“Mother goddess,” I whispered. My last hope was that she would hear me. “Please, this can’t be the end.”
There was no answering whisper, no fleeting touch of comfort. I slumped, my body curled with the curve of my prison. My hand brushed against the leather bag at my waist. Painfully, I lifted the bag and rested it on my belly, spilling the contents onto my chest.
Blinking, I realized I could see them. The white stone I’d taken from the statue in the Pit glowed, flickering with light. I touched my finger to it and a low-grade buzz flickered through my body. The wound in my back throbbed in time with my slowing heart, but the buzz . . . it pushed the pain back. I closed my eyes, and clutched the chunk of stone. Whatever it was doing seemed to be numbing the pain, which was good enough for me. To die without suffering . . . sleep dragged me into its depths. My dreams were strange, distorted images.
Bella hiding in the Deep, her hands around her belly.
Ash and Peta running through the Rim together, Griffin at their side.
Cactus riding Shazer, winging through the skies.
Looking for me, they were looking for me.
My father on his back in a dark hole, an oubliette like mine. His eyes closed in a false sleep.
I jerked awake and groaned. Rolling to my hands and knees, I struggled to sit upright. My head brushed the top of the oubliette when I sat flat on my rear. The silence ate at me, but I refused to acknowledge it by speaking to myself.
A full minute passed before it occurred to me I was not dead, nor did my back hurt. I reached behind myself, twisting my arm so I could feel where the wound had been. A slightly ridged scar under my fingers was the only sign I’d been hurt.
There was no sense of time, no sense of how long I’d been asleep. Except my belly rumbled and my body was healed. I rubbed the white, softly glowing stone. Niah’s words rippled through my mind.
“You’ll need it, Lark. When you least expect, the stone will save your life, I think.”
I broke my own rule and whispered into the darkness. “The Pit holds our greatest healers . . . is it possible this is a part of their power?”
Shifting my weight again, I pressed my hands into the edges of the oubliette. Solid and impenetrable, there was no way I was getting out on my own.
My belly rumbled again. The stone may have healed me, but I was still stuck in the oubliette with no water, and no food. I’d be dead in days.
The small collection of items on my belly from my bag was all I had. I touched the moringa seed and flipped it off me. It tinkled against the sides of the oubliette, settling into the rounded hollow below me. What good was a single seed to me?
I touched the hooked earring. Oubliettes blocked the power of an elemental, keeping them from escaping their punishment. So what good was an earring that would allow me to breathe under water? Useless, just like me.
There was nothing I could do to save myself. No connection to my power. No connection to my bond to Peta.
No way out.
“FUCK!” I screamed and slammed my fists into the oubliette over and over again until the skin broke and the bone ached. The hooked earring hung above my head, jammed into the man-made material. I grabbed at it, but the blood on my hands made it impossible to grip. The tip pierced my finger, drawing a scream out of me. Not pain, not really.
I could do nothing.
I was useless.
I slipped against the inside curve of my prison and fell. Panicked, I couldn’t slow my breathing as I struggled to get hold of myself. The light from the stone illuminated my tiny space, showing me how tiny it truly was. How trapped I was.
Trembling, I forced myself to sit quietly and slow my breathing. There had to be a way out. I only needed to calm myself and find the solution.
I closed my eyes and wrapped my hands around the white stone. A faint buzz began again and tickled over my broken-up knuckles, and the flesh slowly knit itself together. But the light dimmed. I dropped the stone and it lay at my feet. My knuckles would heal. I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep my sanity if I lost my only light source.
Time passed.
A steady drip of water woke me from the daze I’d fallen into. I blinked several times as I found myself staring up at the hooked earring. From it dripped a steady drizzle of water.
I tipped my head back and slid my mouth under the water. Drop by drop, my thirst was quenched. So now it was a matter of starving to death.
Time passed.
Above my head a trickle of air wafted over my nose and I looked up. Apparently Blackbird hadn’t sunk my oubliette as far down as I’d thought. It had small cuts in it to allow for airflow. The cramped cells were designed to hold someone for a day or two. Three at the most, for a severe punishment. I slid my fingers over the razor-thin openings, feeling the hint of rain on the tiny breeze. Sure enough, a chest-rattling boom of thunder clapped and the patter of rain began around my oubliette. Water dripped in through the openings until I sat in a puddle of dirty water. The rain stopped.
The water shrank away and left behind a tiny pile of sand.
I drank from the hook, which still kept up a steady dripping stream.
Time passed.
The moringa seed took root in the sand that had washed in, sprouted into three trunks and gave me a food source. I ate the leaves sparingly—enough to live. That was all I had. A part of me wanted to stop—to give up and die. But my dreams were full of those who searched for me. For Ash and Peta working together while Shazer and Cactus scoured the land from the sky. Of Bella’s growing pregnancy, of the birth of her daughter. The first year of her child’s life.
I wondered what Elle would do when she needed help; I knew it wasn’t a matter of if she did, but when. Who would help the mouthy Tracker?
Time passed.
Still they looked for me. And so I hung on. I did stomach crunches, and awkward push-ups, miniature squats and stretches as best I could. I had to keep my strength up.
Time passed.
My anger at the mother goddess grew.
Time passed.
I was alone, my thoughts my only companion.
A most dangerous companion indeed.
CHAPTER 19
oices floated to me, on the edges of my dreams. Voices of those I loved, those who had loved me. They comforted me, soothing the edges of panic that reared its head from time to time.
“Peta, you’re smelling things again.”
“No, this time I’m sure I smell her. She’s here, I know it.”
I shifted, my body callused in strange places from lying hunched for an amount of time that had no meaning to me.
A soft snuffling, and the sound of dirt trickling down the edge of the oubliette, whispered through one of the cracks.
“Here, she’s here! Barely under the surface.”
The shifting of the oubliette around me stunned me. They’d found me. They hadn’t given up.
And somehow, neither had I.
They pulled the oubliette up, the movement rolling me around.
“Peta, you know she won’t be alive. Before I open this, tell me you understand. We do this to lay her to rest.”
“You have no faith,” she spat out, and I could imagine her back raised in a growing arch. “Do you love her?”
“Do not ask me that. She is—” His voice caught, and I pressed my hands against the door of the oubliette. I couldn’t find my voice, couldn’t find the words to assure them that I was alive.
I knocked on the plastic with my knuckles.
“Mother goddess,” he said, and then the door was ripped open. I fell out and into his arms. Peta let out a shriek and pushed her way between Ash and me. I clung to her with one arm, and to him with the other.
He pushed my hair back from my face, his eyes wide with shock. “How, how could you have lasted this long?”
I blinked, swallowed and spoke the first words since the day I’d been put in the oubliette.
“How long?”
“Two y
ears.”
I shivered. “Tell me everything.”
“I’ll make camp, then . . . then I will tell you.” He started a fire and I stood with only a slight tremble, still holding Peta to me. She purred at a rapid, frantic rate I understood because my heart beat in time with hers. “I knew you were alive, Lark. I knew it. Don’t you do that to me again, Dirt Girl. I’ll kill you myself.”
I pressed my face to her body and breathed her in. “I don’t plan on it.”
I stretched my body, the kinks in my bones and muscles protesting the movement. Peta clung to my shoulder, butting her head into my cheek over and over again as she purred. A droplet of moisture hit my cheek and I turned. “Drooling?”
Her green eyes spilled over with tears and I regretted what I’d said. I took her from my shoulder and sat down with her, stretching out beside the fire. Ash strung a line over the fire and set a pot to boiling. The smell of oatmeal filled the air and my mouth filled with saliva. The thought of eating anything not a green plant made me weep with joy.
I curled Peta into my arms and ran a hand down her back over and over again. “Peta, I’m here.”
Ash built the fire up until it blazed, the flames licking at the big black pot. Tasks done, he laid down behind me. His arms went around me and I clung to him, locking the moment in my mind. I would not forget this. That they were the ones to pull me out of the darkness of the oubliette.
“I’m afraid this is a dream, that I will wake up back in . . . there.” My words were barely audible over the pop and crackle of the fire. Ash, he knew me though, and he spoke to distract me.
“Cassava rules the Rim, Lark. Raven is her second and Blackbird has gone missing. Your father has never been found. Bella is in exile in the Deep, but her messages are getting frantic. She has been gone too long from the Rim, she needs to come home soon or risk going mad.” He paused and his hands stroked up and down my arms. “Cactus and Shazer will be here soon, that horse will have picked up on your bond now that you are out.”
“Raven is Blackbird,” I said. “And Cassava may rule the Rim right now, but not for much longer.” I made a move to sit up and he tugged me back down.
“You need to gain your strength, Lark, before you go after them.”
Peta sniffed. “You see, he is the one for you. He knows enough to not try and talk you out of this.”
I turned my head so I could look into Ash’s eyes. “I do not see this ending well.”
He kissed me gently. “I am with you, Lark. From now until whatever the end holds for us.”
The warmth from Peta, Ash and the fire lulled me into a fog. Despite the fact that I’d been locked up for two years, I was exhausted. I fell asleep, truly warm in both body and spirit.
Child, welcome home.
I was on my feet in an instant, rage burning hotter than the fire at my back. “You miserable whore! You knew I was locked away and you left me when I needed you most!” My voice cracked, but not with tears.
Ash and Peta stared up at me, their eyes wide. My whole body shook and the earth shook around us, trembling as though it too were afraid of me. Or maybe it felt my anger and agreed with me. Peta shifted into her leopard form and slunk toward my feet.
“Lark, calm yourself. Please.”
“No. The mother goddess left me in there to rot as much as Cassava and Raven.” I paced in front of the fire. A slow rolling fog misted over the ground, curling up my legs.
I spun and stared into the dark jungle. “You dare show yourself to me now? NOW?”
Distantly, I knew I was out of control. That some little piece of madness had claimed me.
The mother goddess, though, was no fool. In the guise of my mother, she ghosted toward us. “Child, I could not find you any more than Ash or Peta. That is the power of the oubliette. It blocks all from knowing it.”
“You saw them put me in. You had to know.” I strode toward her, not caring that she was the mother goddess, or that she looked like my mother with her straight white blonde hair and blue eyes. Those eyes flashed.
“You are not my only charge, Larkspur. Others have need of me.”
“You said I was your chosen one, and so you’d leave me to fight for my life.” All the questions I’d pondered while hidden from the world bubbled up. “Did you feel me dying?”
Her eyes flicked away, so fast I almost missed it. I shoved her hard enough to send her onto her ass in a most un-goddess like sprawl. She gaped up at me, shock written in every line of her face. “How dare you?”
Behind me, Ash let out a moan. “Don’t do this, Lark. Please.”
Peta stepped beside me, pressing her body tightly to mine. “You felt her dying and you left her to die. Didn’t you?”
I dropped a hand to Peta and tears sprang to my eyes. At least there was one I could count on. Blinking, I stared at the mother goddess. “Do you wish my death then? Is that what this is? Some twisted way to see me dead? Perhaps Cassava is the one you wanted on the throne all along.”
My words didn’t make sense, not even to me. But they were every fear I’d fought for the last two years. Every doubt, every insecurity, every realization and every hope.
The mother goddess folded her legs under her and spread her pale blue gown around her as though she were the center of a flower. “Sit, Larkspur. Sit.”
I wanted to take my spear and run her through, but instead I sat and folded my legs. Peta lay to my right, but the tension in her body told me everything. She didn’t trust the mother goddess either.
Ash stepped up behind me, but didn’t sit. “I will stand with you, Lark. Even against her.”
I swallowed hard past the lump that grew in my throat. “No. This . . . this is between her and me.”
I tapped my fingers on my knee.
Peta let out a soft growl. “Griffin calls her Viv.”
The mother goddess jerked. “That is fine. Call me Viv.” I knew without her saying so that Viv was short for something else. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered except this moment.
“Well, Viv. What do you want to tell me?”
She closed her eyes and her image shifted to that of a woman I’d met in my testing. Her long brown hair was the color of mineral-rich soil, and her eyes spun with all the colors found in nature. “You have only met one side of me, Lark. There are two sides to nature, and as such, there are two sides to my personality. I cannot dictate when one is in charge.”
I leaned back, pressing my body against Ash’s legs. “Two.”
“Yes. As there is beauty and light in this world, so is there darkness and death. I cannot tell you what the dark side of me is up to. She is completely blocked from me.”
“What does it matter that you have two sides?” Ash asked.
“Because without realizing it, she is playing Blackbird and me against one another. Aren’t you?” The understanding came hard and fast.
She tipped her head and a tear fell.
“I believe so. I can only guess, because I have no memory of what I do when the darkness takes me. I do what I can to hold up the precepts of light—”
“Cut the goose shit,” I snapped. “You are the mother goddess. You may have light and dark, we all do. But I will not sit here and listen to you tell me this isn’t your fault. Griffin said it. You’re meddling where you shouldn’t be.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Be careful, Larkspur. A chosen one can fall as easily as she can be raised up.”
I stood and stared down at her, my fists clenched at my sides. I had a plan, I just didn’t know how smart it was. “Perhaps then I’d be better off to side with your darker half. Perhaps she would see the value in me, the worth I hold.”
Viv’s eyes widened with understanding a split second before they rolled back. She tipped her head back and laughed, a long, low laugh that sent a chill racing up and down my spine.
“Oh, I like you more and more, little Lark.” Her head snapped forward and as she stood, her hair darkened to a blue-black as her eyes lightened. A haunt
ing silver blinked back at me. “You wanted to speak to me.”
“You are working with Cassava and Blackbird.”
“You mean Raven?”
“No. My brother is dead to me. I mean Blackbird.”
Her lips twitched. “Fine. Yes, they are my chosen ones. Chaos, Lark. That is all the world understands. And even while you try to patch up the messes I’ve created, as you try to put better leaders into the families, you cause chaos. I think you are right. I think you would be better off with me at your back. I would have saved you.”
I took a step back, and Peta and Ash moved with me. “Then why didn’t you come to save Blackbird? I had him in my hands, his life was draining.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How could we save our two chosen ones at the same time?”
Without moving, I reached out with my connection to the earth, the flood of strength buoying me up. The mother goddess raised an eyebrow. “You wish to fight me?”
“No.” I raised my left hand and pointed with two fingers at the oubliette. Vines snaked out from the jungle, forking like snake tongues. They grabbed at the opening of the oubliette and wrenched it apart with a violent tear. “Stay away from me. Both of you. I will chose my path from now on.”
With a second flick of my hand I sent the vines to her and scooped her up. She laughed. “You think to hurt me?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Ever hear of a slingshot?”
Her eyes widened and she let out a screech as I pulled the vines toward me, then sent them flinging away at a speed my eyes couldn’t follow.
“I can’t believe you flung the mother goddess through the jungle.” Ash put a hand on my arm, turning me to him. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.” He smiled and I burst into tears. He caught me against his chest, murmuring into my hair over and over. “Easy, Lark. Easy.”
A thump of dirt spun us around and I stared up into the wingspan of the only Pegasus in the world. Shazer stuffed his nose into my chest and breathed me in. “It’s about fucking time you showed up.”
I held his face for a moment and kissed his nose. “I missed you too.” He snorted, but I was already looking past him to the man who slid off his back. Cactus had aged in the two years I’d been gone. His body was harder, his face no longer open as it had been.
Windburn (The Elemental Series Book 4) Page 17