Ash

The memory let me go and I gasped. How could I have forgotten that? Or had I just not thought of it for so long? I shook my head, doing my best to clear things.

None of that mattered now. She wasn’t that girl who’d saved my life so many years ago.

Was she?

“Cassava, I am here for you!”

A cry from a voice I knew as well as my own shattered the morning, and Lark stumbled out from around the fire, her eyes filled with tears, her face streaked with soot. She limped, but I could see no injury. It didn’t matter. She was here. Lark was here.

“Ash, we have to go. I cannot hold her back. She’s too strong.”

I didn’t think, I just ran across the bridge, grabbed her arm, and pulled her with me. “The mystic’s cave,” she said. “We can hide there.”

I nodded and turned, heading straight for Miko’s home. The doorway opened and we slid through the tunnel, into the main room. I spun Lark around and crushed her to my chest. “How did you get here?”

“Cassava, I followed her.”

I needed nothing else. I kissed her, holding her tightly as I held onto her for all I was worth. Her hands slid over my shoulders and pushed off my cloak and leather vest. A part of my brain screamed at me that something was off, Lark wouldn’t do this, not in the middle of a fight.

But I wanted to believe so badly that she was here. That I had not lost her completely. I took her there on the ground and she cried out under me . . . and then as my heart slowed its wild pace she began to laugh. I jerked my head back as her voice changed and the laughter pealed out of her. Her face shifted, and she was no longer Lark, but Cassava.

“Oh, goddess, this could not be any better, Ash. Do you remember the last time I forced you to bed me? How you swore you would rather die than touch me again against your will?” Her eyes glittered up at me and I scrambled back, reaching for a weapon.

“Tsk, now, that’s not the way to treat a lover, is it? Certainly not one that could be carrying your child?” She slid a hand over her bare belly and splayed her fingers there.

“No.” I breathed the word and grabbed a sword. I stood, not entirely sure of what I was going to do, because the horror of what I was staring at froze me as surely as the weather outside would have. Only this I couldn’t seem to shake, couldn’t move past. The ice over my soul was too thick. What had I done?

Cassava smiled up at me, her eyes crinkled around the edges in pure pleasure. “You see, you do not have the heart it takes to end a life when it really matters. One thought of a would-be child, and you are undone.”

A would-be child. I almost believed her, until I grasped hold of the image of Lark in my mind. The truth whispered through me.

Cassava was barren.

Her words were lies.

How the hell could she still be controlling Spirit?

She frowned and stood slowly, her body wavering for an image like a heat wave. As if she were still using Spirit.

I blinked over and over, trying to clear the image. She continued to frown. “How are you fighting me on this?”

“How are you doing it at all without the ring?” I countered, bringing the sword up slowly as if through mud.

“A secret our world doesn’t want to be known, Ash. We are of all the elements, are we not?” she whispered, her words silken, easing their way through me. She reached up and brushed a hand over my cheek. “I’ll admit, it is easier with the pink diamond.”

I shouldn’t kill her; she was my queen.

No! Those were her words. I stepped forward, bringing the tip of the blade to within a few inches of her heart.

Her lips twisted. “You know nothing, Ash. Nothing. To your knees.”

I dropped as if stoned in the head. Her hands slid over my face and tipped my chin up so I looked into her eyes.

“You love her?” she asked, and for just a moment, I saw something in her eyes that scared me more than hatred.

Compassion. Her fingers slid over my face, smoothing my hair back. “You love her, and I can understand wanting to protect her, wanting to save the one you love the best.” She crouched in front of me. “You were always like that. But you can’t protect her. Neither you nor Peta can. We need her stripped bare of all she loves.”

The softness of her voice blended with the hard edge of her words and I struggled to understand what she was saying. I kept seeing the girl that had saved me from the fire. “Are you going to kill me?”

She tipped her head to the side as if considering. “Not yet. I need you, we all need you to stay alive a little longer.”

That made no sense. Even I knew that the longer I was alive, the more chance I would have at killing her. I glared at her as I fought to gain control of my body. While it looked like I could keep my mind to myself, my body followed whatever control she had over it.

“Such a fighter, such a warrior.” She sighed and shook her head, long dark hair sweeping over her bare shoulders. “But I cannot let you leave now, and I cannot kill you yet. Which presents a problem. I cannot ask him to keep a hold on you forever in the binding of Spirit.”

My eyes widened. “Raven is here?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, my son . . . he follows his own path now. Or at least he thinks he does.”

From the back shadows of the room stepped a man I knew only briefly, but I hated him anyway with the heat of a thousand suns.

Talan gave me a sad smile. “Hello, Ash.”

CHAPTER 16

lunged toward him. Or at least I tried to. What I ended up doing was nothing more than a scuffle on my knees, my fingers twitched, and I bared my teeth as if I would tear his throat out.