Pamela (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 3)

by Mayer, Shannon

  Slaves. The word echoed through me, and I knew it was from the mother goddess. “They would make us slaves,” I whispered as if they were listening right now.

  “Goddess.” Oka shook her head. “You are strong enough to be an asset to them. Do you think Raven knows?”

  I shook my head and backed away from the closet like it was a monster ready to reach out and drag me in. “I don’t know.” I wanted to believe he wouldn’t. That he wouldn’t have allowed for me to be used like that, but I couldn’t be sure. He was my father by blood, not by love. I paused and pulled my dark purple cloak out of the closet. With a swirl I whipped it around my back and settled it on my shoulders.

  “Any suggestions on how to make myself invisible? I don’t want to do it like Raven.” I glanced at Oka.

  She tipped her head to one side. “You can see the colors of the elements as they are being used?”

  “Yes.”

  “What colors did Raven use when he showed you this trick?”

  I had to think. “Air and Spirit.”

  “Maybe look in the mirror and do it.” Her suggestion had me moving before she even finished speaking.

  The tall gilded mirror was over double my height. I stared into it, and for a moment, I didn’t recognize myself. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in so long, I didn’t realize I’d left childhood behind.

  I was a warrior woman with a fierce edge to her face that so resembled Rylee, it would be easy for people to think we were related by blood, even though we most certainly were not.

  The black pants and boots, the top, the cloak, it all fed into an image I realized I saw myself as. I was not the pretty witch Milly was, loving the long flowing dresses, and I was not the bad ass of Rylee where nothing I wore was anything but functional. I was somewhere in between.

  I raised my one hand and called up the two elements I would need to accomplish what I wanted. Carefully I wove the power of Air and of Spirit together, doing what I remembered seeing Raven doing. Only I couldn’t get it quite right.

  “Damn it.” The two elements slid away from me, like water through my fingers. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a slow breath. “Oka, I don’t think I can pull the shadows around me like he did.”

  She was quiet a moment. “Could you make it more reflective? So people actually don’t see you?”

  “You mean like actually invisible?” I breathed out that last word. “I don’t know. Is it possible?”

  “Anything is possible, Pamela. Just a matter of figuring it out.” She patted my cheek with one soft paw.

  “Sometimes you sound a lot older than you are.” I laughed and she shrugged.

  “Cats are like that.”

  I pressed my palms together, thinking about all the training I’d had. If there was a spell I could twist . . . Raven’s that he’d shown me when he’d shadowed himself was the closest I could use as a pattern, but I didn’t want to bring the shadows to me. What pushed shadows away?

  Light.

  I lifted my hands. “This is either going to work, or I’m going to light myself on fire.”

  “Oh, that’s reassuring.” Oka leapt from my shoulder. I frowned at her.

  “So little faith?”

  She took a few more steps away until she was almost under the bed. Cowering. “I’ve endured being burned once. I don’t think I want to do it again.” Her eyes flicked away from mine.

  Right, I’d forgotten about that. “Sorry.”

  “Just be careful.” She ducked under the bed completely, nothing visible but her pale blue eyes.

  I turned and stared into the mirror. I could do this.

  I had to do this. I wiggled my fingers as I called the three elements together. Air and Fire snapped and crackled around one another. “Light,” I whispered. “I need light, not heat.”

  Almost immediately the orange-red of the flames changed, shifting into a bright pulsing light that was no longer heating my palm. I curled my fingers around the two elements and then brought Spirit to the forefront of my fingers. Like feeding one drop of water at a time into a bucket, I let Spirit trickle into the other two elements until they were indistinguishable.

  I blew out a slow breath, and gripped the cloak on either side of me.

  “All or nothing,” I said as I pushed the elements gently into my cloak. For just a moment, the skeins of fabric flared, as though hot embers were lit up within them. The light raced through every fiber of the cloak until the whole thing glowed and I continued to feed the power through the material because it felt like the job was . . . not done.

  “Use the other two elements,” Oka said suddenly. “Douse the flames with Water and Earth and Spirit.”

  “How?”

  “One hand to feed the light, the other hand to douse it.”

  I knew she was right, even though there was no way she could have known. I felt it in my very bones that what she said was the trick to this spell.

  I kept pushing the first three elements through my right hand, and slowly on my left I gathered Earth, Water, and Spirit. I say that like it was easy. Splitting Spirit between the two hands was hard enough on its own, never mind when I was handling the other elements too.

  Sweat dripped from my face as I wove the two distinct magicks on either side of me, all for a cloak? But I knew it was more than that. This was much more than that. My arms shook and the muscles in them contracted and spasmed as I controlled the magic in me to an extent that I’d never done before. Even when I’d healed others, there had always been a wildness to it. Raw power.

  This was like . . . threading a needle with a piece of silk while I stood on the bow of a bucking ship. There was a balance, but keeping it was nearly impossible.

  Which made it all that much more important that I hold it together. I finally gave in to the urge to close my eyes. My breath came in ragged gulps and I knew I was nearing the end of my ability.

  How did I wrap this spell up, though? I was already using all five elements.

  “I don’t want to cloak myself in shadows.” The words escaped me as I went to my knees and I lost control of the magick in my hands. The five elements didn’t leave me in a blast, they didn’t destroy my room. No, they just faded, into the cloak, and I sat under it gasping for breath.

  Oka padded over to me, put her paws on my thighs and pressed her nose to mine. “You did it.”

  I stared at her, then twisted to look at the cloak. The deep purple material was still visible to me. “I can still see it.”

  She shook her head. “But I can’t. It is tuned to you. Except for your head, the rest of you is quite hard to see. If I stare straight at you, it is like my eyes want to slide away. Like I’m seeing things.”

  I pulled the cloak around me, scooped her up and put her onto my shoulder. I walked to the mirror and stared into the glass.

  “Holy shit.” I lifted a hand, but even though my hand wasn’t under the cloak, there was an indistinctness to it. Like seeing something far away under water. You knew it was there, but you could be fooled into believing you were seeing things.

  Even as I stared, the cloak shifted and shimmered.

  I was not fully invisible, but so close that I was splitting hairs. And the cloak and its ability to hide me were a hell of a lot better than just waltzing out there and trying to snoop. I turned to one side and the movement of the cloak made it look like a breeze had rippled something.

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  “No kidding. You think it will fool enough of the Sylphs to get by them?” Oka tipped her head.

  “Only one way to find out.” I walked to the door and put my hand on the knob. “You ready for this?”

  She gave a purr. “Ready.”

  I turned the knob, opened the door, and froze with my feet on the threshold.

  In the distance, I could hear yelling, screaming and . . . fighting.

  Without hesitation I ran toward the noises. Because there was not one voice I recognized, but two.

  Raven.
/>   And Lark.

  CHAPTER 19

  MOVING THROUGH THE clouds and mist of the Eyrie, my legs could not take me fast enough toward the voices, toward Lark and Raven as they battled. I passed several Sylphs also running the same way. By the time I reached the place with all the commotion, the crowd was huge and I couldn’t see past all the bodies. I shoved my way through and the Sylphs looked around, but their eyes skated over me, not seeing me under my cloak.

  A bolt of lightning cut through the sky right before I reach the front of the throng.

  Words flowed around us that I heard, but didn’t have time to process.

  Lark’s voice above the others. I saw her standing in the middle of the circle of Sylphs, blood on her hands, her back to me, her body tense. Peta was beside her in her snow leopard form and to the right of them both was Raven . . .

  I stared at him. Saw the blood on him, the wounds in his belly and the way he was hunched over himself.

  “Samara,” Lark said, “do you hear this?”

  The queen nodded. “I hear it.” She stepped beside Lark and laid a hand on her arm. “You will kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  My throat tightened along with my fists. Lark was my friend, and she said she would mentor me . . . years from now. But Raven was my father . . . and teaching me now what I needed to do, and if I let him die . . . then I would once more be years away from mentoring. Assuming that he was right about his skills, though, it would not matter if Lark taught me or not.

  “Oka, what do I do?”

  Raven’s head lolled to the side, and for a moment, I thought maybe he’d heard my voice. I took a chance and started forward. If he was going to die, then I wanted to at least see his face once more.

  “Do you believe in your heart he is your father?” Oka’s question burned through me like a fire I couldn’t put out.

  Yes. I didn’t speak the word, but I didn’t need to.

  There was another man in the circle with Lark and Raven. I didn’t recognize him but it didn’t matter. He was trying to stop Lark from killing Raven.

  My father lifted his head and looked at Lark. “You were always my favorite, Lark. I wanted us to be on the same side, through this all. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Those words, I felt the truth of them even as Lark raised her spear.

  Her eyes were hard, and her body set. “Then you should have tried harder to do what was right.”

  He bowed his head and as he slumped to the ground I leapt forward, my decision made.

  Raven’s knees hit the stones and I swept the cloak over him, effectively making him disappear.

  A scream of fury erupted out of Lark, like no sound I’d ever heard.

  Oka’s claws dug into me. “Hurry, or Peta will smell us here.”

  I tightened my hold on Raven and helped him move. Hunched over, we barely fit under the cloak and I wondered a few times if Sylphs saw us with the way their eyes narrowed before looking away. Or maybe if they saw the drops of blood on the stone before the cloud covered our path, and wondered where they came from.

  I got us all the way back to my room and shut the door. I leaned against it, breathing hard.

  With a quick jerk, I swept the cloak from my body and stared at the man who was my father. On his knees, his whole body shuddered, as though he’d been electrocuted.

  Words echoed through the room suddenly, sharply. Samara was speaking, and even though she wasn’t with us, her command was.

  Raven will be killed on sight.

  I closed my eyes and struggled against the tears. Why was I upset? That my father was a monster?

  Or that I’d saved him for my own uses?

  Slowly, he lifted his head, his blue eyes pain-filled. “Why did you save me?”

  I stared at him while I struggled to find the right words and then I finally just spoke the truth. “You are my father.”

  We locked eyes and I saw the surprise in his, and the uncertainty. “And you heard everything I said?”

  “Some of it,” I said.

  “That I plan to take over the world of the elementals?” His eyes were still uncertain. Like he was afraid of me, or maybe just afraid of what I’d say. Or what I’d think.

  I nodded, taking a moment to recall the scene between him and Lark clearly. Everything had happened so fast that the words had bounced around my head like white noise at the time. My focus had been getting to the front of the group of Sylphs, and then seeing Raven on his knees had shook me. “Some. That you didn’t really love Samara. But were those lies?”

  Raven didn’t move from his knees. “Yes and no. Lark is . . . she is more powerful than I realized when it comes to Spirit. She forced some uncomfortable truths from me. But they were old truths. Remember that, Pam. That you can be forced to speak truth, but you can choose it too.”

  I didn’t truly understand what he meant. It didn’t matter. I’d made my choice and saved him after hearing what Lark had forced from him. Even if the words he’d spoken hadn’t registered fully at the time.

  He put one hand on his knee and looked down at his belly and the gaping wounds. “This is quite the mess. Are you any good at healing?”

  There was a knock on the door, and it started to open before I could say anything. I grabbed my cloak from the ground and swept it around Raven. He was gone from sight as Samara stepped into the room.

  I bowed my head, both in deference but also to hide any guilt that might reside in my eyes.

  “Pamela,” she said my name softly. “I come bearing bad news.”

  I kept my head down. “I was there. I saw . . . I saw him disappear.”

  She sucked in a short breath. “And do you know who he is?”

  I had to lift my head now. I had to look her in the eye. “He is my father, I think.”

  Surprise flickered over her features. “Yes, he is. Which means you are the half-sibling to my child.” Her hands flickered over her belly. “I will give you sanctuary from him, if you would ever need it.”

  “Thank you.” The words were hard to utter past the choking feeling of betrayal. She would give me her protection as Raven sat under my cloak only feet from her. “I am sorry,” I whispered, because what else was there to say?

  She nodded and closed her eyes. “I must go. But you may stay with us as long as you like. We have Sylphs who could teach you great things. If you are half as powerful as Raven made you out to be.” Her eyes flicked over me and then she turned and left the room as suddenly as she’d come.

  Or they would make me their slave. I kept that thought to myself.

  From the bed, Oka let out a meow, drawing my eyes to her. “She was checking to see if he was here.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  I reached for the purple cloak and dragged it off Raven. His eyes lifted to mine. “That is twice now you’ve stood between me and danger.”

  “Don’t make me regret it.” I reached out and put my hands on his belly wounds, closing them over with only a mere push of my abilities. I frowned as I healed him. “Normally this takes more out of me, it . . . is harder.”

  Raven dropped his hands to the floor and searched around until they closed over the cloak. “Did you make this?”

  I leaned back from him and watched as his skin knitted over with a speed I’d never accomplished before. Not ever.

  “Yes.”

  He slid the cloth through his fingers and shook his head. “Unbelievable. How did you make it?”

  “You really think this is the time?” I snapped the question, fear rising in me that we would not be able to get away. Because just like in the Pit, there was no way to Ride Spirit out of here. We would have to walk from the Eyrie until we were far enough away that we could travel. And just how in hell’s name were we going to do that when Raven was to be killed on sight?

  It was as if he read my mind.

  “We will be fine. We’ll use your cloak and mine, and they won’t see us.” He pushed to his feet, went to the door, and flicked
the lock shut. For just a moment, fear raced through me. This was the man Lark wanted to kill, who I had stolen from her. I stared at his back and slowly pulled the sword from its sheath. I leveled it at him, putting the point in the middle of his spine.

  “You said you were one of the bad guys. Tell me why you wanted to kill Lark.”

  He went still as a statue, except for his head which he turned so he could look at me. “You would run me through now, after saving me?”

  “I want the truth. Not some trumped-up version of it. But the truth.”

  A sigh slipped out of him. “I can’t give you all the truth, Pamela. It isn’t for you, and it isn’t for Lark. Not yet.”

  “Try.” I spit the word at him.

  He lifted both hands, palms up, and slowly turned. “It is the bane of any hero’s existence to be harried and cut at from all sides. From those they love, from those they hate, from strangers who feel nothing. That is what makes a hero great, what burns away the chaff and allows the steel in them to harden to a temper that can do what needs to be done. What is coming for Lark is beyond what any soul should have to bear. I am doing what I can to temper her.”

  I noted that he didn’t say he was a hero. “So you are the bad guy still?”

  A sad smile flitted over his lips. “It depends on how you look at it. Maybe in the end, some will see me as a hero. But that is unlikely.”

  The problem with his words was that I understood them all too well. I, of all people, knew what it was to be the bad guy so that someone you loved could conquer. After all, I’d buried a knife deeply into Liam, had taken his life, all to save Rylee.

  A tear slipped from my eye and I dashed it away. “How do you know what’s coming for the world? How can you be certain about so many things that haven’t happened yet? You aren’t a Reader.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m not a Reader.” He squinted his eyes shut. “Cassava started me on this path very young. She found the oldest prophecies and realized what they meant and who they pertained to. I see the look in your eye. These are not the prophecies like the one your Tracker had spoken about her.

  “These are older, from the very founders of our elements. Between those and what I’ve searched out in the libraries of our elemental homes, and the things that are happening, I have come to see the patterns that are tightening on us.”