Free Wicked Wind (Solsti Prophecy #1) by Sharon Kay

are vulnerable while your powers are growing.”
    Nicole looked from Rilan to Gunnar, uncertainty written across her face. Gunnar’s thoughts swept back to the earlier part of the morning, standing in her sunny condo, looking at her family photos…
    “It’s your sisters, isn’t it?” he surmised.
    Her eyes grew huge. “Please don’t hurt them,” she whispered.
    Gunnar’s simmering unease pricked his skin, unmitigated by her revelation. “Last night you told me that you were the only one. All you said about your sisters was that they knew about you.”
    She looked at the floor. “Technically, those are true statements.”
    His blood boiled. He wasn’t a patient demon, and her little white lie pushed him toward a snapping point. “But not the whole truth,” he growled.
    “Gunnar.” The Elder’s voice sounded pleasant, but Gunnar recognized the warning in it. He dropped Nicole’s arm and stepped away from her, knowing his eyes had to be flashing blue flames.
    “But…you’re wrong,” Nicole said to Rilan. “I only have two living sisters. The youngest one died when we were small. If there are supposed to be four, how can we be these…Solsti?”
    Two living sisters . The weight of her words sank in. They were all the family she had left. Brooke, Gin, and I–we stick together . He stared at her, seeing a mix of confusion and fear along with a dose of that stubborn resolve. She protected them. And gods alive, if he still had his sister, he would do the same. How could he fault her for that?
    Rilan frowned. “I did not sense an incomplete circle.” He walked back to his desk. “These two sisters, they have a talent like yours, but with other elements?”
    She nodded.
    The older demon gazed solemnly back at her. “Child, you and your sisters possess a very real and dangerous power. It is of the utmost importance for each of you to learn how to better control it, for we don’t know why you were brought back to our world.”
    Her brow furrowed. “Brought back?”
    “The myth of the Solsti also tells us that the four will return, when the time is right. When the world needs them.”
    Gunnar’s head jerked away from the moody glare he had fixed on Nicole, and swiveled to Rilan in surprise. He had never heard that last detail before. Good gods . If she was one of the Solsti, then she was supposed to fight an enemy more powerful than he had ever seen. And she had just learned that she wasn’t human. All of her beliefs about myths and reality, good and evil, had most likely been scattered like dust.
    She exhaled sharply. “Okaaay, so I’m not human. And I’m supposed to somehow help the world. And the world contains a bunch of creatures that I thought were only stories until last night.” She whirled and marched for the door. “I need some air.”

C HAPTER 5

    N ICOLE ’ S HEAD SPUN as she hurried down the stairs, through the gleaming kitchen, and out the back door of the house. She felt Kai’s and Rhys’s curious eyes on her as she swept past the great room, but she didn’t stop.
    Bursting into the warm fall sun in the huge back yard, she tried to wrap her head around Rilan’s words. Her veins buzzed like a thousand tiny vibrating needles were pricking them.
    I’m not human .
    The questions she had harbored long ago about her birth parents roared back to life. Who were they? Had they known that their daughters would be gifted like this? To play a role in balancing good and evil in the world? Had their death truly been an accident? She felt sick with fear that she had put her family–the only family she had left–into danger, despite her efforts to protect them.
    I’m not human. Brooke and Gin aren’t either
    She had always known she was different. But this ?
    The old demon had known , instantly and without a doubt, what she was. Knew that there were more like her, linked by blood. There was no possibility of keeping it from him. Not that she had thought about hiding her own skills, because