Chapter One: Borrowed Wind

“Groups of six! Three seconds apart!” An academy applicant shoved him aside. “Who put you in charge?” The bridge sagged. Wind leaked from Yue Lan's hold. Lin grabbed a rail and put his other hand against her shoulder. The world stretched. He saw a sea that was not his. Ten years earlier, a young Yue Lan stood on a seawall before an unevacuated village. Her teacher released her hand and vanished into the typhoon. “Don't stop the wave,” he told her. “Give it somewhere it would rather go.” Ten minutes of fear, judgment, and intimate knowledge of every current crashed into Lin's mind. He lifted his hand. The leaking wind returned in twelve braided streams: six beneath the car, four pushing passengers, two bracing the bridge.