He was more Fire and I’d heard that his mother might be sending him to the Pit to be with his father’s family. To train there.

A shudder rippled through me. Half-breeds like us, a child who carried two types of elemental abilities, had a much harder time making it in the world. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t make it. Just meant there was more work to do. That’s what my mother always said.

“Cactus, do you ever get to see your father?”

He shook his head, and I watched in fascination as his face suddenly seemed ten years older. Like he grew up right in front of me. “No.”

“Do you want to?”

The age fell away from him and he was just my friend again. “I don’t know. I get scared sometimes. My fire gets away from me, and I can’t hide it. I think my mom is going to send me away.” His voice lowered. “My father, I don’t think he’s a nice man.”

I clutched at his hand, lacing our fingers together and squeezing them tightly. Not like his mother was all that kind, either. How she had a sweet boy like Cactus, I didn’t understand. “I won’t let her. You’re my only friend, and I’m yours. No matter what happens, we’ll always be friends.”

He smiled at me and I smiled back. I looked away in order to get our bearings. “We’ve veered off track, I think.”

Cactus didn’t let go of me as he turned, which meant I went with him, looking back the way we’d come. “Did you hear that?”

We both went still, listening to the sounds of the forest. The steady calls of birds had gone silent, and even the bugs seemed to have dulled in their constant songs back and forth about where the best place to burrow was. Only the steady dripping of water plunking through the leaves and the fog was left of the sounds I’d expect. Around me, the foliage trembled, as if a wind blew, but there was no wind. This was not the forest I knew, the paths I’d grown up on. Then a sharp, cold blowing gale that didn’t belong in the forest coursed down through the treetops, drawing tendrils of the condensed air with it.

I squeezed Cactus’s hand tighter and whispered, “I don’t like this. It feels strange.”

He pulled me against him, wrapping his arms around my narrow shoulders. “Can you hide us?”

Without another word we dropped to the ground, and I coaxed the vines and undergrowth to cover us. We pressed our bellies hard against the earth, and Cactus kept his right arm over my back. Our breathing slowed as we naturally synced with the earth below us, our hearts beating with the one we all called the mother goddess.

Even with that comfort, though, fear tightened around us, bearing down on our bodies like a large stone lowered slowly, torturing us with what could be coming our way.

The air swirled and then came the heavy pounding of running feet. A voice crying out made my heart leap out of control, constricted my muscles, and tightened my throat until it seemed to close over.

“Lark, run!” My mother’s words ripped out of her, shattering the unnatural stillness.

Cactus’s eyes widened as he gripped me tightly and held me to the earth. No words flowed between us, but we both knew. My mother wouldn’t tell me to run for no reason. The whispers at night for the last few weeks, the fear on the still air as I woke each morning, and the odd look in my mother’s eyes as she stared at my brother and me suddenly seemed to have more meaning.

The currents grew thick, ozone gathering into deep layers around us. Air elementals, Sylphs, were the only ones who could manufacture a storm within the cloud forest like this. I knew; my mother had been teaching me about all the elementals. I pushed Cactus off me and rose just far enough that I could see above the stalks of grass. In the clearing where Cactus and I had been standing moments before, my mother now stood. Her back to me and her blonde hair dancing in the wind so it never touched the earth as it normally did. A soft cry, and I knew she had Bramley with her, my little brother.

What happened next . . . I could barely understand. Five figures, clothed in shimmering shadows, floated down from the treetops. A glimpse of pale skin here and there was all I saw until they landed, encircling my mother.

“You didn’t think you could outrun us, did you? You’re an abomination, a child of Spirit that should have been eliminated when you begged for sanctuary here, and then to seduce the king and give birth to monstrosities. What did you think to accomplish but your own death?”

That voice I knew all too well. My father’s wife, the queen. Cassava. She stepped out of the cover of the trees, her long spider web train floating on the breeze behind her. Short and powerfully built, she was the polar opposite of my mother’s lithe, lean body and ethereal beauty. From where we hid, I could see her face. She was pretty in the way of the earth elementals, her dark hair and bright green eyes flashing.

“Do as you will with me,” my mother said softly, the timbre of her voice soothing me even though I knew she was afraid. How could she not be afraid, though? The queen was terrifying. Yet my mother stood firm. “But leave my children be. They are innocent in this affair.”

The queen snorted and flipped back the hood of her cloak. “And have them tattle on me? I think not. You will die, and your children will die with you.”

Below my bare feet and hands the earth trembled, an anger swelling from the core, up through the layers of all that we held to be holy, and into my body. Before Cactus could stop me, I was up and sprinting toward the closest of the four figures in the black hoods. Without another thought, I flicked my hands at the cloaked body and the vines that had been so kind, so soft under my hands, reared up, wrapping themselves around that one. The vines tightened and the crunch of bones snapping rippled through the air.