Powerful as he was, the storm was testing Alex’s limits. But still he continued, and Allyra knew he would give his life rather than give in. By now, he had tens of thousands of threads under his control, and slowly the rays of the sun broke through the churning sand, and the wail of the wind quieted.
And yet it wasn’t over—there were still angry threads violently clashing against the ones he held. If he stumbled now, those threads were powerful enough to restart the violence of the storm all over again.
Alex staggered and collapsed to his knees, the graceful lines of his face drawn with pain and exhaustion. Blood trickled from his nose as he fought to catch his breath.
Allyra fell to her knees before him, desperately wishing she could help him. But her Gift had no hold in this time, and all she could offer were a few words of encouragement.
“This is not where you fall, Alexander Patrick Cairns,” she said, each word delivered slowly and deliberately. “I know you can do this. I know you are stronger than this.”
If he heard her, he made no sign of it, his eyes closed, his breathing labored and painful.
“Get up,” Allyra bit out. “You are more than this storm. Get up!”
And then slowly, painfully, Alex struggled to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked at her, his gaze filled with agony. She needed to stay strong for him, so she fought against the tears that sprung, unbidden, to her eyes. It tortured her to see him in so much pain, to glimpse the fear in his eyes.
“Finish this,” she whispered. “Please.”
Thread by excruciating thread, he worked until the storm stilled and the wind became no more than a whisper. Only then did he release his hold. Only then did he collapse.
As Alex fell, the power of the memory dimmed. And Allyra barely heard the shouts and cheers of relief from the Atmospheric College. She released her hold over the memory and slipped away.
* * *
Abruptly, the memory shifted again, moving forward, and Allyra found herself back on the balcony.
Alex walked past her to the railing of the balcony, staring pensively at the massive night sky with its infinite stars blinking over the empty desert. He was silent for a long time, but the tension in his body was unmistakable. There was a frenetic energy coiled within him like a slow-lit fuse heading toward an inevitable end.
His long, elegant fingers were curled around the neck of a bottle, from which he would take a long swig every few minutes. It didn’t seem like he was gaining any enjoyment from the drink, appearing more like a man drinking to escape than one drinking for pleasure.
Eventually, she couldn’t take the silence any longer. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” she said softly, aware she sounded like an awestruck teenager.
Alex turned around with a surprised smile, and it lit up his handsome face, chasing away the shadows for a brief moment. “I was hoping I’d see you again—I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For staying with me. For believing that I could stop that storm. For helping me believe.”
She smiled. “How long has it been?”
He ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it and leaving strands standing at endearingly odd angles. Allyra resisted the urge to reach up and smooth them away.
“A week,” he replied.
So, not long at all. She took a closer look at him and saw the effects of his brush with death. His always pale skin now had an unhealthy gray tinge, and his blue eyes were shadowed, the skin beneath them bruised.
“How long has it been for you?” he asked.
“No time at all.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he asked pensively.
“What?”
“Time. Sometimes you can’t wait for it to move—you think you have so much of it, to do everything you ever dreamed of doing. And then there are other times, when you wish you could linger in a moment, and in those times, you realize that you have almost no time left at all. I can’t seem to escape the irony of it.”
He sounded desperate and broken, and she leaned toward him, suddenly afraid.
“I was chosen tonight,” he said tightly, his eyes fixed far into the distance. “You are now speaking to the youngest Elemental High Master ever to be chosen.”
Silence stretched and curled around them, bleeding into the empty night. She searched desperately for the right thing to say.
“Congratulations,” she said carefully, aware that she was on unsteady ground.
He let out a laugh, but the sound was tight and strangled and edged with something akin to madness.
Alex dropped into the seat next to her with his shoulders slumped forward. Never had he seemed more exhausted—or defeated—and her heart hollowed at the sight of it. He turned to her, his blue eyes shrouded and troubled, searching her face as if he might find absolution or an answer to an unspoken question.
With a start, Allyra realized where she’d seen the bright, barely contained light exploding in his eyes.
A leopard had gotten caught in a metal snare on a neighboring farm, and her father had been called—not to save it but to give it a quick and humane death. By the time they’d arrived, the leopard had little fight left in him, with his back leg mangled within the teeth of the snare. But as her father approached, the leopard had dredged up the last of its energy and gotten to its feet, hissing and spitting. It was a gladiator fighting to the death, refusing to acknowledge defeat. And the bright desperation in the leopard’s yellow eyes
