“Ask her again,” Thanasis said, attention still on the horizon. He lowered himself to the ground as if that would make his massive form less intimidating to her.
He crossed his long legs and nudged Ettan, who still knelt awkwardly. It pushed him off balance, and he wobbled, tumbling clumsily to the ground.
A sound trilled out of the girl, high-pitched, and for a moment, her entire being changed. Her lips curved upward in a smile, revealing even, white teeth, and the green in her eye seemed to sparkle. Even the opaque white seemed to gleam with amusement.
But then her dark lashes lowered, and she dropped her gaze to the ground.
Ettan wished she would make the sound again.
“Where did you find the heartstones?” Branesh asked so quietly Ettan could barely hear him.
At the sound of his voice, she peeked up. Immediately, Branesh covered his chest with his hands. “The heartstones? Where did you find them?”
She frowned and then put her hands over her heart. “Heart?” she asked, followed by a garbled sound that, if Ettan tried hard enough, sounded like stone.
Branesh rocked back.
“I understood her,” Thanasis whispered.
“Me, too,” Ettan answered. “How?”
“Heart,” she said again, and touched her chest, then pointed to Branesh.
“Yes,” Branesh answered. “Yes. Heartstones. Where did you find them?”
She shook her head, eyebrows drawing together. Clearly, she did not understand any more of what Branesh asked.
“You said her heartstone pulsed?” Ettan said, realization dawning. “You could feel it.”
“Yes.” Branesh put his hand on his chest and patted it rhythmically. “Like this.”
Ettan released a breath that carried with it all of his worry. “She is not a Creator.” He smiled. Until he realized it was impossible, a part of him had watched her for any indication she could be the species that enslaved them. “Their anatomy was different—much of it was a melding of organic and inorganic material. And none of it pulsed. I wish she would let me feel.” He uttered the last part forlornly. What an amazing creature this female was, and she wouldn’t let him close.
“Touch?” Her voice lifted on the final sound of the word. A question. “Heart?”
“I think she is asking if you want to touch her heart,” Branesh said in disbelief.
“Would it hurt her?” Thanasis asked, and Ettan glared at him.
“I am a healer, Thanasis. Never.” Immediately, he regretted his words, because the look on his brother’s face reminded him of the utter devastation Thanasis had wrought as executioner. “I’m sorry,” he said.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl cock her head and study them. She reached out a hand, and touched Thanasis’s arm.
The Ventos froze. The sandy brown he’d chosen to wear flashed across his skin before deepening to the obsidian he wore as executioner.
“Thanasis,” Ettan hissed.
The girl pulled back her hands and set them in her lap. “Touch heart.” She bobbed her head and pinned Ettan with a stare. She said something else, but he didn't understand her. He thought it might have been, “now” or “do it.” She was giving him permission, but he needed to get it done.
Ettan let his healing flow from his heartstone and across his skin. It traveled down his arms and pooled in his palm. Carefully, he stretched toward the girl, giving her time to change her mind.
She didn’t. Her green eye stayed locked on him.
The first touch of her skin against his jolted him. When he'd healed her earlier, his powers had left his body and entered her. He hadn’t needed to make contact.
The material of her clothing was rough against the back of his hand, contrasting with the softness of her skin. And beneath it, a steady rhythmic beating.
Ettan shut his eyes, allowing his powers to travel through her body. It was amazing and so different from a Ventos. All of the structures inside her body performed in concert. It left him wonderstruck.
He traveled along the pathways he found, following electrical currents and the smallest particles of life-giving air.
Golden bands wrapped around the places he’d healed earlier. But the deeper he went, the more damage he found. Tissues had been sewn together, but the edges were ragged and gaped. It was as if the healing was incomplete.
The sheer number of old and partially healed wounds left him ill. Where had she acquired them? What had happened to her?
A surge of power, like a golden storm, zipped by his awareness, and he followed it along its path until it disappeared in a puff of smoke.
He was near her eyes. This must be the damaged site. Ettan allowed his consciousness to float closer to examine the injury.
That electric current, the one that shot along the path inside her body, had nowhere to go. The trail along which the current traveled had been hacked into pieces.
He could see where someone tried to heal it. There were stitches along the structure, as if someone had tied the sheared ends together. And then stuck it together with something.
Ettan touched his power to the black substance. It clung to him, oozing and bubbling.
What was this?
He concentrated on the ends. Unlike before, when he’d healed those wounds that were recent, he focused his healing on this, on mending the tears and smoothing out the pieces that had been hacked away.
But whatever this black substance was, it kept his healing from getting to the site. Instead, the golden healing color skimmed right off the surface and dissipated. Much like he’d seen the impulse of energy earlier, his healing glanced off her body into nothing.
Ettan focused. He had been a healer for a long time. His entire life was spent learning about energy and air, and he’d taken all of that knowledge and used it to make him the premier healer in Zephyr.
A thought suddenly struck him, unwelcome and jarring. He remembered drifting after being forced to heal the Creators. His renown had been as useless then as it was now.
With a painful jerk, he pulled himself away from the girl.
“I can’t fix what’s wrong,” he answered. “Someone has hurt her. And it’s beyond my skill.”
Thanasis widened his eyes, and Branesh rocked back. “How is that possible?” Branesh asked. “You healed the Creators, and they were more machine than organism.”
“It—” How could he describe what he’d seen? Ettan held his hand out, fingers together. He moved his hand over the currents of air all Ventos could feel. “Her body is like an air current. Except, instead of one, it has many, many currents, and all of them perform a function. One is charged with energy, moving faster than I’ve ever seen. The others carry substances I need more time to study but are critical to her staying alive. When I heal, I focus my healing on those spots that are damaged so everything moves smoothly. But there’s something stopping me. It is as if the current stops, and my energy ricochets off it into nothing.”
As he spoke, he felt the air stir with the girl’s rapid breathing. It tickled the back of his neck. When he glanced at her, she met his gaze intently as if she was trying to understand what it was he was saying.
How much easier this would be if he could ask her the questions outright.
“Her heartstone?” Branesh reminded him.
Her eyes widened, her gaze going immediately to Ettan.
“She has no heartstone. Her body is not like ours. It is made up of systems and currents unlike anything I’ve seen. Unlike anything else on Sonhadra, and certainly not like our Creators’ metal and tissue.”
“Amazing,” Branesh whispered. Thanasis made a sound that could have meant anything. The air around them changed, from warm to frigid, a sign their brother approached.
The girl ducked her head, throwing her hands over it just as Aaddhar passed above her. He swept past her before winding back to her and solidifying.
“Not a Creator?” Aaddhar asked. “Then how do you describe what I’ve found?”
Ettan didn’t have a chance to ask what it was Aaddhar found before his brother strode toward the girl. “Who are you?” he yelled. “Where did you come from?”
The girl lifted her head, her eyes narrowing. She slammed her hands next to her, the mist on the ground rising into clouds and then settling back. Words tumbled from her lips, none of which Ettan could understand.
But he didn’t need to understand her to know she was angry. Her cheeks burned. He could feel the change in the air around her, heating along with every sound she made.
She stepped toward his brother, and to Ettan’s amazement, his brother, the lead guard of Zephyr, backed up a step.
And the girl wasn’t finished. Her cheeks bloomed a deep red.
“Is she going to hurt him?” Thanasis asked.
“I found no sign she was capable of hurting us,” Ettan answered. “With strength or power, that is. I’m not sure what she is saying, but I believe her words would blister us.”
Thanasis chuckled, and the girl shut her mouth with an audible click. She faced Thanasis, studying him. In fact, all of them looked at their brother in disbelief.
It had been too long since his brother had been anything but serious.
It was then Ettan noticed how rapidly the girl breathed. Her shoulders lifted and lowered, and she sucked in air through her mouth and nose.
She placed her hands on her knees and bent at the waist.
Ettan knelt, staring up into her face. It had gone from flushed to pale, her spots stood out starkly against her skin.
“Breathe.” She panted. “Can’t.”
Ettan understood that. For some reason, she’d been able to breathe inside the temple, and until her tirade a moment ago, she hadn’t seemed to have any difficulty pulling in air.
He tried to remember the pathways inside her body and how he followed the smallest particles of air into her tissues. Her body had done something with it. Carried it and then changed it. At the time, he’d been so interested in her whole system, he hadn’t paid attention to its efficiency.
He should have.
“She can’t breathe,” Ettan said. For a Ventos, it was the worst possible thing one of them could suffer. Air was life. It sustained them and made them who they were.
“How do we fix it?” Thanasis asked.
Anything Ettan would have said was cut off when the girl collapsed. Around the green of her eye, small spots of red appeared.
“Do something!” Branesh demanded. Like she had with him, he knelt by her and put his hand on her chest. But the girl was past the point of understanding.
Ettan searched for the answer. What could he do? This was a city of air, and the girl was suffocating.
Then it struck him.
Zephyr was made of strata. Creators had lived here, on the uppermost strata, high in the atmosphere of Sonhadra after they’d destroyed the rest of Zephyr and made it uninhabitable for other creatures.
But there had been creatures besides Ventos in Zephyr, and all of them had lived on the lower strata. For them, they needed the air on those lower levels to survive.
Perhaps that was the problem here.
Ettan gathered her in his arms. “We need to go lower,” he said to his brothers and, in a flash, turned purely Ventos.
Chapter Five
Aveline
It would be really great if these guys could stop turning into ghosts and spiriting her around this place.
The air rushed past her, hot and damp, as they flew faster than Aveline had experienced since the last guy had crashed her through the wall of the building she’d knocked down.
She was caught in a whirlwind. It spun around her, lifting her feet off the ground as it dragged her. If she’d had breath to speak, she would have asked what he was doing. Even then, how would he hear her?
He didn’t have ears because he was a ghost.
A horrifying thought occurred to her. Was she dead? Was this heaven?
There were plenty of clouds. And these handsome men who carried her from puff to puff could very well be described as angelic.
But she was suffocating. How could she be dead if she still hurt? And if she was dead, so what? What was the alternative? Life on the Concord? The only reason she’d been kept alive was for Dr. Bates’s experiments. If it hadn’t been for Marisol, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to survive the IPS.
Aveline’s ears popped, and her lungs opened up. She took in a breath and another. The air was different here. Not so damp or heavy. It filled her up, giving her the relief she needed.
She took another one, because she could, and it worked the same.
Her ears popped again, and suddenly, they’d stopped flying. Her feet touched the ground, and she wobbled. The surface he’d placed her on was different than the one he’d taken her from.
This felt familiar.
Aveline glanced at her feet, and gasped. “Grass!” she cried and knelt. She ran her fingers through the green blades. It was grass!
The other guys appeared, solidifying into the forms that were becoming more familiar.
“Thank you,” Aveline said to the man who set her down. He obviously had figured out what was wrong, why she wasn’t able to breathe, and brought her here.
The man didn’t say anything but continued to stare at her with fathomless eyes. But that wasn’t what really struck her. It was his color.
It was all of their colors.
Their forms were fluid. Even now, shaped like men, one moment their feet would touch the grass and the next they’d float above the ground. And all the time, the shades melded and changed.
The one who’d brought her here, his colors were blinding. They were all shades of gold and yellow, and when he’d put his hands on her, he’d shined so brightly her eyes hurt.
Or eye.
He knelt next to her and touched the ground. “Grass,” he repeated, and his face split into a grin. It was strange. When solid, he appeared almost human. He dug his fingers into the earth, and the tendons on the back of his hand flexed with the movement, so he must have bones.
Maybe they just disintegrated and reformed?
His teeth were white, but his lips were gold. She stared at him, then dropped her gaze to the ground, aware of the way she had been studying him.
But he didn’t seem to mind. The smile remained on his face, and he sat, cross-legged, as if he was ready to settle in and wait until she was finished. He was a visual delight, dark hair and eyes contrasting with multi-hued skin.
How interesting that their skin could take on so many shades, but their hair remained the same color and length. And their clothes! The men solidified, and like magic, they had on the same clothes as before they’d turned into wind.
He moved his hand closer to hers where it remained in the grass. This guy definitely liked to hover. Earlier, he’d placed his hands over her heart. At least he’d asked permission. And when he did touch her, she felt good. Like he was doing something inside her that warmed her.
Unlike the looming, broody one. Even now, blues and blacks raced across his skin as he glared at her. He was bigger than the one seated next to her. Broad shouldered and solid. When he transitioned from ghost to form, his feet remained planted on the ground.
Unmovable.
But he’d moved when she’d yelled at him. He’d retreated.
Aveline smiled at the memory, and the man across from her cocked his head in confusion, almost as if he was asking what the joke was. Sparks of gold flashed in his dark eyes, and without thinking, she leaned forward to see better.
Aveline was so taken with the fireworks in his eyes, she didn’t realize his gaze was fixed on her face, but he was no longer smiling. Instead, he stared at her eye.
Immediately she sat back, slapping her hand over it. Why was this affecting her now? How much time had passed since she’d landed here, and it only now occurred to her to be embarrassed?
The man’s golden color disappeared; the light extinguished like a switch had been flipped. His s
kin darkened, and the fire in his eyes went out.
Now he looked like the one who yelled. Black, blue, green chased away the gold. He reached toward her, and she jerked back.
Hurt flashed across his face, and his lips firmed into a line.
Guilt rose inside her. His face reminded her of the looks Marisol used to give her when she would refuse to steal something she really wanted. Even though Aveline had refused so rarely. She would have done anything for their survival, but there were times when Marisol wanted clothes, or shoes, and they hadn’t needed those things.
A horrible image of her sister, open mouth gasping for breath as she suffocated in the blackness of space, flashed through her mind. It made Aveline wish she’d gotten Marisol what she’d wanted. What would it really have hurt to get her a pair of shoes she wanted, especially if they’d have ended up on the Concord anyway.
Aveline pulled herself out of her head to focus on the man whose hand touched hers. She let him tug until her hand was back in her lap.
“Who are you?” she asked, mesmerized by the way the color began to clear until he was gold and yellow again.
Narrowing his eyes, he glanced toward one of the other men, not Grumpy—he was too busy grumping at her—but the tall one.
The giant one. He’d scared the shit out of her earlier when he’d shrouded himself in a black so dark it seemed to reflect everything around them. He wore his color like a suit of armor.
When the giant spoke, his voice was low and deep. It seemed to vibrate the air around her, and she could almost see the waves it made.
Of the men, the giant’s appearance changed the most. When he turned into a ghost, he was a thundercloud—silver, and so thick it was impossible to see through. Without his black armor, his skin took on the milky shade of a storm.
His hair was short, shorn close to his head, and reminded Aveline of the uniformity of the hard-eyed justices on Earth.
But this man was not like those Earth justices. For all his hard angles, square-jaw and cheekbones cut sharply beneath light eyes, there was compassion in his gaze.
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