CHAPTER 9
Neither Raven nor I moved from where we lay on our bellies in Death Valley, our eyes trained on the figure of Vivica—the false mother goddess. She’d just taken the power of the first Terraling—Frost—and embedded it in an emerald.
I could not believe what I was seeing. I wanted to imagine that the whole scene was a creation of Talan’s and not the true past. I wanted to believe he’d somehow put this together to force us to help him. But I knew in my heart and soul what I was seeing was real, that somehow Vivica had learned a way to harness the power of the original five elementals into the stones.
Stones that all but for one lay in my leather pouch.
I blinked and I was no longer in the desert, no longer in the past but back in the present, standing once more in the cavern where we’d started the journey. My hand was numb from the icy cold water and I jerked it out as if I’d been burned.
Stumbling, I made my way across the room and finally went to my knees, breathing hard as though I’d been running. Peta was there in a flash, her face tucked in tightly to mine. “What did you see? You were only gone seconds.”
I wrapped an arm around her and held her to me. “The false mother goddess, she confined the original elementals, she stole their power and infused it somehow into the stones.” I put a hand to my hip to reassure myself they were still there.
No, that wasn’t quite right. I turned to look at where Talan stood. “What happened to you? Why are you not confined? Why has your power not been sucked away?”
On his knees across the room from me, Raven nodded. “That is my question as well.”
Talan sighed. “Vivica came to me last, after she’d imprisoned my four siblings. As you know, Spirit elementals had been slaughtered almost into extinction. I… made a deal with her. She would have some access to my power without a fight, and she would allow the last few lines of my family to continue. I knew that it was within one of those lines that the one who would stop her would be born.” His eyes swept over to me. “You are our only hope, Lark. You are the one we have been waiting for.”
“What about Raven?” Peta asked. “He has the same powers, more actually than us.”
Talan shook his head. “No, his strength is broken between five elements. It is Spirit that trumps all, and Lark is stronger in Spirit than anyone, even Vivica. Once you are trained.”
“But not you,” I said.
“Not me.” He agreed with a quick smile that hid a truth. He thought I would be stronger than him at some point.
The whole thing felt like a setup and I didn’t like it.
I closed my eyes, and thought about all the possibilities. Why was I stronger? Was it just because of my connection to Earth and Spirit? Or was there something else? My instinct was there was something deeper Talan was not telling me.
“I can see the wheels working that mind of yours,” he said. “So like your mother.”
My eyes snapped open and I stared at him. Really looked at him, as I tried to see something that maybe wasn’t there. But the more I stared, the more I saw what my mind had been trying to tell me.
His eyes were exactly like my mother’s.
His height and build similar enough.
The line of his mouth and nose…
Air suddenly became a struggle to hold inside my chest and it whooshed out of me with my words. “Are you my… grandfather?”
His eyes bugged open and he sputtered before he answered. “Shit, no.”
But his reaction told me I was on the right track, even though he’d answered truthfully. “We’re related through my mother, aren’t we?”
He shrugged and turned away. “All elementals are related. You know that, especially within the family lines.”
The air was charged between us and I wanted to push him to get the real answer. So I went a different direction.
“You are lying about why you did what Viv wanted.” I narrowed my eyes. “It was not just to keep your family lines safe. If you could have stopped her, you would have.”
Talan tensed and slowly closed his eyes. “Damn your perception.”
“Spill it,” I said. “You do me no favors at this point by keeping the truth back.”
He stood there and finally after a good minute of silence spoke. “She had my last surviving son. I did it to save him, though in the end it didn’t matter. He was killed by a rogue elemental.”
His words were lanced with pain and truth.
I still didn’t understand how she could have backed him into a corner and I almost asked. Peta pushed a paw against my leg. “Another time. It is enough that he speaks truly now.”
She was right.
That didn’t mean I was done, though. “You allowed Viv to do all those awful things, then? You allowed your power to be harnessed to the ring, knowing she would use it to hurt others?”
“Well, not before I cursed her.” Talan grinned suddenly as if that made all the difference in the world. “I had a witch help me twist a powerful curse that we laid on Vivica while she slept. My plan was that she wouldn’t know the curse, so would unknowingly end up getting herself killed and our problem would be solved.”
“Didn’t work, obviously.” I pushed to my feet, Peta still in the crook of my arm.
Talan shrugged. “She woke up in the middle of it, took the witch and forced the terms of the curse from her.”
“Of course she did,” Raven grumbled. “Shit, why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”
“None of you were ready. And I thought it best you and Lark see it together.”
My mind reeled with everything I’d learned. I held up one finger. “So to recap. Vivica bound half of the power of the five original elementals in the rings.”
Talan nodded.
I held up a second finger. “And then she stuffed your siblings away somewhere?”
“In oubliettes around the world,” Talan said. “I’ve been searching for them with no luck, hunting for them for years. If I could free them, the five of us could stop Viv.”
“And the prophecy?” Raven strode around to us. “That had to do with Lark, didn’t it?”
Talan nodded and then shrugged. “Probably, but it could just be a coincidence of words.”
Peta snorted. “Please, you aren’t that stupid, are you?”
Another time I would have smiled at her giving him shit, but right then there was no chance of a smile on my lips.
Talan frowned at her. “Peta, what I know is that Lark is the one to help me find my siblings and stand with us against Viv. But as soon as Viv realizes that, we will be on a deadly time crunch. We find my siblings, and the six of us stop Viv. That is Lark’s calling now.”
“Why only six of us? Why not add Raven in there, too, and really knock her down?”
Talan let out an exasperated sigh. “Because it is a matter of balance, Lark. Viv imprisoned four of the six of us, one died to try and stop her, and she left me half bound to a stone. So, six must stand against her.”
Wait… “Six? There were six siblings? I thought there were only five?” Was there some unknown element? The ramification of that sent a ripple of shock through my limbs and I felt it echoed in the shock bouncing from Peta.
Talan tensed and muttered something rather uncomplimentary about himself under his breath. Peta’s ears twitched but otherwise she was still.
Talan slammed a hand against the wall. “Damn it, this is not the time.”
I waited for him to speak, feeling like for the first time that patience with him would be the key.
The minutes ticked by while he stalked around the room. “Damn it,” he repeated, “yes, there were six, though I hadn’t planned on telling you that just yet. The last born of the five original elements was myself, of course. But Mother… she had what the humans call an oops.”
I almost laughed out loud, kind of a giddy laugh because it sounded ridiculous. Almost, but managed to keep my mirth under wraps. “Okay. So why do I have to stand in the place of that sixth sibling?”
He locked eyes with me. “Why do you think?”
Raven groaned. “Him and his damn guessing games.”
I bit my lower lip. Dead. The sixth sibling was dead. I was taking that sibling’s place.
Talan’s facial features so like my mother’s.
My stomach rolled and I slowly went to my knees as the understanding flowed over me, a cascade of uncertainty and surety at the same time. “My mother?”
Talan nodded. “She was the baby sister we all loved, born a long, long time after the rest of us. You carry her power, Lark. As did your brother. It had to be one of you.”
He was my uncle. Talan was my uncle. Holy shit, holy shit. I didn’t know how to process what I was learning.
Peta pushed herself against me. “Breathe, Lark, or you’ll pass out.”
I took a big gulping breath, held it, and let it out slowly.
“Again,” Peta instructed, and I did as she told me until the black spots in my vision slowed.
Talan crouched in front of me. “Viv destroyed six, so it will take the six of us to put her away. She knows how to block me from using Spirit against her, as she has learned to control all the elements. We must hammer her from all sides to take her down, because she has tied herself directly to the four remaining families. She can draw on the power of many, many elementals if she chooses.”
I looked up at him. “Won’t that hurt them?”
He nodded. “It will kill them, taking the weakest first.”
Well, that was a shitstorm just waiting to happen.
“So what next, then?” Because that was where I was stuck. All these things. My parentage being laid out. The civil war happening in the Rim, the destruction of the human world, the Deep under threat, all the Sylphs missing from the Eyrie. Vivica being who she was. Having to find the missing siblings. My missing… aunts and uncles. Weirdness did not even cover that.
“We train you,” Talan said.
“That is not enough,” I fired back. “We have the stones, surely that would help us?” Or at least, we had some of them. Those connected to Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water were within my possession. I reached to the small leather bag tied to my belt, running my fingers over it. Four stones with more power than anyone should ever have.
The pink diamond, the one connected to Talan’s power, had gone missing, though, and in many ways, it was the deadliest of the five, giving the wearer the ability to control so much, and in the bargain, lose their hold on reality. That was what had happened to Cassava. She’d worn the pink diamond for years, using Spirit for her own gains, and in turn lost herself to madness.
“There is more to the prophecy.” Talan turned to Raven. “Did you get the book from the Pit?”
Raven gave a sharp nod and left the room, his black cloak swirling out behind him.
Talan twisted around to me. He blew out a breath, and shook his head before he spoke. Almost like he wasn’t sure of what he would say. “I know this is a lot to take in. But everything that has been done has been to keep you safe, and to strengthen you to this point. So that you could help me free my brothers and sisters.”
I frowned at him, a dark suspicion growing in my heart. “What do you mean?” I didn’t like the sound of “everything that has been done.” Just how deeply did he have his hands in my life?
His eyes flicked over me, weighing me. He hesitated, though, and that only heightened the tension in the room. Finally, he spoke, slowly, as if each word were fragile.
“Your father’s madness. Your mother’s death. Your brother going missing. That’s only a few of the things. All your life has been steps on a path where we have been trying to dodge Viv, to keep her unaware of what we are planning, to keep her from realizing who you were. She expected a princess to face her, a warrior from birth. We made you a humble planter for a reason. She would have killed you as a child if not for Cassava blocking your abilities.”
I stared at him, my heart pounding as the words sank into me. Sank into my bones as if they would break each one apart from the marrow outward. Shaking from head to toe, I stared at him, unable to fully fathom at first. Because he couldn’t mean they’d manipulated my life from that early point on… did he?
I struggled to get the words out, to question him while the air I fought to keep breathing seemed to clog my chest and throat. “You… broke my world? You stole my family from me? You’re my uncle and you did this to me?”
Talan didn’t have a lick of sorrow on his face. If anything, his eyes hardened, and his lips tightened. “Yes, it was planned from the beginning.”
The air between us all but crackled, as if those words were an ignition for action. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I lost my mind in that moment.
I dropped Peta and launched myself at him with nothing more than my body and fists. All I could see was my past and the horrors I’d faced from such a young age. My mother falling from the sky as the wind was ripped from her lungs and her life taken, Bramley crying for me and then—dead or alive—his body stolen away, my father dying in my arms, having to kill my siblings, the oubliettes, Death Valley, being kept away from Peta, Ash. Ash.
Ash.
The scream that ripped from my throat was sheer pain, agonizing loss after loss exploding out of me like a monstrous burst of uncontrollable lava from a mountain that was too small to contain the violence.
There was no finesse about my attack. I drove my fist into his solar plexus and sent him backward through the falling water. He tumbled and landed on the other side with a wet thud, but I was already there, swinging a foot at his head. He rolled, and I followed, snarls ripped from my throat.
Never had I felt rage like this and my body could not contain the animal anger as it spilled upward. I’d only taken form as my animal counterpart a few times, and only when I absolutely had to—like when fighting Raven in the Eyrie. Right then, there was no controlling the shift as my body slipped its human shape and I landed on four large paws. As a snow leopard, I had no doubt I could destroy Talan. I would tear him apart starting with his treacherous mouth.
My whole life had been a fucking game to him. I was just a piece on a chessboard to be manipulated and positioned, to be used and discarded as if my life and the lives of those I’d loved meant nothing.
What about Bella and her children? Would they be safe? No, I knew they weren’t. For all I knew, he was positioning them to use them… to hurt them to break me. Images flashed through my mind of all the people in my life, all those I’d loved. Their eyes, and the spirit behind them broken, maimed and begging me to keep them safe.
And I’d failed them all.
The roar of blood pounding in my ears and the rush of air in and out of my lungs blocked out every other noise. Talan’s mouth moved but I heard nothing. I bent and grabbed him by a foot with my mouth, my teeth digging through the flesh. I jerked him hard to the side, which spun his body out in a wide arc. He slammed into the wall, but was up in a flash. He held his one leg gingerly, barely balanced on it as I slunk on my belly to the floor and stalked forward.
He said something. I didn’t hear him; the words didn’t compute. He held a hand out, and there was a flash of pink that lit up the room.
And then I was on my knees, in my human body, my head bowed to my chest. Pink lights flickered and sparkled around me. He was using Spirit to subdue me.
I screamed again, the rage nothing I could control. Cactus, my childhood friend, had pissed me off once so badly, and not able to fight the rage and the power that went with it, I nearly brought down a mountain. That was a candle to this roaring bonfire that consumed me.
“Keep fighting me, Lark.” Talan’s words finally reached my ears. “I want you to break through my hold on you. You need to connect to all the power in your reach.”
But there was no breaking through his power. He was too strong. I could feel his power like a weight on me, holding me down. Pinning me to the cold rock. I couldn’t even lift my hands, or twitch my fingers, never mind lift my head.
I managed to roll my eyes up to glare at him through the strands of my hair that had fallen over my face. Slowly I found the words I needed, though I had to sort through to find the exact thing I wanted to say. “Are you happy with your creation, then?”
His eyes widened, shock filtering over his face. “I did not create you, Lark. And I would no more hurt you than I would hurt a sister of my blood.”
Peta crept forward in her housecat form and put herself onto my lap. “That is a lie, Talan.”
“Is it? Lark can hear the lie in people. Am I lying, Larkspur? Did I want to hurt you?”
Every muscle in my body trembled as I knelt there sitting on my heels, Peta clinging to my legs. He took a few steps forward and crouched in front of me. “What would you give to save them all, Lark? Would you give your life?”
“Yes.” I stared at him, hating that he was right about not lying.
“Would you give up the life of your parents to save your siblings?”
My gut lurched and I didn’t want to answer. I struggled to breathe, but I refused to look away from him. “I could have saved them all if I’d known what I was up against.”
“No, you can’t. No one can save them all, Lark. I ask again, would you give up your parents to save your siblings? To save Bella and her children? To save the Rim? To save our world?”
I knew the answer, we both did. I would give up whatever I had to if it meant I didn’t lose them all.
I swallowed but couldn’t get past the growing lump in my throat that threatened to burst into tears. Talan reached out carefully and tipped my chin up with one finger.
“If you could save them all, would you be willing to suffer for them, to have all your joy, all your laughter, all your love taken away if it gave you the key to protecting those who survived?”
Peta let out a long, low hiss. “You’re a bastard, Talan. You are her family!”
He nodded. “I know. But I’m not asking you to give up, to be hurt by anything I have not experienced myself. Are you willing, Lark? Now that you know why it was done?”
I closed my eyes because I could not turn my face from him. A hot tear slipped from one eye, the traitorous reaction of my heart and the lump in my throat. What would I give for those who remained? Would I give up Ash to save Bella? Would I give up River to save her mother? I bit my lower lip and finally opened my eyes. Talan was blurred through the watery vision of my tears.
“How can you set one life above the others?”
He sighed and my body slumped, his hold on me gone. “Because in many cases, that was their wish. Your mother’s, your father’s… they knew what they were agreeing to. It was the only way to help you. To keep you safe from Vivica.”
I wasn’t sure I totally believed him. But there was no deceit in his words, no lies on his tongue. Maybe it wasn’t the truth, but he believed his own words.
And for now, I would have to as well.