by Kate Kelley
I nodded, releasing a pent-up breath. “I guess I can’t know the truth. I have three different stories floating around my head. But thank you for answering my questions. I should get back now--” I stood and as soon as I did, Babs stood too, almost tripping her chair. “Oh, but Cole said you wanted to join us?” Her eyes looked hopeful, a smile on her lips, and I almost missed the hard glint that sheened over her eyes.
I schooled my face into passiveness. “I told Cole I would bring Wolfram next time I came back. I’m afraid that would upset him if I didn’t follow through with our deal.”
MacKay laughed, a mirthless, harsh noise, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stood alongside his wife and flattened his hands on the table. “Cole hates August, it’s true. But don’t want August. He’s chosen his path. Cole has been punished several times for chasing him down.”
Like a switch was turned on, I remembered that Cole had been after me, not August. “What about his attempts to capture me?”
My parents shared a glance full of something heavy, and Babs turned back to me, her features tight. “We didn’t know. He’ll be punished again.”
I faked a smile, wishing I could know the truth, wishing things weren’t so complicated. “Well, then, I might be back for a visit sometime in the future, but, for now, I think I want to lay low for awhile. This world is too overwhelming for me. Again, thanks for the answers.”
Babs frowned at me, her eyes welling again with tears. “I wish you would stay. You’re just beautiful and everything we ever hoped for.”
I watched her, her eyes glowing a dim copper, her nose pert, mouth full like mine. It was odd that she was my mother, as young as she looked. She looked like she could be my sister, and MacKay looked the same age. I supposed I got my pastyness and freckles from him, and the bit of red in my hair. And a part of me was glad that I closed this chapter in my book. But another part of me thought it would be more profound than this. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I came here to see if I belonged, but I don’t. I don’t belong in a rebel group in a realm that isn’t my home.”
MacKay lifted a barely-there brow. “Is earth really your home?”
I shook my head. “The truth is, I don’t belong anywhere.”
Babs nodded, and a tear slipped down her cheek. An odd sense of guilt encompassed me, but I didn’t know why I should feel guilty. I didn’t know them. They weren’t my parents, not really, and I didn’t owe them anything.
MacKay inclined his head toward me. “It was a pleasure to meet you, and please come back and see us. If not for me, then at least for your mother.”
I flinched when tears of my own misted my eyes. The word Mother was so foreign to me, it didn’t feel right being connected to me in any way. I rubbed at my eyes, feeling foolish. I hadn’t expected to be emotional. “I will, when the time is right,” I promised.
And it was true. I wanted to see them again. But staying with them wasn’t an option. I needed to build my own home, find my own truth.
I turned to go with one last wave goodbye, walking stiffly toward the door. I wondered briefly if I should just stay, just get to know them. Become their daughter.
I didn’t make it very far before pain lanced me, raking down my back like hot knives, and blackness covered my vision, a scent of smoke in the air the last thing I remember.
Chapter Twenty Eight
A ringing in my ears grew so loud I thought someone was playing the damn flute. My back was cold--so were my hands, and the back of my skull. They tingled with tiny sparks. The cold confused me--I hadn’t been cold since my powers had come in, and I’d almost forgotten what it had felt like.
I sat up, which was a big mistake, and hurled my dinner all over the ground. At least, I thought it was the ground. I waited for the double vision to stop swimming, for the images to come together. I was looking at gray, cracked concrete.
Fucking hell, not again.
Sure enough, when I looked up, black, iron bars met my vision. And beyond them, I could see tiny light and when the ringing settled in my ears, a whirring noise overtook it, shushing my senses in the eerie silence. I stood and crept closer to the bars, and rested my head on two of them, peering out.
My stomach plummeted at the sight.
Those blinking lights were machines with tubes hooked to people lying prone on white hospital beds. They were lined up along the wall, out in the open. I counted seven, all appearing to be young adults. There was one bed at the end, the eighth one, from what I could see of the metal legs that was shrouded by a curtain. I wasn’t sure if a person lay behind the curtain or not, but I wasn’t eager to find out.
What the hell is going on?
I clutched my head, trying to remember the last thing that happened.
Images flashed through my mind--white moth, flying, parents, tea--
The fucking tea was poisoned.
I wiped a hand over my face and surveyed my surroundings, trying to find an escape. When I realized with sweet clarity that my wrists were not clamped with iron, I smiled. They’d underestimated my powers as Zephyrine had. I could blow myself out of here.
I closed my eyes, ready to summon the magic within me and the air and fire around me, when a sharp jangle of keys drew my focus away from the task. I backed up to the wall and crouched, trying to appear inconspicuous.
My father entered--MacKay--looking smug. I kicked myself for trusting him and Babs even a little bit.
Ugly leprechaun.
Behind him a man walked in, long dark beard and gaunt-looking face. He wore a white coat like a doctor might wear.
I laid down quietly, closing my eyes until only a sliver of sight remained. My heartbeat out of my chest when MacKay walked to my cell, shoving his hands in his pockets as he stared at me in open disgust. “Waste. Babs is out of her mind on this one. I don’t think the blood will take. Should have just killed her as soon as I knew she was Air. A twisted creature, nature’s mistake.”
In my relief, he backed up and with the man, they moved with purpose to a young woman with dark skin and naturally curly hair reclining on a bed. The bearded man administered something in her IV and the woman gasped, sitting up right like she’d come back from the dead.
MacKay clapped, his back to me. “Well done. We’ll test your abilities later.”
The woman opened her mouth and blinked, staring at the tubes in her arms.
“Don’t react, Sage. You’ve just been administered the Wind blood, and have been in a coma for two weeks. The shock of the new magic might take awhile for your system to use, so we’ve given you iron to quell the temptation to use it.”
The woman’s face twisted into outrage and she tore the tubes from her arms in a violent wrench of hands. She leapt up, but MacKay was already there, grabbing her by the throat, her scream echoing off the walls.
I called my power to me, sucking in the air and energy from the space around me.
Except, nothing came.
I tried again, and felt an emptiness inside of me.
Iron. Iron in my blood, blocking my magic.
He turned directly toward me and I closed my eyes completely, my heart beating out of my chest. I heard the keys again, a struggle, and another scream-the faint scent of burned skin, and the clang of metal on metal, the click of a lock.
When footsteps fell away, I opened my eyes a crack again to see the two men now walking toward the curtained bed. I craned my neck back trying to watch them. The second man pulled back the curtain and I stifled a gasp.
A child lay on the bed, hooked up to air machine and several dark tubes taped to his little arms. The child couldn’t have been more than seven years old. My insides shook as I watched the second man check his IV, then the monitor to which he was set up. He suddenly hung his head heavy and turned abruptly from the child.
MacKay swore. “Fuck, Alfie, I thought you said he could take the blood. Fucking weakling of a kid. We’ll have to burn him.”
Alfie...the same Alfie from the Fire Kingdom? The
one that was supposed to help cure me when I was ill? The vague thought passed through my mind but I was too busy seething at the fact that they’d killed a child.
I watched Alfie’s shoulders shake as I imagined he sobbed, but when he turned, his face was turned up in a hideous grin.
The sick fucker was laughing.
“I told you a peasant earth kingdom kid was probably not going to be strong enough. Not one this young. We need them to be at least ten, Kay.”
MacKay shrugged and they retreated, pulling the curtain on the poor child. I shook with rage, and before I knew it, I was standing,and pounding my fist on the bars.
MacKay stopped, looking at me head on with a dead stare. Then he shook his head and turned away from me, making his way toward the door.
“Hey! Don’t you turn your back on me, Pops!”
He stilled and turned. He took his time walking toward me, and I clutched the bars in a vice like grip. I called my powers to me, willed them to me, but they didn’t come.
“What do you want with me?” I asked as he stood a foot away. I watched Alfie pass by slowly and out of the door quietly.
MacKay came closer, closing the distance between us. “My wife thinks your blood could be used. Essentially, you’d live down here, in this cell forever, giving your tainted Air blood to other elementals who need a boost.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tic tac, popped it casually into his mouth. “I rather think that’s too good of an existence for you. You see, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that you aren’t natural, aren’t aiding the evolution of our kind. And I think your blood would taint our project.” He sighed. “But, the wife wins, as always. Happy wife, happy life, as they say.”
He turned his back to me, presumably to walk away, but it was rather a bad idea on his part. Though, to be fair, there’s no way he could have known what I would do next. I barely knew what had happened until it was done.
The energy in the air crackled to my fingertips in a fraction of a second and the spear that I formed from the fire flew through the bars to bury inside his back, staining the white of his coat.
He barely grunted, fell to his knees, the blood spreading quickly through his coat, widening in a thick red circle.
He fell forward, his head smashing into the concrete, and if the spear hadn’t already killed him, surely that had.
I called my air to me, and twisted my arms in a circle, pushing the fire through on the other side toward the bars. They erupted in a rumbling explosion and I ducked, dogding the bars as they flew toward me. They crashed against the stone behind me, sending horizontal cracks along the wall.
When the smoke cleared, I bounded over the rubble and turned toward the sound of the door opening with a thud as it hit the wall behind it.
Babs stood frozen, her crimson eyes glaring at me until they fell behind me to her husband laying in a pool of his own blood.
Her eyes widened and the scream that tore from her throat scared me more than the fire that erupted along her arms. She threw a fireball directly at me and it hit me squarely in the chest, disintegrating upon contact.I waited, and she stared dumbly at me. “What are you?” she breathed, and I moved past her, knocking her out of the way with a strong gale of wind. She hit an empty cell and fell to the floor and I was out of there, bounding up the stone steps, wrenching the door open and through the home before bursting out of the front door into the blinding daylight.
I’d been out for the entire night?
I ran directly into Cole, but didn’t let it deter me. I ran until I heard the unsheathing of a sword and I turned with my air, gusting the guard back who’d been about to cut me to ribbons. His head his the siding of the building and I leapt on him, filching his sword and rounding on a swarm of guards at the ready waiting behind for me. The sword wasn’t the same as the katana, but it would work.
I called my power to me, but it wouldn’t budge. I felt a weariness in my bones from the excess of power exerted already. Shit.
“Stand down, this one’s mine.”
Her voice made my blood run cold, and I turned to face my mother.
“Why not just let me go? Why are you intent on capturing me?” I asked her, stalling for time.
Babs grinned and pulled her own sword from the sheath at her waist. “You’re even more useful now that I know you have fire. When did you get the fire? Are you using blood magic too?”
I frowned. “I was born with it, bitch.”
Babs eyebrows hit her hairline. “Nice try. Tell me, did Alfie double cross us? Tell you all about the blood magic? How did you get it to not scent? If it works on you, then it might work on me as well. I admit, I’d been weary on using it on myself until I knew for sure it worked, but we share the same blood. We’re family, are we not?”
I glared at her. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have one of those.”
“Oh, pish posh. Let mommy dearest have a hug.” She lunged and struck, and I parried her blow with a clash of metal.
Suddenly, it hit me.
“You and MacKay..you were the young couple at the inn, the night of the fire. How did I not see it before?”
Babs cackled, her gorgeous face twisting into something witch-like. “Clearly, you didn’t inherit my intelligence.”
My nostrils flared as the anger rolled through me. “You started the fire, didn’t you? Not Cole. You made that old man deliver that creepy message.”
Babs smiled. “Good job, darling.”
“Did you mean to kill me?” I lunged and swiped, but Babs sidestepped my blow.
“MacKay’s idea. When you didn’t die, I came up with the idea to use your blood.”
Our swords clashed again, blocked, swiped, slashed, parried. She pushed fire through her blow, trying to set me off course.
“Fire doesn’t hurt me, stupid. Or haven’t you been paying attention.”
Babs snarled and leapt with her sword and I blasted her backward with air, her sword going flying. And mine accidentally with it.
I leapt at her, pinning her to the ground, my hands on her throat. She kicked up, catching me in the gut, and rolled toward her sword.
I recovered and jumped on her, forcing her wrists back, I kneed her in the back as I held her wrists together. She struggled against the hold until a gust of something hard hit my back, sending me reeling forward. I let go of Babs and rolled violently across the dirt. When I stopped, I leapt up, facing my challenge.
The dark-skinned woman from the cell next to mien stood, her eyes wide. She looked at me, and then at Babs and covered her mouth. “My bad, you two look so much alike.”
I rolled my eyes and lunged for Babs, but she was gone, and pain lacerated my right arm. I yelled and turned to see Babs with her sword coming straight down toward me in a killing strike.
I covered my head but a scream stopped me. I peeked out of the top of my arm to see Babs’ face directly in mine, the sword pointed at me.
Except her face was blue. I backed up and looked at the length of her. She was trapped inside...inside of ice?
I whirled around and the dark skinned girl smiled at me. “I’m Thalassa.”
I nodded, my breath coming back to me. “Rai.”
The next few minutes were a blur, Thalassa by my side, breaking down the Wildfire guards with air and ice.
I lost count of how many we’d taken down and when we reached the wall, I knew that my limit was coming up. I was so bone weary.
Thalassa’s green eyes darted at the guards coming at us from the drawbridge, and I could practically see the gears turning in her head. She was trying to figure out a way out without using her powers. She was as spent as I was.
I grabbed on to Thalassa and pulled her close. She frowned at me. “Now’s not the best time for a hug.”
“Trust me, and hold on tight.”
Moth guardian angel, come to me.
I had no idea if it would work or not, but as I saw the guards picking up their pace, I prayed harder, I needed it to work.
THe moth appeared like a knight in shining armor, swirling around us until my feet lifted from the ground.
I vaguely noted Thalassa’s protests, but since she continued to hold on tight, I wasn’t distracted from my task. The moth swirled around us faster and faster as we rose higher and higher, and when I tilted my body forward, the air rushed under and behind us to surge us forward and over the gate.
I chanced a peek back as we flew over the field and my eyes met Cole’s, even from this distance, I would recognize the crimson eyes. He inclined his head toward us, a sparkle in his eye.
And onward we soared.
Chapter Twenty Nine
“Where are we now?” Thalassa asked as we walked across the swinging drawbridge toward the bailey of the Fire Kingdom’s castle.
“Fire Kingdom. Home,” I said, not breaking my stride.
And it was true for me. Now I knew, though I’d taken a roundabout way of figuring it out, that this was my home, because it was where Wolfram was.
Where ever he was, that was my home.
I pressed onward, past the silent guards, eager to get to him, to tell him what I had found out. I faintly smiled at the joy that filled my soul as my heart echoed mate, mate, mate, on the beat. I’d tell him so, when I saw him. And that bitch Adara would just have to move aside. Gone were the days when I let the things I needed go. Gone were the days of apologizing. I was here to claim my happiness.
“Rai,” the regal voice rang out as I was halfway down the hall to Wolfram’s room.
I turned and bowed to the Queen. “Your majesty, I have news.”
Her eyebrows twitched and her cool expression remained. “Oh?”
I averted my gaze. “If you permit me to speak freely, I can tell you exactly what--”
“Is this about you being an Air elemental?”
I looked up sharply to see the Queen’s gaze had gone hard.
I blinked, totally derailed. “How did you--”