That he would even dare was the last drop in an overflowing bucket of no more patience.
I grabbed his hand and twisted it backward, the snap of bone clear as a bell in the still air. “Don’t ever try to hurt her again, Cactus. I will choose her every time. Do you understand?”
His jaw dropped, but I didn’t let go of the arm I’d broken. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He whispered the word and I let him go.
Standing, I turned back to the crowd. Flint began a slow clap. “To defend a familiar like that. Brilliant, Lark, it’s the way it should be done.”
I held a hand out for Peta and she leapt into my arms. “You wouldn’t really kill him over me, would you?” She blinked up at me.
I touched a hand to her back. “Yes. I would.”
Her eyes widened farther, and through the bond I felt her surprise.
Flint smiled. “Just to be clear, I’ve always liked Peta.”
I stepped away from Cactus and headed to where Shazer waited. “Flint, I doubt that very much. As long as you treat her well now, that’s all that matters.”
“You’d doubt me?”
I turned and glanced back at him. “The charm of a Salamander is legendary. We all know it. I won’t be charmed, Flint. I will take you at face value. End of story.”
His smile slipped and he gave me a slow bow from his waist. “So between you and me, nothing but truth.”
“Between you and me, nothing but truth. No matter how hard.” I didn’t bow back.
His grin grew. “You and I are going to be good friends, sister. I look forward to years of arguing with you.”
I burst out laughing, caught off guard by his words. Bella smiled and lifted a hand, which caught everyone’s attention.
“As queen of the Rim, I welcome all Salamanders to our home as a place to recoup and wait for your home to be safe once more.”
Flint nodded. “Thank you. We will take you up on your offer.”
The crowd shifted, looking from one to another. As if they weren’t sure if they could follow Flint without a trial by fire. The way they chose their leader was sheer strength. Then again, he’d fought Fiametta and she’d been the one to fall.
They would soon see he was strong enough. Or maybe they’d seen enough in the cavern. I shook my head; what did it matter to me who ruled the Salamanders?
Worm shit, I did not want to be a meddler. A tiny voice I recognized as my own piped up.
Too late, idiot.
Bella tipped her head to one side. “We are family, even though we are sustained by different elements. If we do not stand with each other, who will?”
The Salamanders murmured their agreement. Bella and Flint got the people organized, setting them off in groups, sending those who could travel the easiest and fastest ahead of the rest.
None of it really mattered to me; I had a job to do. And Ash to find. His name tightened in my belly. How many days since I’d thought of him? In all the chaos and fighting, I’d barely had time to consider how much closer I was to the mother goddess helping me.
I reached Shazer and ran a hand over his neck. He head-butted me in the belly lightly.
“Is your sister coming with us?”
“It is her choice,” I said. “She’s my queen; I can’t stop her.”
Footsteps on the grass turned me around. I expected Bella. What I got was an agitated and fired-up Cactus.
“You seriously are going to just leave me here?” he spluttered. “Like I’m nothing to you?”
I leaned my head against the Pegasus. “I would rather bed Shazer at this point than you, Cactus. At least I know I can trust him not to try to manipulate me.”
Shazer snorted. “Don’t tempt me, you have a lovely ass.”
I rolled my eyes and slapped a hand against his hide. “Don’t try to help.”
Cactus stared at me, his hair matted with blood, his face burned and his eyes as angry as I’d ever seen them. A sudden thought rolled through my head. His behavior was just off enough to make me think he was being an ass. But what if he had been affected too? Like Scar, Finley, and the others? I reached out to take his hand and he pulled me toward him.
I pushed a pulse of Spirit through him, looking for something that controlled him other than his own thoughts.
Nothing resided in him.
Everything he was doing was just Cactus being a prick. I pulled back, sadder than I’d been in a long time. “Cactus, we are friends, but you are putting even that to the test.”
“I’m the one putting it to the test? You ask me to come to the Pit, I get injured trying to help you, and you won’t even heal me? What kind of friend is that?” He was yelling and people were looking. If he thought causing a scene was going to bother me, he had another think thing coming.
I put a hand to his chest and shoved, sending him back a good ten feet. “What kind of friend tries to manipulate someone he says he loves? What kind of friend is okay with her losing a piece of her soul for the sake of his vanity? Piss the hell off, Cactus, and stay out of my life. Do you understand? Because the next time you come at me, I won’t hold back. You tried to hurt Peta. You tried to manipulate me time and again. I change my mind. We are not friends. I do not want you in my life. Got it, Prick?”
He pushed himself up, and brushed his hands over his legs. “Yeah. I got it. Bitch.” He walked away, without a single look back.
“Finally,” Peta muttered.
I fought the bitter laugh that teased at my mouth. Peta was right. Finally was the only word that fit. After all this time, Cactus finally understood that we were done. We could have been friends, but he’d broken that too when he’d tried to hurt her.
Like the idiot he was, he thought I’d forget all he’d done because he batted his green eyes at me.
Shazer yawned. “You have a way with men, you know that?”
“You have no idea,” I muttered, thinking of Coal. And suddenly afraid that maybe I was the asshole. What would happen when Ash and I were together again? Would I chase him off too?
“Relax. I would tell you if it was your fault,” Peta said, obviously picking up on my train of thought.
Shazer nodded. “Agreed. He’s a giant dick. You were right to send him away.”
I smiled, but the edges of it fell. “Right. Let’s get going. There is no way the Eyrie won’t be waiting on us. I’d hate to disappoint them.”
I mounted up on Shazer’s back and tightened my legs around his sides, urging him forward.
He paused. “What about Bella?”
I spotted her a good distance away. “She was with me to play the diplomat. To help things go smoothly. You think the Eyrie will go any smoother than the Deep or the Pit?”
He shook his head. “No, but she’s going to be pissed when she realizes you’re gone without her.”
I urged him forward again and he started his wind-up gallop. Bella spun as the sound of his hooves on the earth filled the air.
“Larkspur!”
I lifted a hand to her. “Be safe, Bella.”
Shazer leapt into the air, and I pointed a finger at Flint. He saluted me, and I knew for better or worse, he was a part of our family. Maybe he always had been. I shook my head at the thoughts swirling through it.
Peta slid down my shoulder to sit in front of me, her paws resting on Shazer’s neck. “Three of the five stones collected. Is the final stone where you left it?”
Shazer’s ears perked up. “You had a stone already?”
“The pink diamond. But I hid it away.”
“Smart.” He bobbed his head as he angled his wings to take advantage of a current of air. “Even though you know they’re addictive, they would still begin to work on you.”
Peta’s tail twitched almost spasmodically. “Lark isn’t stupid. She’s been careful with the stones right from the beginning. Unlike these other fools who wear them as if they aren’t capable of ruling otherwise.”
I placed a hand on her. “Not their faul
t, either. Not really. None of us understood what the stones were truly for until it was too late.”
And that was the crux of it. In that, what Talan had said was right: it was my fault all this had happened. I’d given the stones to the leaders of the four families without any thought to there being a consequence. I shook my head as the guilt piled on my shoulders.
“Where is Blackbird in all this? We have seen neither hide nor hair of him, though he is hunting the same stones,” Peta asked suddenly, breaking my line of thought.
I rubbed a hand on one thigh. “I’m hoping he is behind us somewhere, the Rim or the Deep, looking and not realizing the stone is gone.”
Peta yawned, her tiny jaw cracking wide. “Wishful thinking. What are you really thinking?”
The thing I’d not been able to dismiss rose out of my mouth. “That he’s waiting for me to gather all five stones and then take them from me. A single fight he knows he will win, rather than tiring himself out on four different rulers.”
“Exactly,” she whispered. “That was my thought exactly.”
There was something that bothered me, though. “There are still things that don’t fit.”
“Like what?” Shazer threw the question back.
“Let’s go through this logically,” I said. “Bella fought me, and then our father lost what was left of his mind. From there, we went to the Deep where Finley set an assassin on me, we fought her, and then two Sylphs attacked us. In the Pit, we faced Scar who was being manipulated and then Fiametta who, like my father, had lost her mind.” I paused and replayed the events over and over in my head, and only two notes stood out. “Each time, there has been a personal connection when I faced a ruler. My father. Scar. Bella. Finley. Except for the Sylphs who showed up at the Deep. They were no one I knew. There was nothing personal about that attack. Which tells me . . .”
“You aren’t dealing with a single enemy, but two.” Shazer’s words were clear in the high, crisp air.
Two enemies, neither of which I was entirely certain I knew. But I couldn’t deny Shazer was right, as much as I wished he were wrong.
I nodded.
“Exactly.”
CHAPTER 17
he Himalayan Mountains reared into the sky in front of us. I pressed a hand against Shazer’s neck. “I think we should land away from the Eyrie and see if we can get a look at the situation before we make any decisions.”
He gave me a quick nod and spiraled out of the clouds. Peta shivered against me, though I doubted it had to do with the air temperature.
“What is it?”
“This place was not good to us. To either of us, and I doubt this time will be any better. It makes my tail puff up.”
I grimaced. I couldn’t disagree with her. To say I’d left the Eyrie on bad terms last time was an understatement. I’d essentially killed their old queen, destroyed their mountain home, and walked away without any form of punishment. And Samara, the new queen, had been clear that if I dared show my face again, my life would be forfeit.
“Peta, did you come back here after I was banished?”
“No. It is the one place I didn’t study. Their library was destroyed when you and Cassava fought, and I wasn’t sure Samara’s threat didn’t apply to me as well.” She sniffed. “I could have snuck in and they’d have never known. But like I said, there was nothing to look at. The library is gone.”
Shazer swept down the last few feet to an open valley that was far enough away from where the Eyrie had been that I thought we’d be unnoticed. He dropped down the last bit, his wings tucked in tight to his sides, and did a double hop that bounced me off his back. I landed in a crouch, but on my feet, and Peta grinned from where she clung to him. “Reflexes like a cat; you’re getting there.”
A half smile turned my lips up as I stood. “How far are we from the Eyrie?”
Peta ran up Shazer’s neck, stopped on his head and lifted onto her back legs, peering toward the mountain. Not that standing on two feet would give her a better vantage point. Like a meerkat investigating the lay of the land for danger, she swayed and bobbed, but remained upright as she scanned the area around us. I raised my eyebrows, surprised that Shazer held still for her to use him essentially as a step stool.
He grunted, as if he realized what was going on, and shook his head. She clung to him with her back feet, shocking me that she was still upright. “Hold still, hay bag.”
“Hay bag? I just flew you two around the world the last few days. Show a little respect. Pussy.”
She tightened her back claws in the top of his head. “The Eyrie is two valleys over. Assuming the Sylphs stayed in the same mountain.”
“They’d have to,” I said. “They are tied to it, as surely as the Undines are tied to the Deep. They would have had to rebuild in the same place to keep their people from going mad with homesickness.”
“Take your stinking, dirty cat claws off me, you dirty stinking cat,” Shazer drawled.
Peta flicked her tail. “Make me, oat eater.”
I rolled my eyes and put a hand to the ground while they bickered like an old married couple. Without thought, I called on my connection to the earth. Would it buck and fight me? The power waiting for me there was thick with the same entity I’d felt before.
A sentient being that seemed to be the mountain itself. But that wasn’t possible. Was it? The mother goddess was the mother goddess, there was no other being—
Illusions, Larkspur. Your world is an illusion that shall soon be shattered in a way you could not understand before now.
I froze where I was, as if I’d been covered in ice for a thousand years. I didn’t dare move. “Who are you? You’ve spoken to me in the Deep and the Pit, as well as twice here.”
Peta meowed at me. “Who are you talking to?”
I didn’t answer her. “Tell me who you are.”
The presence shifted and rolled, tugging at me with the strength of the world behind it. We are the ones from which your power comes. We are the beginning. And we will be the end.
I swallowed hard. “Are you helping me?”
Peta crept to my side and crawled into my lap, “Lark, who are you talking—”
Yes, I was there in the Pit. You fight a battle that no one sees yet, Lark. The one who calls herself the mother goddess is not to be trusted.
Peta’s jaw dropped. “Sweet savory catnip, you aren’t talking to yourself, are you?”
The voice chuckled softly. Peta, we see you. Your ties to Lark are deeper than any familiar. Your souls are entwined as they were meant to be.
Peta clenched her paws and her tiny claws dug into my vest. “You are the voice I hear when I sleep.”
I am. Be strong, little cat, and do not let the fear of losing Lark overtake you; you will never be without her again. There was a pause and in that moment, worry slipped off Peta. Through the bond, I felt her relax. I hadn’t even known she was so afraid, and yet now that it was gone I could easily see the way she stood a little straighter, her eyes shining brighter.
Lark’s power has woken us from a long sleep, one that buried us to keep us silent. And now we will guide you both as best we can.
We. I thought there was a feeling of more than one entity. Male and female.
Yes. We represent all.
“The Eyrie, I have to retrieve the final stone.” I paused. “Do you have . . . advice?”
The stones are needed, but not for what you believe. A shudder rolled through the mountain and the voice fell silent.
I waited for several minutes, on the off chance they would say anything more. Finally I lifted my hands from the ground. “Well, that was . . . interesting.”
Peta nodded and we both looked at Shazer, whose eyes were wide as saucers.
“Who the hell were you two talking to?”
I shrugged. “Don’t really know.”
He flipped his muzzle at me. “Take a guess.”
“The mountain, I think.”
Peta nodded. “Yes, that�
�s as close a guess as any.”
His eyelids fluttered. “If you both hadn’t heard the voice, I’d have said Lark was losing her marbles. As it is, any good news from the . . . mountain?”
I laughed at his careful wording. “Just that the stones are needed, but not for what I think.”
“That doesn’t help us get into the Eyrie without being struck down by lightning, does it?” he pointed out.
“No, but I have an idea.” I smiled at him. “Think you could do a loop over the Eyrie and get some idea of the layout?”
He snorted and stomped a foot. “So just I get the lightning?”
“I don’t think they will strike you. Not without me on your back.”
He rolled his eyes. “The words, I don’t think, are not exactly reassuring.”
“Best I’ve got. I’m not going to lie to you.” I stood. “If you don’t want to do it, I understand.”
He grunted, spun and galloped away, leaping into the air at the edge of the clearing. Peta sat beside me. “He’s as prideful as any Sylph.”
“Yeah, but it works in my favor from time to time.” I walked to the edge of the clearing, my eyes going to the sky every few steps. I couldn’t see him, and I hoped he would be okay.
“He’s smarter than he looks.” Peta trotted ahead of me.
I changed the subject. “What, or who, do you think that was? The mountain, yes, but under that . . . what the hell are we dealing with here, Peta?”
She jumped onto a downed log, and sat. “Powerful, we know that much. Tied to at least two mountains. And your power woke them up. But when?”
I thought back to the times I’d used everything I had. “When I destroyed the Eyrie, that was when I heard the voice the first time. Again in the Deep, and then in the Pit when I was fighting with Fiametta and the mountain was collapsing.” And one other time that I hadn’t thought of in years.
“I see your face. There is more, tell me.”
“When I faced the shadow walker, during my banishment. I destroyed a fair bit of real estate and I felt the presence. It was distinctly male then, but there were no words, just raw power.”
Rootbound (The Elemental Series, Book 5) Page 16