The pink diamond, the one connected to Talan’s power, had gone missing, though, and in many ways, it was the deadliest of the five, giving the wearer the ability to control so much, and in the bargain, lose their hold on reality. That was what had happened to Cassava. She’d worn the pink diamond for years, using Spirit for her own gains, and in turn lost herself to madness.
“There is more to the prophecy.” Talan turned to Raven. “Did you get the book from the Pit?”
Raven gave a sharp nod and left the room, his black cloak swirling out behind him.
Talan twisted around to me. He blew out a breath, and shook his head before he spoke. Almost like he wasn’t sure of what he would say. “I know this is a lot to take in. But everything that has been done has been to keep you safe, and to strengthen you to this point. So that you could help me free my brothers and sisters.”
I frowned at him, a dark suspicion growing in my heart. “What do you mean?” I didn’t like the sound of “everything that has been done.” Just how deeply did he have his hands in my life?
His eyes flicked over me, weighing me. He hesitated, though, and that only heightened the tension in the room. Finally, he spoke, slowly, as if each word were fragile.
“Your father’s madness. Your mother’s death. Your brother going missing. That’s only a few of the things. All your life has been steps on a path where we have been trying to dodge Viv, to keep her unaware of what we are planning, to keep her from realizing who you were. She expected a princess to face her, a warrior from birth. We made you a humble planter for a reason. She would have killed you as a child if not for Cassava blocking your abilities.”
I stared at him, my heart pounding as the words sank into me. Sank into my bones as if they would break each one apart from the marrow outward. Shaking from head to toe, I stared at him, unable to fully fathom at first. Because he couldn’t mean they’d manipulated my life from that early point on… did he?
I struggled to get the words out, to question him while the air I fought to keep breathing seemed to clog my chest and throat. “You… broke my world? You stole my family from me? You’re my uncle and you did this to me?”
Talan didn’t have a lick of sorrow on his face. If anything, his eyes hardened, and his lips tightened. “Yes, it was planned from the beginning.”
The air between us all but crackled, as if those words were an ignition for action. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I lost my mind in that moment.
I dropped Peta and launched myself at him with nothing more than my body and fists. All I could see was my past and the horrors I’d faced from such a young age. My mother falling from the sky as the wind was ripped from her lungs and her life taken, Bramley crying for me and then—dead or alive—his body stolen away, my father dying in my arms, having to kill my siblings, the oubliettes, Death Valley, being kept away from Peta, Ash. Ash.
Ash.
The scream that ripped from my throat was sheer pain, agonizing loss after loss exploding out of me like a monstrous burst of uncontrollable lava from a mountain that was too small to contain the violence.
There was no finesse about my attack. I drove my fist into his solar plexus and sent him backward through the falling water. He tumbled and landed on the other side with a wet thud, but I was already there, swinging a foot at his head. He rolled, and I followed, snarls ripped from my throat.
Never had I felt rage like this and my body could not contain the animal anger as it spilled upward. I’d only taken form as my animal counterpart a few times, and only when I absolutely had to—like when fighting Raven in the Eyrie. Right then, there was no controlling the shift as my body slipped its human shape and I landed on four large paws. As a snow leopard, I had no doubt I could destroy Talan. I would tear him apart starting with his treacherous mouth.
My whole life had been a fucking game to him. I was just a piece on a chessboard to be manipulated and positioned, to be used and discarded as if my life and the lives of those I’d loved meant nothing.
What about Bella and her children? Would they be safe? No, I knew they weren’t. For all I knew, he was positioning them to use them… to hurt them to break me. Images flashed through my mind of all the people in my life, all those I’d loved. Their eyes, and the spirit behind them broken, maimed and begging me to keep them safe.
And I’d failed them all.
The roar of blood pounding in my ears and the rush of air in and out of my lungs blocked out every other noise. Talan’s mouth moved but I heard nothing. I bent and grabbed him by a foot with my mouth, my teeth digging through the flesh. I jerked him hard to the side, which spun his body out in a wide arc. He slammed into the wall, but was up in a flash. He held his one leg gingerly, barely balanced on it as I slunk on my belly to the floor and stalked forward.
He said something. I didn’t hear him; the words didn’t compute. He held a hand out, and there was a flash of pink that lit up the room.
And then I was on my knees, in my human body, my head bowed to my chest. Pink lights flickered and sparkled around me. He was using Spirit to subdue me.
I screamed again, the rage nothing I could control. Cactus, my childhood friend, had pissed me off once so badly, and not able to fight the rage and the power that went with it, I nearly brought down a mountain. That was a candle to this roaring bonfire that consumed me.
“Keep fighting me, Lark.” Talan’s words finally reached my ears. “I want you to break through my hold on you. You need to connect to all the power in your reach.”
But there was no breaking through his power. He was too strong. I could feel his power like a weight on me, holding me down. Pinning me to the cold rock. I couldn’t even lift my hands, or twitch my fingers, never mind lift my head.
I managed to roll my eyes up to glare at him through the strands of my hair that had fallen over my face. Slowly I found the words I needed, though I had to sort through to find the exact thing I wanted to say. “Are you happy with your creation, then?”
His eyes widened, shock filtering over his face. “I did not create you, Lark. And I would no more hurt you than I would hurt a sister of my blood.”
Peta crept forward in her housecat form and put herself onto my lap. “That is a lie, Talan.”
“Is it? Lark can hear the lie in people. Am I lying, Larkspur? Did I want to hurt you?”
Every muscle in my body trembled as I knelt there sitting on my heels, Peta clinging to my legs. He took a few steps forward and crouched in front of me. “What would you give to save them all, Lark? Would you give your life?”
“Yes.” I stared at him, hating that he was right about not lying.
“Would you give up the life of your parents to save your siblings?”
My gut lurched and I didn’t want to answer. I struggled to breathe, but I refused to look away from him. “I could have saved them all if I’d known what I was up against.”
“No, you can’t. No one can save them all, Lark. I ask again, would you give up your parents to save your siblings? To save Bella and her children? To save the Rim? To save our world?”
I knew the answer, we both did. I would give up whatever I had to if it meant I didn’t lose them all.
I swallowed but couldn’t get past the growing lump in my throat that threatened to burst into tears. Talan reached out carefully and tipped my chin up with one finger.
“If you could save them all, would you be willing to suffer for them, to have all your joy, all your laughter, all your love taken away if it gave you the key to protecting those who survived?”
Peta let out a long, low hiss. “You’re a bastard, Talan. You are her family!”
He nodded. “I know. But I’m not asking you to give up, to be hurt by anything I have not experienced myself. Are you willing, Lark? Now that you know why it was done?”
I closed my eyes because I could not turn my face from him. A hot tear slipped from one eye, the traitorous reaction of my heart and the lump in my throat. What would I give f
or those who remained? Would I give up Ash to save Bella? Would I give up River to save her mother? I bit my lower lip and finally opened my eyes. Talan was blurred through the watery vision of my tears.
“How can you set one life above the others?”
He sighed and my body slumped, his hold on me gone. “Because in many cases, that was their wish. Your mother’s, your father’s… they knew what they were agreeing to. It was the only way to help you. To keep you safe from Vivica.”
I wasn’t sure I totally believed him. But there was no deceit in his words, no lies on his tongue. Maybe it wasn’t the truth, but he believed his own words.
And for now, I would have to as well.
CHAPTER 10
Talan and I knelt on the rock across from one another deep in the mountain where he’d brought me. Where he was holding me against my will. And while I didn’t want to kill him at that exact moment, I suspected it had something to do with whatever influence he’d put on me with Spirit. Or maybe it was because I knew now that he was my uncle, my blood.
None of which did anything to soothe my tumultuous emotions. Peta pulled herself onto my shoulder, her tiny claws digging in for a tight hold. She spoke for me. “Let me get this straight. You did horrible things to Lark all her life, in an effort to… train her?”
“That’s putting it simply,” Talan said, his eyes never leaving me. “But yes. When we face our darkest hours, repeatedly, we either become stronger, finding reserves we don’t know we have, or we break. I’ve yet to see her break, and so she was given more challenges. More pain. Still her heart did not crack. She’s a better person now than she was as an angry young woman who could not find her power.
“We, all of us, need her to be stronger than she could have ever been if her life had been one of ease. If her father had accepted her. If her mother had survived and protected her. If Cassava hadn’t tried to wipe out the Rim with the lung burrower worm. If Ash hadn’t been taken from her. All of it had a purpose—pain-filled, but still purpose. What if there comes a time when she must face Viv on her own? What if something happens, if plans go sideways and I am not there with her? Would you have her go into that fight weak?”
He pushed to his feet and held a hand out to me. “I don’t ask you to like me. I ask you to trust me that what is coming needs you at your best. I ask you to trust that the cost will be worth it in the end.”
Damn him and his words, his truths that I couldn’t turn away from. I didn’t take his hand, but pushed to my feet on my own.
“You train me, teach me, and we stop Vivica. We make this world right again. And don’t expect me to call you uncle.”
He looked away. “Agreed.”
From across the room, Raven cleared his throat. “You two done?”
I turned to him, surprised by the rush of relief I felt seeing him. After all Raven had done, that I could want to trust him again should have surprised me. But that was the reality of family. You always hoped those who’d done you wrong would come back around. Maybe that was the case with Raven. Maybe we could find a friendship now.
He held a book out, the leather binding singed in places. “This is the book we retrieved from the Pit. You recognize it, Peta?”
She craned her neck. “Olivisha’s spell book?”
Raven nodded. “She was… apparently the first Salamander.”
Talan grunted. “Yes, she is. Ollie is the middle child.”
Ollie. That he referred to the original Terralings with such familiarity was strange to me, even stranger that I was now a part of that elite number in a way.
More than all that, though, was a sudden fatigue that swept over me. I stared at the two men; neither was working Spirit on me, but I knew Talan could hide that from me too.
“It’s your emotions,” Peta said into my ear, quietly enough that I would be the only one to hear her. “Strong emotions, realizations, healing from all that pain, and the shift from snow leopard back have drawn your reserves low.” She butted her head against mine and tried to shift some of her energy to me. I held off on taking her up on her offer.
I reached up and touched her gently. I could stand a little longer.
“So what is this prophecy you are talking about? Aren’t most of those done up by Readers?” The words of Frost, the Original Terraling, hovered in the back of my mind. One to save, one to destroy. I fought the shudder that wanted to ripple through me.
“Most are spoken by Readers, yes,” Talan said as he took the leather-bound book from Raven, “but we have a few seers in our pure elemental bloodlines too. Like Aria, like Ollie.”
Aria, the Sylphs’ queen before Samara. She’d spoken to me, named me the Destroyer, and her words had been truer than I’d ever wanted.
He flipped through the book, stopping about three quarters of the way to the end. “Here, after the spells she begins to write what looks like a journal. But interspersed, here and there, are small prophecies.” He turned a page, ran his finger down it and turned another. “Here.” He tapped against the page and turned it around for me. I took the book gingerly.
The spot he’d tapped was only a few lines. I read them silently as Peta peered down from my shoulder.
“The world will come to a breaking point, where there will be no going back. The Veil will no longer be the refuge it once was as its barriers will break wide open, the humans will allow fear to rule, and the very existence of our world will be at stake. It is then that the ties that bind both the Veil and the ground beneath our feet must be severed. To save any… to preserve any chance of life… chaos must reign. Destruction must gather. All pretense of protection must be ignored. The six must stand together. The Destroyer will reign freely, and she will decide the fate of the world.”
“Well, that’s rather cheery.” I handed the book back to Talan. “The words are the opposite of what I would have thought.” I frowned, not sure I was even bothered by the words because they made no real sense except the last piece. That was rather clear. “The prophecies regarding the demon hordes were all about surviving, about stopping the destruction. And yet this is like we should actually encourage destruction.”
“That’s exactly right… Destroyer. You must help me find my siblings, and then the six of us will do what we must to heal the world. That is why it has always been you, over Raven, who must do this.” Talan stared hard at me.
I stared back. “I’m not causing more destruction, thanks. Already brought down the Eyrie. Already helped to sink the Pit.”
Neither of those actions were something I was proud of. Many people had died for my efforts to kill Cassava the day the Eyrie had been brought low. And more yet had died at the Pit as the lava had turned on the Salamanders. Though, that hadn’t been my direct influence. I’d been there and seen the results—I still felt the weight of responsibility on my shoulders.
Peta snorted softly. “That’s like saying I’m never going to purr again. I might try not to, but it’s in my nature.”
I twisted to look at her, my tone dry. “Thanks for the backup, cat.”
I rubbed a hand over my eyes knowing I could not take any more in and still retain what I was hearing. “I’m done. I need to sleep for a bit and then perhaps we can get on with the training.”
Talan nodded. “Be my guest. But do not sleep long.”
I grunted at him as I left the circular room and the two men standing in it. The walk through the tunnels was silent, but my mind would not shut off—there was so much to take in, that I was overwhelmed with all I’d learned.
Back in the room that had been assigned to me, I sat on the edge of the bed. Peta jumped down beside me.
“You have a plan then?” She tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes.
I put a hand to the leather pouch at my side. “I have four stones, Peta. Do you think he could stop me from leaving if I used them?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Maybe. But you want to learn from him, don’t you?”
“I hate him. I w
ant to learn from him. I’m afraid for my family. I’m afraid for what is going to be asked of me. I want to find Ash.” My heart lurched as I spoke his name out loud for the first time in a long time.
Peta stepped up and put her paws on my thighs. “Take what you can from Talan. For everything else, he is talented with Spirit. Even if he was not one of the original children of the mother goddess, I would tell you that. With training, you can be more than you are now and that could save those you love. And if we could find the original elementals, all the better. They can take up the fight against Viv. Maybe they could help us find Ash and bring him back.”
Her eyes blurred. It was easy to forget that both times I’d been cast out of her life, Peta had been with Ash. As his unofficial familiar, they had nearly as tight a bond as she and I did. I ran a hand over her head. “We’ll find him. We’ll bring him home.” Of that, I had no doubt.
I made myself lie on the bed, and Peta curled up on my chest, her chin on her paws. I closed my eyes, tried to relax, but even though I was fatigued from everything, my mind wouldn’t let me go.
The past and seeing Vivica fight the original Terraling, Frost. The things Talan had said. The stones laying heavy at my side. Raven. Ash. Bella. River. Father. Bramley. Pamela and Rylee. Names and faces swirled through my mind, making it difficult to do more than breathe.
Peta was oblivious to my upheaval as she slept, for which I was grateful.
I kept working at the many threads that had been laid in front of me. How many of them could I make sense of? Talan had said that Viv wanted to rule and the past images had shown that. But she couldn’t be free of the curse until she held all five stones, that was the catch of the curse. With four of them in my leather pouch, surely that would slow her down.
Maybe she had her hands on the pink diamond, but I didn’t think so. But that took me back to my past and all that had been done to me in the name of making me stronger. Of keeping me safe from Viv while I grew up. It was done. I was who I was and many lives had been lost in the process. I could not change it. I put an arm over my eyes in a vain attempt to truly sleep.
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