My lungs expand and contract, each fitful gasp paired with a dull twinge.Run, Min.But there is nowhere to go. Forcing down a wad of bile, I look up at the deity. Through the shadowed interior of his cowl, I sense his gaze, a direct, piercing thing.
“What are you?” I choke out.
“I am Eurus, the East Wind,” he responds, a hum of ancient winds and eroded stone. “The storms are my palette. The wind is my brush. I command them both. And now,” he murmurs, “I command you.”
A silvery band ensnares my waist, pinning me in place. I open my mouth to scream, but it’s as if a thin sheet of air seals itself over teeth and tongue, cutting off any emerging sound. I struggle to no avail. Eventually, the pain of my reopened wounds becomes too great. I fall limp, trembling, as a breeze slips into my pocket.
“Take it, bird,” coaxes the East Wind. “Set me free.”
The sleeve of his cloak retracts. Lady Clarisse’s key ring dangles from a thin rope. His hand is wide, pale, fingers distinctly masculine, with surprisingly clean nails. “How d-did y-you—?”
“That employer of yours is overconfident. The shackles suppressed the majority of my power, but not all of it.” He sounds darkly pleased with himself. “But the enchantments on the shackles prevent me fromunlocking them myself. Only a mortal can do so.” He thrusts the key against my chest. “Before she returns.”
Even if I were to escape, the nearest estate is half a mile south. And anyway, what would I say? That an imprisoned god attempts to break free from the tower where he is kept? They would think me mad.
“And if I r-r-refuse?” I whisper.
His exhalation drifts across my face. It smells of sweet rain. “I don’t want to hurt you.” The tendril squeezes my torso tighter. My ribs groan in protest, and I bite back a cry from the added pressure on my wounds. “But I will, if I have to.”
Death by a thousand cuts, or death by a single blow? Lady Clarisse I can weather. The East Wind I know nothing of.
My hands tremble so severely it takes multiple attempts to insert the key into the lock at the prisoner’s wrists. The chains tumble to the stone with a violent crash. The manacles encasing his ankles follow. A wave of power detonates, driving forth a screaming, rain-drenched wind that claws at my hair and skin and clothes. When it dies, I’m left hollow with guilt. Everything her ladyship has worked for, gone with but one betrayal.
“G-go then,” I manage through chattering teeth. “I d-did wh-what you asked. Leave now.”
“Oh no, bird.” Eurus draws me closer, into the startling heat of his massive body. “You’re coming with me.”
His arms band around me. They are like pillars of stone, or wood, or something equally inflexible. My struggles revive themselves as he blasts open the door. Another gust shatters the window at the top of the landing. In my shock, the keys slip from my hands. Plastered to his chest, my ear shoved against the hard plate of his sternum, I go rigid in his arms.
For below, there awaits the sea. Look at how she churns. Her vicious temper, those dark, watery hands scratching at the rocky cliffs, waves frothed like saliva below. My tongue swells, blocking my airway, for the immortal has climbed through the shattered window onto the steeply slanted rooftop, its panes crusted in salt, slick from recent rain.
Now I begin to thrash. Now I writhe and hammer and beat at the deity who holds me captive. My stomach lurches as the prisoner strides to the very edge of the roof. The water. I can feel its sting in my throat, inside my nostrils. There is no ground, no solid earth, only the wide, swallowing sea below.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Please—”
He leaps.
5
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN WE PLUMMET, the frigid air cutting at my face, and the sea swelling like a growth in my vision, until it is all I know. A wave arcs high, lashing toward me. Seconds before we make impact, I squeeze my eyes shut.
Abruptly, the downward motion jerks to a halt, and my stomach drives upward into my throat from the unexpected change. My eyes snap open. Somehow, we begin to climb. I cling to my captor with clawed fingers, only vaguely aware of how he stiffens beneath my touch. Overhead, there is the sky, its stars dusted like pollen in the wind. My mind whirs, unable to process why we failed to hit the water, until two dark shapes framing the East Wind’s back draw my focus.
Wings.
Their breadth is vast, perhaps twice the length of his already impressive height. A thin gray membrane stretches over the long, curved bones. Inlaid across the top: ebon scales. Their texture appears similar to hammered copper or tin. They cast an iridescent shine in certain slants of light. Fearsome, to be certain.
I was not aware that gods possessed wings. The Mother of Earth certainly doesn’t. She wears a simple cotton dress, her dark hair piled high upon her head, hands coated in dirt. The Master of Sea is equally humble in a long shirt and breeches, his only means of flight the sailsof his ship, which he uses to shape the tides. This immortal, thisEast Wind, is so unlike them. Who is he? Where does he hail from?
A drop in altitude sends a weightless swoop through my belly. My fingers dig harder into his muscled shoulders, and I tuck my face against his neck to shield myself from the wine-dark sea below. We bank hard, catching an updraft of wind, which props us higher than I thought was possible. Over the East Wind’s shoulder, the green rooftops of St. Laurent fade into black velvet, each loudwhumpof beating wings propelling me farther from home.
Soon, Lady Clarisse will return. She will make herself a cup of beauty tea, steeped for four minutes exactly. Then she will climb the stairs to the northern tower and find the cell door agape, the prisoner gone.
And then? When she discovers that I, too, have vanished, will she connect the pieces and assume I unlocked the prisoner’s cell? The idea makes me ill. She would not believe me capable of such disobedience, would she?
Time spins out, but eventually, sunlight splashes the eastern horizon. Below, I spot a boulder shaped like a bird of prey—an eagle—erupting from the water. Then a rocky island comes into view, its edges worn smooth by seaside winds. But it is what surrounds the island that sends my stomach into a heaving, fear-stricken heap.
A gray, malevolent mass. A great storm circling the scrap of barren earth, its blackness broken every so often by lightning. The East Wind flies straight toward it, and I freeze, eyes squeezed shut as the first flecks of hail pelt my face.
