Free elemental 04 - cyclone by Larissa Ladd

brother. He filed that away in his mind without addressing it.
    “If she loses her mind, she could be incredibly destructive. I mean, you saw what she was like when she first came into her full abilities. It wouldn’t be hard to justify the elders putting her to death.” 
    Dylan watched Aiden start to argue the point—the look of defiance on his older brother’s face—before his bright eyes dimmed and he nodded.
    “So what can we do for her?” Dylan chewed his bottom lip in thought.
    “We have to get the water energy out of her. I think she’s holding onto it not…not just because it gives her an edge against her competitors who can’t manipulate water energy at all, but because it’s a part of her grandmother, and Aira doesn’t want to give that up.” 
    Aiden’s eyes widened. “How are we going to do that?” he asked. 
    Dylan shrugged. “I have no idea. I just know that she’s got to get back to normal energy levels if she’s going to have even a remote chance of survival and holding on to her sanity.” 

 
     

    C HAPTER 9
     
    AIRA WAS APPREHENSIVE AS SHE walked into the building of the elders. Energy swirled inside of her, power flowed along her arms and legs, her mind ran at a million miles per hour. She took a deep breath and heard her grandmother’s voice, a litany of a lesson that she had received on multiple occasions as a child. “Your mind knows the difference between excitement and anxiety—your body does not. You have to bring your mind and body together in order to be able to control either.” Aira felt decidedly anxious at the prospect of her continued testing. The two battles that she had been involved in had been challenging in their own way, but Aira was much more concerned about the testing that would determine her stability—and her fitness to rule psychologically and intellectually. 
    The elders hadn’t given her any indication in the message they had delivered via Saoirse that actual testing would be going on or any kind of particular trial would be happening. The younger woman had arrived at Aira’s apartment and said simply that the elders wanted to speak with her—not that it was time for the next phase. Aira’s fast-moving mind, trapped in speculation for the entire drive to the temporary headquarters of the elemental elders, had filled with scenarios that might play out. She wished she had brought her tarot cards with her. She was finding it harder and harder to get real answers from the cards—but they might provide her with some guidance for the situation she was about to face. 
    Aira knew Dylan and Aiden were worried about her. Dylan had suggested the day before that the energy Aira had been given by her grandmother was not helping her as much as the older woman had hoped. Aira could sense the truth in Dylan’s words—she felt increasingly unsteady. The water energy her grandmother had imparted to her had initially helped suppress the wilder aspects of her air energy, but over time she had sensed the stronger energy of her alignment overruling the steady calm of the water energy. She felt as though she was spawning a hurricane inside of herself, an unstoppable force of nature she couldn’t quite control. However, she didn’t know how to release the water energy within her. She had thought that her creation of the storm at the first of her trials would accomplish it, bleeding the energy out of her, sending it into the world once more, but it had not. 
    Before she, Aiden, and Dylan could come to any kind of conclusion about how to rid her of the problematic energy, Saoirse had showed up, stating that she had to take Aira to the elders. The message she had brought with her had underscored the urgency while at the same time not giving Aira any hint as to what the purpose of the meeting would be. She had asked Aiden and Dylan to follow her, and Saoirse had not—for once—even attempted to argue with them, simply saying that Aiden and Dylan would have to