“You . . . I think are going to need all the help you can get, my little friend,” I whispered to her.
Peta butted her head against my thigh. “Over there. Two women talking about not being able to have babies.”
The scene was too perfect to not have fate’s hand in it.
I lifted my head to see a slender young woman with long blonde hair almost as pale as my own. Tears hovered in her eyes as she pressed a hand to her belly and shook her head.
I felt a pull toward her and listened to my instincts. “Peta, we will come back for her. To check on her.” I didn’t have to say why. We both knew Elle wasn’t coming for her daughter. Not in this life.
Peta bobbed her head in agreement. “Of course we will.” As though there was no other possible solution.
I strode up to the woman. Her friend had left and she was alone on the bench. “You wish to have a child?”
Her head jerked up. I stared down at her tear-stained face. “What?”
I didn’t wait for her to say anything else, just placed the baby into her arms. “She needs a mother. Take her.”
The woman’s mouth dropped open as I backed away. “You need her too.”
She clutched the baby to her. “How . . . why?”
“Because sometimes . . . things have to happen. Good and bad. This is one of the good things. Love her. Protect her. Teach her. Be her mother.”
I kept backing away, a part of me feeling as though I’d abandoned the little one.
“Does she have a name?”
Smiling, I nodded. “Her name is Rylee. A warrior’s name for a warrior’s heart.”
The world seemed to still around us, as though the universe had paused to take note of that exact moment. I knew it for what it was; a fork in the road, one I would look back on and wonder if I made the right choice.
I should have been terrified.
Peta and I spun at the same time and ran back the way we’d come.
“She will love her,” Peta said. “I saw it in her eyes.”
“If she doesn’t, it won’t matter. We’ll be back and if I have to . . . I will raise her myself.” The words popped out of me and I realized I meant them.
I would take the girl into my care if the woman proved to be false.
Perhaps the most concerning thing was I almost hoped that would be the case.
CHAPTER 22
he Eyrie was as we’d left it. Chilled by the wind, hidden by clouds and ruled by Queen Aria.
“Where are we landing?” Shazer banked to the right, circling the Eyrie, moving with the air current.
“The throne room.” I’d barely said the words and he dropped, tucking his wings and swirling through the clouds in a looping spiral. I clutched his body with my legs, and Peta sank her claws into me. Her hair fluffed up around her body and her green eyes watered.
“I hate this horse. I regret suggesting him.” The words were hard, but there was no heat in them.
He laughed and snapped his wings out wide. They caught us only a few feet from the floor of the throne room. With a delicate prance he landed, snorting and blowing.
I slid from his back. By the scene in front of us, we’d interrupted something rather important. There was a row of four women on their knees at the feet of the queen. Her blind eyes came up and somehow seemed to meet mine. To the left of me, Cactus stood between two Sylphs. He gave me the slightest of nods.
“Ah, Larkspur. You made it in time, I see.” Aria laughed softly. “I had hoped you would come.”
I strode forward, snapping my spear together at my side. “I’m here for my father. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Child, I told you the truth. He is not here. Both then, and now.”
She did speak the truth; I could feel it in her words. I pointed my spear at her and the Sylphs around us shifted. Enders dressed in their white leathers ghosted forward, their long sharpened staffs pointed at me. I should have cared, should have worried.
Yet I felt no fear.
“I know you speak truly. That does not make you right.” I lowered my spear, pressed the butt of it into the ground at my feet.
She clapped her hands together once. “Enders, ease off. She means me no harm. Where have you been, Lark? Two years you were missing, everyone thought you dead. Yet now you are here, back searching for your beloved father.”
I wanted to rage at her that he was anything but beloved. That he was needed only to fulfill his duty and name a proper heir. But those words would not form.
“An oubliette held me.”
A solid gasp went up through the room.
Aria leaned back. “How in the world did you survive?”
Bands of fear tightened over my chest at the mere thought of my prison. “I am here for my father. Either you will allow me to search for him, or I will tear your home apart. It is your choice.”
Beside me, Peta sucked in a tiny breath. Surprise filtered through the bond between us. From behind us, Shazer stomped a foot on the tile. “I will catch you if need be, Lark.”
The four women on their knees in front of the queen watched us with wide eyes. Except for one. She was on the far left and she stood. “I will not stand for this. I am the heir to the throne. Get back to the ceremony, Mother.”
“Noma, calm yourself, my daughter.” Aria spoke with a calm tone that brooked no argument.
“Old woman, you have been on the throne too long,” Noma snapped, her hand lifting as she turned her back on me. A flash of sapphire blue danced over her fingers and up her arms.
I had no doubt about what I saw. Noma could call water to her aid through the use of the sapphire stone. The fifth and final gem of the elemental world; she carried the Undines’ sapphire. She raced up the stairs to her mother’s side.
Those thoughts flashed through my mind in less than a single beat of my heart. I connected to the earth and the power rushed into me, filling me. I pushed off the ground in a leap and the stone beneath me buckled, but it didn’t slow me. I shot through the air toward Noma who had climbed to her mother and wrapped her hands around her neck. Water surrounded the queen’s mouth and nose in a bubble. Too thin perhaps for anyone else to see; but it didn’t matter.
I thrust my spear down as I sailed through the air, the blade aimed at the juncture of Noma’s neck and head. A perfect kill shot, one she wouldn’t even feel, it would happen so fast.
But a snap of wind caught me midair and sent me tumbling sideways into the mountain. The wind was knocked out of me and for a split second I thought it was a Sylph taking my air. I gasped in a breath and used it not for myself. “She is killing your queen!” I screamed.
White Enders leather filled my vision. “Then our queen should not have called her forward as a potential heir.”
I blinked up at Samara. She’d changed in the two years. Her eyes were hard, and there was a scar across her chin, jagged and white with age. “She’s using water to kill her. Not air.”
Samara spun. From where I sat, I threw my spear, drawing from the mountain. The spear shot from my hands and slammed into Noma’s lower back. Hardly a clean death, but she jerked away from her mother, a cry escaping her as she fell to the ground.
Aria stumbled backward, and the sound of water splashing to the floor seemed to fill the throne room. “Take her,” Aria gasped out.
The Enders were on Noma in a flash. Three pointed spears fell on her at the same time. Boreas, the queen’s favored Ender, and two others.
Aria wavered to her feet. Boreas went to her side and helped her stand. “Thank you—”
“My queen, there is no need,” he murmured with a smug-ass smile on his lips.
She slapped him, hard enough to leave an imprint on his face. “You would have let her kill me. It was Larkspur who stopped her.”
Boreas’s face went white; with anger or shock, I wasn’t sure.
Aria drew in a breath, bent and took something from Noma’s body. “Terraling, you know what this is?” She hel
d it out to me, a stone of blue that swam as though it held the ocean within it.
“Yes.”
“Take it to Finley. The girl will need it.” Aria threw it to me. I lifted my hand to catch the stone, but my fingers never touched it.
A gust of wind caught the jewel and sent it skittering across the floor at Samara’s feet. She bent and picked it up, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. From behind her, a figure stepped out of the shadows. The one person I would gladly kill, and whose grave I would gladly dance on. The one who’d stolen my family from me.
“Cassava.” I breathed out her name.
“Larkspur, so lovely of you to come. So predictable. He would not have done the same for you, I have made sure of it.” She reached behind her, grabbed someone and threw him forward.
My father sprawled on his belly, his eyes glazed over as if he were drugged with poppy seeds.
Peta stalked in front of me, her entire body fluffing up as her hair stood on end. “This is the bitch that hurt you. I will tear her throat out.”
“No,” I said. “She is mine, Peta. Mine alone.”
I tore my eyes from my father and looked at Cassava. “I am here, then. You’ve tried to kill me how many times, yet here I stand.” I spread my hands wide. “Perhaps now you want to see if you are stronger than me?”
She grinned. “You don’t wonder why I would meet you here?”
Aria answered her. “It has been a long time since elementals openly fought with their power, Cassava. Do not do this.”
I knew what Aria meant. Terralings truly battling would cause massive destruction. And the Eyrie would suffer for it.
Cassava sneered at her. “Old woman, will you or your people stop us? Or will you hold to the rules the mother goddess handed down that have slowly strangled our people?”
Aria stiffened. “We will not interfere. That is our way.” The Sylphs began to back away.
Cassava pulled a stone from around her neck. The emerald I’d given Bella. The emerald that would give the wearer power over the earth, or in the case of one who already had that connection, would boost it immensely.
Worm shit and green sticks, this was not a good turn.
The reality of what I was seeing set in. If Cassava had the emerald, what had happened to Bella?
It took everything I had not to run forward in a blind rage. “What did you do to her?”
“What makes you think I would hurt my oldest daughter?” Her sweetly laced words were venomous to my ears.
“I think you would destroy anyone who opposed you, even those to whom you gave life. You destroyed Raven.”
“You assume she didn’t simply hand this lovely gem to me. And Raven and I have a lovely relationship,” Cassava countered, her eyes glittering with malice as she licked her lips.
My father lifted himself up to his elbows, his eyes clearing a little. “Bella traded her life and the life of her child for the emerald, Lark.”
Cassava stepped up beside him, and kicked him in the side. He grunted, though I doubted her impact was all that hard. More likely he was already hurt. After two years in her care, he probably had his share of injuries.
Behind us, Aria whispered, “This will not go well for my Sylphs.”
I had eyes only for Cassava. “We are done with these games then, bitch. It is time you pay for your crimes.”
“I agree, at least on being done with the games. You have been in my way since the beginning. I regret not killing you then.”
I circled her, drawing the power of the earth to me until I fairly hummed with it. Her eyes flickered and the madness I’d seen in my father was reflected there. Mad. She was out of her mind from using Spirit the way she had; I knew it.
Cassava laughed. “Fool, just like your father. He thought he was strong enough to keep me in line. See him now as he grovels at my feet.”
Peta snarled and bared her teeth. “I am here, Lark. We do this together.”
She was right. Peta could stand with me, she was a part of me. Cactus made a move and I swung my spear to block him. “No. No matter what happens, do not step in.”
“Lark, do not—”
The ground under him bucked, and sent him flying across the throne room.
I whipped my spear around and pointed it at Cassava. She lifted her hands over her head in mock surrender, a smile on her lips. “Little Larkspur. I do believe it is time for you to be with your mother.”
Her words rang in my ears. With my mother. But not with Bramley? Her smile widened. “That’s right, half-breed. He lives. But not if you do not bow to me.”
CHAPTER 23
ies, she had to be lying. But it was Aria who snapped me out of the fog of Cassava’s words. “She will say anything to stay your hand, child of the earth. She knows you rival her power. Even while she holds the emerald.”
My training took over, my instincts and anger driving me. I leapt forward, as I held the spear over my head, snapping it down in a hard thrust toward Cassava’s heart.
She screamed, her face contorting as she flung a hand toward me. The lines of power were a brilliant, pulsing green as they wove around her arms and torso. I knew what she was going to do, but in midair I could not avoid the blow. A chunk of the mountain flew toward me, and slammed into my side. As it hit, I pulled the molecules of the rock apart, breaking it down into a fine dust and circumventing the full power of the impact.
Cassava’s eyes widened as I landed right in front of her, the powdered earth floating down around us. No more words. I was done talking.
I lunged at her, driving my spear toward her stomach. She spun backward and flicked her hands at the ground beneath me. Damn, she was fast. The other elementals I faced were slower in how they used their power. They called it up, I saw the intent in the power lines, and then I avoided what they tossed at me.
With Cassava, there was almost no time between her calling the power and what she threw at me. I didn’t know if it was the emerald or something else, and it didn’t matter.
The ground lurched up beneath me and I fought to smooth it out. Every step I took toward her, she diverted me. I finally dropped my spear. This was not going to be a fight where it would help me.
“Giving up?”
“Just getting started.”
We threw our power at one another, pushing back and forth, neither of us truly giving way. The balance between us was too close for either of us to truly get the upper hand. Sweat slid down my face and my legs shook as though I’d been running for miles.
The Eyrie broke apart piece by piece, walls and structures toppling as we tore and hurled the world around us.
Cassava’s hand wavered over her opposite arm, but she dropped it and flicked her fingers at me. The tile at my feet broke and the mountain seemed to reach up and take hold of my feet, pinning me in place.
I pushed the rock away from me, and stumbled to the side, ending up next to my father.
“Lark. The Namib Sand Sea,” Peta yelled.
She was right, I could use the same tactic here as I’d done on the sand. But I had to get my friends out of the way. “Shazer, fly!” I yelled. The horse gave a grunt followed by the sound of rushing wings.
Cassava laughed. “Still trying to save your friends? I’m going to hunt them down and kill them all, Lark. As soon as you’re dead.”
I moved to my father’s side and pressed my hands against the tile. I broke it apart so I could touch the ground underneath and truly feel the mountain. Within the Wretched Peaks lived intangible pathways that called to me; the elemental who’d created the Eyrie left them behind. I felt them under my hands, under my skin, and in my soul.
Like aqueducts brought water from the rivers, the energy channels that created the mountain and Eyrie flowed to me, and allowed me access to more power than I could ever reach on my own. The ground sucked my hands down in a welcoming embrace.
I felt the mountain sigh, as in relief. It is time.
Cassava laughed again, throwing her hea
d back. “You need to touch the earth still to call it up? Goddess, you are weak.”
“Peta, Cactus. Stick close.”
I didn’t have to ask them twice. Peta was at my side in a flash and Cactus was right behind her, crouching with me. The mountain . . . I could feel it as though it were a living creature, breathing slowly. Exactly as my first visit had awakened me to the added power within this part of the earth, again I could feel it waiting for me to call on it.
Cassava’s laughter stopped as suddenly as it started. The ground below us sucked Peta, Cactus, and me down so we were trapped up to my waist and Peta’s belly.
Vines sprouted between the remaining tiles and wrapped around all three of us, binding us as tightly as any chain. They squeezed until I could barely breathe, but I kept following the paths mountain showed me. Deeper and deeper I reached, Spirit and Earth calling to me in tandem as I sought out what the mountain strove to show me.
“Lark, tell me you’ve got this,” Cactus wheezed out.
“Of course she does,” Peta snapped back.
Of course I did . . . the pathways all lit up inside my head and I saw how the two powers interconnected. How Spirit boosted Earth, how the mountain had come alive with so much Spirit poured into it.
The entity welcomed me home. The mountain stirred under us and I called it up, beckoned it to me. The world shook and I closed my eyes. In my mind I saw the earth swallow Cassava, and crush her beneath the mountain, saw the weight of the rocks and the earth end her life.
A roar filled my ears as all around us the ground swelled and ripped apart.
Screams rent the air. Power ripped through me, and the mountain bellowed, as if a large animal was released from a thousand-year cage.
“Hang on!” I yelled as the ground beneath us dropped. We floated as if we fell for ages. I didn’t let go of the power. I funneled it through the mountain. Everything I had, I gave. I opened myself like never before and the mountain crashed around us.
Child, you go too far. This was not what I wanted. The mother goddess spoke to me, her words hard.
Windburn (The Elemental Series Book 4) Page 19
