by A. W. Exley
Lettie continued to draw more water up through the floor until the room resembled a shallow pool. With each tremble of the building, water swished back and forth like a lazy tide. The salamanders tried to burn it off and steam spiralled up to the holes in the ceiling. But Lettie had the entire ocean at her call, and for every gallon they evaporated, she called forth two more.
Byron hurled balls of air at Lettie, but Grayson stepped in front of her with his cricket bat. A whack sounded as he sent a ball hurtling into the far wall.
Lettie glanced at him. “You’re rather handy with that.”
Grayson grinned. “I was captain of the university cricket team.”
“None of this matters, Lettie. Because I know how to destroy you.” Byron reached out a hand and curled his fist around the air. Then he lifted his arm high.
Grayson grunted at Lettie’s side, then he was torn from her as he shot up into the air. The doctor’s wide, panicked gaze sought Lettie as the sylph lifted him up until he was several feet off the ground. The cricket bat fell from his grasp and clattered to the floor. His face turned red and he clawed at his throat, but his hands were unable to relieve the invisible pressure on his air supply.
“Jasper!” Lettie screamed. The gargoyle had almost disappeared as he continued to break through the last few layers of rock and was unaware of what happened above his head.
“Let him go! It’s me you want!” Lettie yelled and lunged at Byron.
He bobbed up and out of her reach. Just as Jasper and Julian used to do when they played as children. But this time it wasn’t a favourite toy or hair ribbon dangled beyond her reach. It was the life of the man she loved.
“Oh, this is far more fun. Do you want to see what happens when you remove the air from a human’s lungs?” Byron drew in a long breath.
Lettie stared at Grayson as his skin changed from red to purple. His struggles became slower, weaker.
“No. I lost one man I loved to a sylph, I’ll not lose another,” Lettie whispered.
She closed her eyes and reached out to the ocean that surged under their feet. Then she surrendered to it.
Lettie inhaled a scream as pure rage consumed her. The ocean was a brutal mistress, and immense power flowed through her body. The salt water held an overriding desire to smash and destroy everything in its path, and that perfectly aligned with Lettie’s intent.
Water exploded through the subterranean cavern and shot upward, blasting Jasper back out of the hole and depositing him on the ballroom floor. The hole her brother had made crumbled at the edges to reveal the swirling, angry vortex below. Rocks were tossed back and forth, and spray rose up and misted the air.
Water flowed upward into tentacles that wrapped around Lettie’s legs and held her aloft. Her silken skirts merged with the foaming water, and she became the angry and turbulent sea.
Now free of the cavern, water surged upward and ate away at the hole in the floor. Walls tumbled backwards as foundations dissolved from beneath them. Rooms were revealed as though the skin of a banana was peeled away. More pieces of roof caved in when the supporting timbers were dislodged and thrown to the ground.
Jasper flew upward, wrapped his arms around Byron’s legs, and then using his far greater weight, dropped them both straight down and into the black gaping maw.
Samuel darted in and caught Grayson as his limp body plummeted.
Jasper and Byron disappeared into the dark water. Lettie sensed, rather than saw, him struggling to free himself from Jasper’s unbreakable grip. She was the ocean now, and Byron was in her domain.
“You sought to remove your element from Grayson, now let us see if you can breathe mine!” Lettie screamed as she commanded the salt water to find access to Byron’s body.
Through mouth, nose, ears, and eyes it flowed. Her element forced its way down his throat and into lungs and stomach. Deep in the flooded cavern, he clawed at his face and throat, just as Grayson had done.
She would destroy them all. Foundations and rock collapsed around the hole, but like a hungry mouth, the more it consumed the wider it grew. Underneath the mansion was a swirling sinkhole intent on devouring whatever was within its reach.
Lettie drew Byron tighter in her embrace. His eyes wide as water flowed into his sockets and every orifice. His clothes torn from his body by the bricks and rocks whirling by.
“I will give you a mouthful to keep you quiet,” she whispered in his ear as her ocean claimed him.
Jasper exploded from the void, pushing aside the constant rain of debris from above. He flew up next to Lettie, grabbed her around the waist, and tugged her free of the water spout. “Let it go, Lettie. It’s done.”
“No!” she screamed. She would consume everything until only sand remained. She was finally free. There was so much more of her, and she could swamp the land until only her element remained.
She clawed at her brother as his enormous wings beat to lift them both skyward. The salt water held her tight, and she was a toy pulled between two forces.
“Let go of the ocean, Lettie, please. You have done enough, and we need to save Grayson now.” Jasper’s stone arms strained to keep hold of his sister and to wrench her away from the voracious ocean.
Grayson. Did he still live?
With a sob, she ripped her mind free of the vast saltwater monster. She shook her head to clear her vision and searched for Grayson in the rain of bricks, tiles, and wood.
Lettie wrapped her arms around Jasper’s broad neck, and he flew higher as walls and the ceiling tumbled around them. Upward he soared until they were free of the mansion crumbling into the ground.
“Grayson, please be alive,” Lettie whispered, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
28
The ground shook and rolled below, the grass undulating with ripples. The crashes were made tangible by the strength of the vibrations in the air. Far beneath them, piece by piece the mansion dissolved and disappeared into the ground. Fires flared only to be extinguished as they hit the waves below. Voices cried out and people ran down the hill. Frightened staff supported one another as they hobbled clear of the destruction. A cloud of dust rose up and blotted out the stars.
Lettie watched the end of the Soarers’ reign as Jasper flew over the devastation. He landed in a clear paddock where the others waited. Lettie ran to Grayson as soon as her feet touched the ground.
“Grayson?” She stroked his face as Samuel laid him out on the ground. “Why doesn’t he answer me?”
Marjory knelt down and placed her fingers on Grayson’s neck. Then she sat back and shook her head. “He’s gone,” she whispered.
Lettie gathered Grayson’s limp body in her arms as tears obscured her vision. “No! You must save him. Dawn, please. I love him.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know how.” Dawn spread her hands, helpless.
“There might be a way if we work together, but I cannot guarantee the result,” Jasper said.
“Anything—please, Jasper!” Lettie didn’t care what he did, so long as it brought back the gentle doctor.
Jasper flexed his monstrous arms and then tapped a nail against his stone chest. “I dimly remember something Father once told me. The dead cannot be brought back without a spark of life. I’m going to give Grayson a piece of me. It will be the seed that Dawn can nurture with her gift.”
Jasper used his nail to dig into his granite construction. He grunted as he carved a sliver of stone from over his heart. He held up the fragment, shaped somewhat like a flat nail.
“Open his shirt,” Jasper said as he knelt behind Dawn.
Lettie cradled Grayson’s head on her lap while Dawn unbuttoned his shirt and pulled the two sides apart, revealing his pale chest.
Jasper positioned himself behind his mate, so she was tucked into the protective arc of his arms and torso. He picked up her right hand and laid it on Grayson’s forehead, underneath his own large hand.
“He’s fortunate he’s dead for this, because it’s going to hurt.”
Then with his left hand, he pushed the sliver of gargoyle stone through Grayson’s skin and muscle. He kept on going, even as his finger sank into flesh, until surely the shard had pierced the doctor’s heart. When he withdrew his hand, he took Dawn’s other one and pressed it over the wound.
“Imagine the shard is a seed that you want to germinate. Do your best,” he whispered. “For Grayson and for Lettie.”
The Cor-vitis vine that bound the couple sprang to life and curled around Dawn’s and Jasper’s arms. The luminous green plant sprouted tiny leaves as it touched the two souls it had chosen. The mystical plant was normally invisible except to its chosen pairing. But when the Lord Warder and the heart worked together, the Cor-vitis became a beautiful thing, visible to all.
Jasper’s wings extended and sheltered them while Dawn worked. She whispered to herself as she summoned her Elemental gift. As a child, Dawn had thought she possessed a green thumb with her ability to grow plants. Only when she moved to Ravenswing Manor and learned of her true heritage as a Meidh did she realise her gift went far deeper.
Lettie prayed to Gaia, begging her to release Grayson’s soul back to them. She couldn’t survive losing the man she loved.
A soft green light emanated from the intricate pattern covering Dawn and Jasper. Their joined hands glowed brighter and brighter as though they held a captured a star. The glowing lines radiated out from under their hands at Grayson’s head and chest. The same pattern that the couple wore drew itself over the doctor’s body. Lines disappeared under his clothing as the Cor-vitis raced over his skin until the light coming off him made Lettie squint and avert her face.
A flash of green burst from the small group and lit the sky above the paddock, as though they had freed the fabled aurora borealis of the far north. Lettie looked up in wonder at the different hues of green that swirled and danced like a Cor-vitis drawn in the clouds, until it slowly faded to nothing.
In the silence came the gasp of air being drawn into lungs. Then Grayson’s head bounced on Lettie’s lap. She bent down as the doctor rolled to his side, coughing.
“Grayson!” Lettie flung her arms around him. Tears of joy obscured her vision. Dawn had given him life.
“Let me breathe before you start squeezing me so tight,” he said, thumping his chest with a fist.
“I’m never going to let you go,” she whispered as he rolled onto his back.
“Why does it feel like someone shoved a knife into my heart?” He sat up and rubbed his chest. The small slit where Jasper inserted the piece of himself had closed over and healed. The scar dipped in the middle like tiny pair of outspread wings.
“We’ll explain that later.” Lettie curled her hands in Grayson’s hair, pulled his head to hers, and kissed him. She used her lips and tongue to convey all those things that jumbled in her mind and couldn’t make it past her throat.
“I love you,” she said at last, when she had to release him to catch his breath.
Grayson stroked her face. “I always have and always will love you.”
Jasper held out a granite hand. “Let’s get you back to Samuel’s house before you two forget you’re sitting in a paddock.”
“What of people injured in the fall of the mansion?” Grayson stared at the space where spires and turrets once punctuated the air. Now there was nothing except a lingering cloud of dust.
“They can cope without you for a few hours. Soarers will look after their own, and we will have the villagers to assist with the Ocram staff.” Samuel gestured to the road, where a stream of horses and carts were headed to the site of the disaster.
“A few hours, but no more,” Grayson murmured, his moustache wrinkled at the idea of not rushing to attend those in need.
Dawn took Lettie’s hand in both of hers. “I have something for you. Something that was stolen from you and that you thought lost forever. Now, I return it to you.”
Then her friend pressed something tiny into her palm. Dawn stepped back to stand by Jasper.
Lettie frowned and stared at her curled fingers. Her palm itched. She unfurled her fist and at first couldn’t comprehend what she held.
A tiny seed wriggled and squirmed on her skin. It danced as though to silent music. Then the outer shell burst open and a silver rivulet poured into her cupped hand. Tributaries sprang off the main river, raced across her palm, and wound around her wrist. The delicate streak of water jumped from Lettie to Grayson and raced over his body.
She stared at Dawn in wonder, and new tears ran down her face as the Cor-vitis seed revealed that Grayson was her mate.
“How?” was all she could whisper as she watched the wondrous map drawn in silver over their arms.
“Ava never stole your seed, but her roots dug into your mind and convinced you it was gone forever. I could see it when I arrived yesterday, but wondered why you didn’t seem aware of it. I realised I needed give it back to you in the same manner that Ava stripped you of it.”
“What is it?” Grayson asked, holding up his hand as mercury raced over his skin.
“Something truly wondrous. I shall explain it when we return to the house and are alone.” Lettie’s heart was full.
A few hours later in Grayson’s bedroom, a sated and happy Lettie curled up next to the doctor. She marvelled at how the Cor-vitis flowed over her skin and drew delicate patterns. On Dawn and Jasper it was a green plant with reaching tendrils and leaves. But on her and Grayson, it reflected her beloved water element as a silver stream with rills, ponds, and waterfalls. “I still don’t understand how any of this is possible. Ava stole the seed from me years ago, long before I ever met you. How could it have germinated without me even knowing it was there?”
Grayson tugged a pillow up behind him and pulled her closer. “I think I can explain that. I used to play with Elijah while my father tended to you. I told you about the first day I met you, when I skinned my knee while you were walking in the garden with Father. I remember you kissed my forehead and told me everything would be all right. That was the day I told Father I was going to rescue you from the ogre and marry you. That was the first time we touched, and what if that was the day this strange plant germinated?”
How miraculous that the Cor-vitis had sprung into life all those years ago when she kissed the young Grayson. And now, both their childhood dreams had come true.
At first light the next morning, the group rode out to the Ocram mansion. Or what had once been the mansion. The trapped ocean had carved an enormous crater the size of a lake. Like a giant boiled egg that had the top lopped off, the hill had been sliced clean and scooped out.
“Soarers have their heads in the clouds but forget their feet are on the earth,” Lettie murmured.
Without Samuel’s work over the years, it would never have been possible. He had undermined their sanctuary while they sneered and laughed at him.
The salt water had abandoned the cavern it made and returned to the ocean where it could stretch and roam for miles. The cavity was now washed by fresh water and looked like an ancient excavation. Part of a stairway jutted up and went nowhere. Pieces of wall still had wallpaper clinging to the side. A chair did a solo dance and then was pulled down and disappeared beneath the surface.
Lettie glanced to Jasper, whose stone face was unreadable. “Do you think their phoenix is down there?”
When she was paired with the ocean, she had consumed Byron Ocram but had no recollection of sensing the phoenix within the whirlpool she had birthed.
He crossed his arms and watched the few people who came to see what happened. “We never saw it escape, and a fiery bird would have been obvious blazing across the sky last night. The Soarers are ruined without it. Let us hope they retreat back to where they came from originally.”
“Most of the staff ran out before the mansion collapsed. Only a few had minor injuries,” Samuel said. The two gargoyles had spent the night with the villagers, ensuring the injured were looked after and surreptitiously trying to determine how many Soarers remain
ed.
“What of Ocram?” Grayson took Lettie’s hand and rubbed a faint silvery line with his thumb.
Jasper climbed back onto the saddle of his horse and picked up the reins. “Gone. As well as a handful of others who were still in the ballroom when the entire floor collapsed. Lettie used the ocean to sweep them all to the bottom of the sinkhole, and they are in Gaia’s embrace now.”
Lettie shuddered to think of how the ocean had controlled her. She climbed into the gig next to Grayson and then turned to Samuel, who rode beside them. “How did Rachel bear it? The ocean is so powerful, I thought it would tear me apart.”
He smiled, his attention on the North Sea, stretching along the horizon. “Saltwater undines are tempestuous like the ocean. Great rage is balanced by great passion. She felt everything to the extreme, and there were days I was glad to be made of rock.”
Lettie shivered and rubbed a hand over her arms. She was glad to return to peaceful water sources like the lake and the deep spring water that fed the village well.
They travelled back to the house and congregated in the parlour. There was much to be discussed. They would help the village through the next few days and weeks, as they removed Ocram’s hold on Whiterock. The Soarers had fallen, but revenge was a pendulum, and they had to prepare for it to swing back the other way.
“It’s never over, is it? You strike at them, they strike at you. At least you have a physician in the family now,” Grayson said.
The balance still needed to be redressed, but Lettie didn’t want to think about that. She had more immediate concerns. “What exactly is Grayson now?”
Jasper sat on the arm of the sofa as Dawn settled upon it. “An honorary gargoyle. I told you matches between Elemental and human are rare. But when they happen, Gaia finds a way. The piece of me acts as a bridge between Elemental and human and will allow him to share your life force.”