil of killing. Anyone who isn’t as determined as I am to avoid it at any cost. Anyone who isn’t willing to make the kind of sacrifice that might be necessary to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.