Ridley had no idea how much time had passed since her last meal, and she didn’t feel like eating, but she knew her body needed something. Somewhere far above her, the constant flicker of magic and lightning illuminated the dark night as she let the backpack slide off her shoulders. With trembling fingers, she opened it and removed a can of soup.
It wasn’t an accident.
Mom had died. Billions of people had died. And it was all because someone had planned it. Archer’s deceit was still a shard of ice wedged into her heart, but this—the revelation that the Cataclysm had been a carefully orchestrated event—was monumental in comparison. The weight of it was crushing her.
She clutched the unopened can with one hand while pressing the other over the stone pendant lying against her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and let hot tears drip down her cheeks. How could individuals take it upon themselves to decide the fate of the world? It was so heinous, so utterly unjust. Everything inside Ridley screamed to fight back. To make them pay. She wanted desperately, fiercely, to destroy all their wicked arxium and bring about the future Nathan envisioned. The future she and Archer—the ice shard pierced a little deeper—had discussed so often over the past couple of weeks.
But hopelessness draped its heavy self over her fighting spirit. The Shadow Society controlled far more than she’d ever imagined. If they wanted the world to stay as it was now, what could she and a bunch of elementals do?
Ridley wiped her wet cheeks with the back of one hand. The breeze that had curled around her when she first landed here had vanished, leaving a strange stillness in its wake. She swallowed, sniffed, and peeled back the lid of the soup can. She thought of fire, and the resulting flames dancing across her palm quickly heated the can’s contents. She forced herself to eat. Then she summoned just enough energy to blow a few warm gusts of air around herself, partially drying her damp clothes and hair.
It wasn’t an accident.
She had to get back to Dad and the others. She had to tell them the truth about what had really wiped out most of the earth. She had to warn them that the Shadow Society might—if Archer had been lying about everything and was still loyal to them—know where their new home was.
But she was so tired. So, so tired. When last had she slept? It didn’t feel that long ago, but it must have been … days? When she’d been racing toward Lumina City to find Archer, it had seemed like she could keep going forever while in elemental form. Well, if not forever, then at least far longer than anyone could last in human form. But now, she doubted she had the energy to even become one of the elements, let alone remain that way for any decent length of time.
She lay down, right there on the road, with her backpack as a pillow and a clump of weeds cushioning her shoulder. Just for a little while, she thought. A storm will start up again soon. It won’t be long before it’s raining again. Then I’ll wake up. Then I’ll …
It didn’t start raining again. Ridley woke up to the sort of dim, gray light and cloud-obscured sky that meant it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. A night, a day, a night and a day? It took a moment, and then the pain of Archer’s betrayal pierced her chest again, followed closely by the unbearable weight of the Cataclysm truth. Then the physical ache of a body forced to sleep on a solid surface quickly made itself known.
It wasn’t an accident.
She had to get back and tell everyone that they probably needed to find a new home. Archer didn’t know exactly where the mountainside building was, but Nathan had shared enough information that Archer could probably find it. Her pulse thrummed with renewed urgency, but she took the time to quickly eat a can of something pretending to be a fruit salad. She needed the energy if she was hoping to push her elemental form to its limits and return to the mountains as quickly as she had made it to Lumina City. She stood, wincing at the ache in her stiff joints. But the discomfort would be gone once she was …
Her thoughts slipped away like smoke on a breeze as something whispered at the edge of her mind. Something … Dad? She was about to change form and question the magic more closely when a gust of wind blew her hair away from her face. It vanished, and two human forms appeared out of thin air a few paces away.
Nathan. And Dad.
Ridley was hit by the overwhelming urge to run to her father, fall into his arms, and sob her heart out. But the expression on his face kept her feet rooted to the spot. “For the love of all that’s magical,” Dad said, striding toward Ridley. “You have got to stop racing off on your own and putting yourself in danger.” Up close, Ridley could see the relief mixed in with his frustration. He swept her into a hug.
“How did you find me?” she asked, her voice small.
“We headed for Lumina City and listened to the elements as we went. Well, Nathan listened,” Dad corrected as he released Ridley. “I suppose I was just a passenger.”
“A passenger I could have gone much faster without,” Nathan growled.
Ridley decided to ignore him. “You didn’t have to come after me, Dad. I was on my way back—”
“You should have taken someone with you. I know I can’t stop you from doing this sort of thing, but did you have to do it alone?”
“Oh, so I should have waited around until someone else decided they had time to come with me?” Ridley snapped, her tone harsher than she’d intended it to be. The tide of hurt she was trying to keep at bay battered against her defenses, leaking into her voice and curling her hands into fists. “People were a little preoccupied with other things, Dad. We had all just fled for our lives. Everyone else was busy with their own family and friends and—and people they care about.” She broke off as the ache in her chest intensified. Archer was someone she cared about. She hated how true that still was, despite all the lies he’d told her.
“Ugh, none of this is important right now,” she continued, blinking her tears away. “There are things I need to tell you. Archer is …” She took a deep breath. “He’s part of the Shadow Society. Or he was, but isn’t anymore. I don’t know. He says he’s changed and that he’s on our side now, that he’s lying to them and not to us, but who knows. So we probably need to move our entire community all over again, because he knows roughly where it is and it’s possible he’s told his father. Who is the director of the entire Shadow Society, by the way. And the Cataclysm …” She sucked in another deep breath. “The Cataclysm wasn’t an accident. The Shadow Society planned for it to happen. They messed with the conjurations the energy magicists were doing, while also doing their own conjurations that provoked the elements into reacting violently on a massive scale. It was all intentional.”
Dad and Nathan simply stared at her.
“Yeah,” Ridley said quietly, finally unclenching her hands at her sides. “It’s kind of a lot to take in.”
“The … it … what?” Dad stammered.
“That … actually …” Nathan frowned as he stared past Ridley, one hand rising to slowly scratch his chin. “Makes a lot of sense,” he finished. “All the things the public doesn’t know … the wild magic that isn’t actually deadly, and the arxium they spray into the atmosphere to keep the violent storms going … I always assumed it was the government—or the Shadow Society, or both—taking advantage of the Cataclysm after it happened. But they actually caused it in the first place.”
“This is unbelievable,” Dad murmured. His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and Ridley knew he was thinking of Mom. “What a waste,” he whispered. “What an utter waste of everything beautiful in the world.”
“I know,” Ridley said quietly.
“And … Alastair Davenport? He’s the director?” Dad shook his head. “I can’t believe it. We were … friends. Well, sort of. Not close friends, but more than acquaintances. You were Lilah’s friend. You were at their home all the time, and I just—it never crossed my mind that you might not be safe there. But he would have killed you if he’d known what you are.”
“I know,
” Ridley repeated, even quieter now.
“We need to leave,” Nathan interrupted. “Warn everyone we might not be safe in the mountains. Then we can discuss all of this in detail and figure out if it changes any of our plans. It would be a lot quicker,” he added with a glare in Dad’s direction, “if we could fragment. Instead we have to take a non-elemental with us.”
“So you go ahead then,” Ridley told him, unable to keep the irritation from her voice. Nathan being pissed off at Dad was pissing her off. “You can fragment and travel faster. I’ll bring my dad.”
Nathan shook his head. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again. Well, my magical sight, if not my actual sight. I can’t trust you not to do something stupid and irresponsible again.”
“Hey, can you stop with the whole over-protective father act? If I decide to risk my own life, it has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with every elemental. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“Nathan,” Dad warned.
“I’m just one elemental!” Ridley exclaimed. “If I leave and never come back, it’ll make zero difference to your big plan.”
“It will make all the difference,” Nathan said. “You’re not like the rest of us.”
“Nathan,” Dad growled, a threat in his voice.
“No, I’m sorry, Maverick. It’s time to tell her. If you won’t, I will.”
A sick feeling coalesced in Ridley’s stomach. “Tell me what?”
Nathan looked at Dad, gestured as if to say Go ahead, and waited. Dad gripped Rildey’s arm. “We’re leaving.”
Ridley stood her ground. She almost repeated herself, but then she thought of Saoirse. If this secret was about the two of them, did she really want to know it? But … it couldn’t be. If something had happened years ago between Dad and Saoirse—and even if there was a possibility it was happening again now—how could that affect Nathan’s plans for returning the world to the way it used to be?
“Long ago,” Nathan said, “there were certain elemental families far more powerful than the rest.”
“Nathan—”
“According to the stories, they were the rulers of their time. Their children were born just as powerful. Even more so if their magic was inherited from both sides and not just one parent.”
“This is not for you to—”
“These elementals were the first to be killed when those without magic decided to turn on our kind. They had the power to fight back, but they were taken by surprise with various forms of arxium. We thought they were all gone, but it turns out—”
“Nathan!” Dad shouted, his expression furious now. He turned to Ridley, and in a gentler tone, he said, “You’re one of them. You’re one of these powerful elementals Nathan is talking about.”
Ridley stared at Dad. Then at Nathan. Then at Dad. “What?”
“You have no idea how much power you truly possess,” Nathan told her. “You’ve never pushed yourself far enough because you didn’t know you could. Ridley …” He watched her intently. “You could probably single-handedly bring down the arxium panels over Lumina City. And the wall. You could burn through all of it.”
“Um … I don’t think so.”
“I know so,” Nathan argued.
“But … then …” Ridley shook her head. “Does this magic skip generations? Because Dad doesn’t have magic, and neither did my mom. And my grandfather doesn’t have magic either.”
Dad took a breath, but no words left his tongue as he exhaled. Quietly, Nathan said, “No. It doesn’t skip generations.”
“But then …” Ridley raised both eyebrows, wondering why the flaw in Nathan’s logic wasn’t as clear to him as it was to her. “Obviously I’m not one of them.”
“You are,” Nathan said. “Of that there is no doubt. The stone—your family heirloom—recognized you. Saoirse told me how it lit up at your touch.”
Ridley’s gaze returned slowly to her father. The truth shoved up against a door in her mind. A door she was trying desperately to hold closed because once it opened, there would be no bottling up what was on the other side. But the truth was unrelenting, and it seeped through the cracks around the door, sinking slowly into Ridley’s being until finally she gave in and stopped trying to hold it back.
The truth flooded her mind.
A faint ringing filled her ears.
Her body felt shivery and hot and numb all at the same time.
“You’re not my father,” she whispered.
“Ridley—”
“And Mom. She’s not … she wasn’t …”
“I can explain all of this.”
“Have you ever told me the truth about anything?”
“I love you,” Dad said fiercely, his blue eyes piercing into hers. “That is the first and last truth. The only truth that matters.”
Tears prickled at the corners of Ridley’s eyes. She swallowed. “And what is the rest of the truth?”
Dad inhaled deeply, his expression tortured. “Your parents, Sarah and Karl Ohlson, were our closest friends. They were elementals. Very powerful. Both of them. With so few of their kind left, it was highly unlikely two of them would ever come across each other, let alone end up together. But they did.
“When the Shadow Society discovered us, they were killed. We—Claudia and I—managed to get to their house and we … found them.” His voice shuddered on those last two words, hinting at the horror of whatever state he’d discovered his friends in. “We heard you crying and so … we didn’t think, we just took you and ran.
“We reached Lumina City and Grandpa. We tried to find out if you had any surviving family, but we already knew your biological grandparents were no longer alive. The Shadow Society made sure of that years ago. And we could find no trace of your aunt—your mother’s sister. So … we decided to raise you as our own. We already loved you as much as if you were, so it wasn’t a difficult decision. We had all the necessary documents forged. We remained in Lumina City, building a life for ourselves there and never reaching out to any other elementals. It was … safer that way.”
He trailed off, watching Ridley closely. Somehow, she was still standing, which was surprising because it felt as if the ground had been tugged from beneath her feet like a tablecloth trick. Except there was no table underneath. There was nothing, and she should have been falling.
Fat raindrops began to spatter the crumbling road around her. She pressed her palms against her cheeks, vaguely aware that Nathan was standing some distance away now, giving her and Dad a small amount of privacy. She didn’t remember him moving.
“So this,” she whispered, her hands still pressed to her face, “is why you’ve been having whispered conversations with Saorise. She knows all this. Of course she knows. You all used to live together. The last time she saw you, when I was a baby, I wasn’t yours. I belonged to someone else.”
Dad nodded. “Yes.”
“And that’s why she was saying that I … I haven’t reached my full potential. Because she knows my parents were super powerful. And when she gave me the stone pendant and told me it was my mother’s, I was picturing Mom—Claudia—but the whole time, she knew it was actually—” Ridley’s voice cracked as it hit her yet again that the mother she’d lost was never actually her mother, and that she still had nothing special of hers. It was a stupid, small thing to focus on, but she couldn’t help it. The stone that hung heavy against her chest belonged to a woman she didn’t even know.
“Ridley, I’m so sorry. I asked Saoirse not to say—”
“Were you ever planning to tell me?”
Dad swallowed. Paused for too long. “I …”
Ridley lowered her hands to her sides. “So that’s a no.”
“It’s … it’s probably a no,” Dad admitted, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “Your mother and I … we always spoke about telling you one day. But without her, I just … I didn’t know how. And you and I have always had a good relationship. I know you don’t te
ll me everything, and clearly I haven’t always told you everything either, but we’ve still been close. For a teenage girl and her father, we … well, it always seemed to me we had a pretty good relationship. I didn’t want to ruin that.”
“But you had the chance to tell me just a few weeks ago! When I got that letter and you and Mrs. Lin told me all about the elementals. And Grandpa made it seem like there was something else you needed to tell me and—oh.” Another truth rammed into her. “He knows. Obviously he knows. That’s what you guys were disagreeing about. He wanted you to tell me, and you wouldn’t.”
“Ridley—”
“This is the real reason you didn’t want us to ever join any group of elementals. You were afraid the truth would come out, and you didn’t want that.”
Dad clenched his jaw before saying, “Yes. That’s the truth.”
Ridley looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
Dad. Who was not her dad.
She suddenly saw what everyone else could see: that they looked nothing alike. Aside from their shared eye color—a tiny coincidence—there was no family resemblance. “You’re a coward, Maverick Kayne,” she whispered. The name felt wrong, like her tongue couldn’t properly wrap itself around the shape of it when the shape had always been Dad. “Why couldn’t you just tell me any of this?”
“Because I love you as desperately and fiercely as if you were my own, and I didn’t want you to think of me as anything but your father.”
“But you never even gave me the chance!” Her breaths came erratically. Her heart thudded miserably. Around them, heavy raindrops smacked the road with increasing intensity. Dark clouds swirled above. It had been so still—unnaturally still—after she arrived here and while she slept. But now the storm clouds were churning and the air was whipping itself into gusts and lightning flickered overhead. Was it because of her? Was she unintentionally influencing the elements? Or was the wild wasteland magic simply doing what it did best: being wild.
It didn’t matter. None of it changed the horrible truths that swept repeatedly over Ridley like waves crashing relentlessly on a weatherworn shore.
Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3) Page 9