Raven smiled. “Enders and guards, you are all so sure. But would you not rather stand with the rightful king?”
The shift around me was palatable, a shaking of the heads, a lowering of weapons. Son of a bitch . . . I didn’t have to see it to know that Raven was using Spirit on them, twisting their minds.
“Loose arrows!” I rushed Raven, knowing I had only seconds. Maybe less.
The arrows were not loosed; the confusion he placed in their minds had worked to his advantage. I leapt at Raven and he flicked a hand at me, holding me above his head with ease. Air held me tightly, squeezing my ribs and lungs, drawing the breath out of me. I struggled, but I might as well have fought iron bands as the air that was around me.
I was going to die if I didn’t do something. I called on the earth and ripped it away from under Raven’s feet. He stumbled and I dropped. He was on his knees. Not a perfect kill position, but I would make it work.
I sucked in a breath and was running at him in a flash even while my muscles screamed for me to breathe more first. I went low this time, dropping to my knees, and using the earth to propel me forward, both swords driving toward Raven’s chest. He flicked a hand at me and I was thrown to the side and slammed into the wall of the throne room. He pinned me there.
“You are a tenacious bastard. I don’t really want to kill you, you know. I would have just done it if I’d wanted to,” he grumbled, rubbing his head as he stood. I clenched my fingers, the only thing I could do.
Elk was there, holding the king over his shoulder, standing like a statue. Unable to deny the power of Spirit Raven had over him.
Raven laughed, whatever seriousness I’d seen gone in a flash. “Oh, Ash, this is going to be fun. I wouldn’t want the king to banish you, that’s too easy. And you’d go right to her, and we can’t have that, can we?” He tapped a finger against his lower lip as he slowly began to pace the room. “You see, I have plans, and they don’t involve taking the throne here yet. Can’t rush these kinds of things, you know.”
“You’re a—”
A binding of air slapped over my mouth. Raven tipped his head to one side. “No bad language in the throne room, please. My mother hates a potty mouth. Except in bed, perhaps I’ll give you to her. But wait, you were already in her bed, weren’t you?” He winked and I tried not to gag.
Another thing I’d done my best to forget. As the queen, Cassava could call any she wished to her bed. And that included me for a period of time. I shivered, pushing those memories away. They would not help.
Raven walked to me, dragging my body down so we probably looked like we stood side by side. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to make sure all the Enders and guards hate you. And then I’m going to let my father loose and they,” he pointed at the others, “are going to tattle on you.”
I refused to close my eyes, the utter loss of what I’d planned washing over me in a wave unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I’d failed Lark, Bella, and our family of Terralings.
Raven snapped his fingers and the world sped up triple time. The king was yelling, Elk and Dreg outed me as a traitor, and I hung against the wall, unable to refute any of it. Unable to even fight back.
I’d never felt so helpless in all my life, not even when I’d been forced into Cassava’s bed. Not even when I’d been forced to bed Bella.
Not even when I’d watched Lark walk away from the Rim.
Rage and crushing disappointment battled over me for control of my emotions.
“Ash, what have you got to say for yourself before I banish you?” The king was in my face, his eyes flashing as though lightning danced in them. I’d not even seen him approach, so lost in my own misery as I was.
The gag of air was removed from my mouth. “You are a fool and will destroy our world if you keep on as you are. Your mind is broken, old man. I pity you, for you were once a man worth laying my life down for. A king I was proud to call my leader. Now . . . I am embarrassed I ever followed you.”
The king’s eyes widened, and behind him, I saw Raven nod slowly. “Well said.”
Basileus pointed at me, his hand trembling, the Spiral again echoing his emotions. “You are bani—”
“Father, wait,” Raven said. “I think perhaps you might be acting in haste.”
The king slowly turned. “Raven, what are you doing here? I thought you were missing?”
I wanted to shake my head at his confusion, but I couldn’t even do that. Raven approached his father, bent and whispered in his ear. Slowly the king nodded. “You are a wise young man, Raven. Thank you.”
Raven grinned and gave me a wink. “You can thank me later. Even I can see that the world needs true warriors, Ash.”
I didn’t understand his sudden shift. But my attention was brought back to the man I’d called my king for so many years. No more would I bend my knee to him. “What would you do then, Basilieus?”
“Raven has pointed out that losing Lark has pushed you over the edge. I can understand that. I loved her mother that way too and her loss . . . it was . . . .” His eyes softened and for a moment I saw the king I knew and loved. He shook his head. “You need time to cool off. Throw him in the dungeon for a few months.”
My weapons were taken from me and I was yanked away from the wall. Or maybe more accurately, Raven allowed me to be taken.
Arms and legs bound tightly, I was dragged off to the very dungeons I’d planned for the king to be taken to. Through the Spiral and across the short distance between it and the Enders barracks, we saw enough other Terralings that I knew the word would fly that I was being punished for something.
Once more in the barracks, I was glad to see that Belladonna was not there. Hopefully she would not try and get me out of here. A few months in the dungeon I could handle; it would give me time to plan. To decide what step to take next. That was the only thing that kept my head up, and my small amount of hope intact.
I was tossed in the first cell and the door was slammed shut behind me. My connection to the earth was gone and I was weaponless. I stood in the center of the cell. I’d been in here once before as a prisoner, I knew what to expect. Still, there was a shocking sense of exposure to suddenly be stripped of all that made me strong.
Raven appeared suddenly at Elk’s side as the Ender locked the door. “I think you should leave him in here permanently. Feed him only once a day. Enough to keep him alive, but that’s it.”
Elk nodded, his eyes glazed over with the command that was obviously pushed through by Spirit.
“It will be done.”
Raven clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent. Now leave. I want to speak to Ash. We have things to discuss.”
Elk left without a question and Raven leaned against the bars of my cell. We had things to discuss, did we?
Just what in the seven hells was Raven up to?
CHAPTER 3
aven grinned at me, and there was something off about him. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps he had a split personality? “I know you think we are on opposite sides, but we’re really not. We just are coming at this from two different directions, you know?” he said.
I didn’t move from the center of the cell. I was pretty sure he couldn’t affect anything in the cell with any of the elements, but I didn’t want to chance that I was wrong. I still didn’t understand why he hadn’t killed me outright.
“What, nothing to say to that?” He leaned in and reached through the bars. His fingers were about an inch from me.
I folded my arms and drew in a slow breath, forcing myself not to move. “Why didn’t you let your father execute me right there?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Well father is a rather loose term, don’t you think? Perhaps the man who raised me would be better.” He winked as if telling me something I didn’t already know. “As to why I didn’t kill you, that’s simple. It’s not time for you to die yet.” As if that was going to make me feel any better about him standing there.
He pressed his head to the bars. “You want to know how my mother did it, how she managed to have me?”
“Not particularly,” I said, though I’ll admit I was curious.
“Ha, I see it in your eyes. You want to know the sordid details.” He grinned, and again I was struck by the fact he didn’t seem mad, just . . . disturbed maybe was a better term. As though he enjoyed making people uncomfortable with the truths of his past.
He clasped his hands together on my side of the bars. “She’s not even truly my mother. Though that isn’t something most people know. Her handmaid bore me.”
I stared at him, unable to fathom exactly what he was saying. He wasn’t Cassava’s son?
He nodded and gave me a wink. “Yes, she raised me as hers, but I share no blood with her. That wouldn’t do. She gave the handmaid the pink diamond to wear, along with the ruby from the Pit, and the smoky diamond from the Eyrie, and then forced her to bed an Undine. While the details she never really shared, I have not quite duplicated it.”
“You are not of the royal house at all,” I said, my voice icy even to my own ears.
Raven laughed softly. “No, I’m not. But does that matter when I am obviously the strongest one in the whole world?” He wove his fingers together. “Lark, she isn’t really my sister you see. If I could convince her to have me, show her we aren’t related—that seems to be a sticking point for her—I’d make her my . . .” He trailed off and made a suggestive motion with his lips while his eyes sparkled. I stood struggling to breathe around the anger that snapped through me.
I lunged for him and he jerked back, scrambling away from the bars as he laughed at me. My hands brushed over his fingers, but he slid through my grasp, leaving me with a piece of cloth I ripped from his shirt.
“Oh, you almost had me there, Ash.” He waggled a finger at me like I was a naughty child.
“You’d be better off killing me. Because I will never stop coming after you and your mother.”
“Phah.” He waved a hand at me, leaning in as if we were conspirators. “The trick is to control people, Ash. And as long as I can control you, I may yet have a use for you. In fact, I’m sure I will have use for you. Dead people can’t help me, not really. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to have them resurrected.”
I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping open. Raising the dead? Goddess tell me he wasn’t so foolish as to play in matters of necromancy. That was a line of power that had been stripped from the elemental world for a reason.
He waved at me again. “Don’t worry, I only did it once to see if it was possible. It is, but . . . well, let’s not go there. The result was not what I’d hoped.” For a moment his eyes clouded over as if he were truly disturbed, and then he shook himself.
“Are you mad?” I asked, unable to not ask the question.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Though, I suppose it is possible. But I think the problem is I’m just very, very bored. You see, there is no one as strong as me, except Lark. I want to be in charge, she doesn’t want me to be in charge. I mean for a long time, it’s a game I played with Mother, but she’s—”
“Dead.”
He shook his head and smiled. “One would think so. I was going to say Cassava is succumbing to the same madness as Father. Using Spirit when you aren’t meant to is as dangerous to the mind as having Spirit used on you.”
His words rebounded over and over in my head. I knew it. Cassava was not dead. Which mean she could be out there plotting against Lark, yet again.
Raven went on. “It’s a game I enjoy greatly. And there are more players in this game than even I realized. Maybe more than you realized.” He grinned and his blue eyes sparkled as though he had a great joke going. “But I’ve found I can’t just go into the different families and take over things the way I’d planned. They are on the lookout for me now, thanks to Lark. Between the mother goddess and my sister—well, she’s not my sister, but that’s semantics—my plans keep getting twisted.”
It hit me what he was saying, the undertone of it all. “You don’t want to be seen as a monster. You want the people to love you.”
Raven pointed a finger at me. “See, I knew you would understand. You get me, Ash. Another reason I don’t want to kill you. I think we could be friends one day. I think we could understand one another. You are not the only one in a dungeon, you know.” His eyes softened, and there was a glimmer of pain there.
He was mad, that was the only answer I had for his reasoning that he and I could possibly ever be friends.
“I really want to help our world,” he went on, “I do. Just not the way anyone can see right now. It’s going to take a cleansing before we can make things right again, even I can see that. Mother doesn’t agree with me. Neither of she nor the mother goddess actually agree with me. But I am right. I just need Lark to see it.”
“So you leave me to rot,” I said.
He nodded. “Until you agree to serve me, and by serving me, we will help Lark.”
“Fuck off.” The words were out of my mouth and he laughed.
“Potty mouth, yeah, my mother would love to have you in her bed. Perhaps I should be threatening you with that . . . but wait, you already spent time there. How was it? Did she tie you up?”
I gritted my teeth, keeping my words to myself. They would have only inflamed him further anyway, and I didn’t need that.
He took a few steps back so the shadows partially swallowed him. “Let’s see if you are singing the same tune after a few years in here.”
Years. Cut off from my connection to the earth. Would it be the same as banishment? Would I lose my mind? For the first time, fear for myself coursed through me. I’d been punished like this before.
Tight spaces and I did not get on well together.
His footsteps faded and I found myself alone the cell. Hours later, Dreg brought me food and a single cup of water. The routine continued the same the next day, minus Raven.
And the next and the next. I fought the growing anxiety that spooled around my belly, looping tighter and tighter within me.
Dreg was always the one who brought me my food and water, and he spoke not a word. No matter what I said, or how I pleaded, he kept his mouth shut. As though he couldn’t hear me. Maybe that’s what Raven had imprinted in his mind, that Dreg would be deaf to me. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard.
A week passed by in a blur of tediousness and growing agitation. Because I was given so little food and water, I knew I could not even push my body with exercise to pass the time. I would dehydrate too quickly, leaving me weak and vulnerable. Which left me one option. Either I stared at the walls and slowly went mad, or I did as Lark had when she was cast into the oubliette.
She’d told me what she’d pulled off, letting her mind float, and in that state she’d been able to see things that went on in the world outside her prison. It might have been because of her connection to Spirit, but perhaps I could make it work for me, too. If nothing else, it was worth a try and would keep me busy for a period of time that would otherwise leave me staring at the walls as my mind slowly cracked.
I sat in the center of the small room and slowed my breathing, counting each inhale and exhale until the scrambling fear in my mind slowed its spread, until my body sunk into a space where there was nothing but the sound of my own heart and the calm of not seeing the walls around me.
Like a fog rolling over my head, the cell faded, and when I opened my eyes I was left sitting in a place of calm. Empty, the place was nothing but gray and white. I stood and thought about the Rim, and slowly trees grew around me, reaching to the sky. The ground was warm beneath my feet. The place was the Rim . . . and yet not. There were no people, no homes, nothing moved, not even birds or the breeze that always flowed between the massive tree trunks. Almost as if I’d stepped into a picture painted so lifelike, yet without any actual life to it.
“What is this place?” I spoke the words out loud to see how they sounded as much as anything.
What I didn’t expect was an answer.
“A place between the Veil, yeah?” Griffin strolled out from behind a redwood on my right. I turned to face him. He was a bit taller than me with black hair and eyes just as dark. A wolfy grin stretched across his face and I almost expected his tongue to loll out. He was a shapeshifter, though I wasn’t sure I’d call him a werewolf. Griffin was something more than a mere werewolf. More like the father of all wolves, the Great Wolf. He had been a friend to Lark, so I did not fear him.
“How do you mean it is between the Veil? I know there are seven levels; how is this different?”
Griffin squinted up at the branches over our heads. “You see, the Veil is set up in layers like you said. This is a place between them, like what you’d see if you stopped in mid-stride as you crossed over them, yeah?”
I frowned. “And how exactly did I manage this? I have no connection to Spirit.”
Honestly, I’d thought the meditating was more a way to pass the time than anything else.
“Ah, well, I may have had something to do with that, yeah?” He winked. “I just needed you to relax long enough that I could draw you here. Now that you’ve been once, you can come and go as you please.”
Interesting as that all was, I wasn’t sure how it helped me, and I said as much.
Griffin laughed. “It don’t. Not one bit. But it might keep you from losing your mind, which if I recall can be an issue for you elementals when you are cut off from your power. Which even though you weren’t banished, you’re cut off, yeah? Long enough and you would lose your mind.”
He was right, and he’d touched on the fear that had begun to grow in me. Griffin went on. “Here, you can work your connection to the earth, here you can practice with your weapons. Your body will be weak when you get out of the dungeon, but your mind and muscles will know all you’ve trained them to do. You elementals always bounce back. You were made to.”
He turned and began to walk away.
Ash (The Elemental Series, Book 6) Page 3
