Recurve

Vetch launched himself at Griffin and I lost track of them as I spun in a circle with Cassava, using her body to shield me from the grasping hands of her mindless followers.

From the very edge of my vision, as I wrestled with Cassava, a flash of a ragged green skirt caught my eye. Fern?

I didn’t look her way again. As long as Cassava didn’t know she was there, maybe Fern would be safe from the queen’s control.

“Little bitch, I will slice you open and eat your heart!” Cassava screamed and the ring stuck there, on her finger, at her knuckle. We spun and spun, and my body was giving out, my ribs making it incredibly hard to breathe.

I reached to my waist and pulled my final remaining dagger. “This is going to hurt you far more than me.”

She screamed as I put the blade against her middle finger, gritted my teeth, and shoved. Surprisingly, the blade slid through her skin and bone with ease, a light pop as it came completely off. Cassava’s scream tipped into a high-pitched wail as her finger fell to the floor.

The hands reaching for us dropped, and the mob slowly slid to the floor, an eerie silence spilling over them. At my feet, the finger twitched, the pink diamond glittered and the ground gave a slight rumble before eating both items in a single gulp. Someone behind us retched, and the splat of vomit on the hard packed dirt met my ears.

I still held Cassava’s arm under my hand, which meant the bleeding finger was easily visible as it and the others glowed a sickly green. Her hand and arm began to shrink until it was nothing but a claw, minus a digit, black and scaled. Wings beat at my head, black feathers filling my vision as I fought not a woman, but a giant raven. Twisting around, I dropped to my knees as a wicked sharp beak shot toward my right eye. I turned my head and her beak slammed into my temple. Again and again she pecked at me, and I couldn’t get her away. My skull ached, and I knew it would be one more blow and she’d break my head open.

Scramble my brains.

But my family was safe, my father alive.

I’d done my job as an Ender.

“Enough!” That single word reverberated through the air, knocking us both back.

Head feeling as if it had been slammed against a rock, repeatedly, I lay on the floor, my eyes barely focusing.

My father stood, Fern supporting him, his children behind him. As if they’d always stood behind him. He held a hand out, palm open and alive with green fire. Above me, Cassava shrieked. There was a triple beat of her wings, and then a whoosh of air passing, as she dropped to the ground, forced back into her human form.

“Basil, Lark tried to kill you,” she cried. And there it was, the gambit she would throw down. But would my father believe her?

“Lying bitch, you will be banished for this, if not executed,” he swore at her, and relief coursed through me like a waterfall on a hot day.

She put a hand to her left arm, under her long sleeve. And without seeing it, I knew she had the stolen armband. With a grin and a mock curtsy she twisted the armband.

“Not today, lover.”

Her body swirled and sucked in on itself, and then she was gone in a pop of air.

I fought to sit up, to see that it really was my father. That he was okay. But I wasn’t so sure I could even do that.

“Larkspur, I expected better of you,” my father said, and I stared up at him, shock hitting me hard. His eyes were foggy, and he seemed confused. But that didn’t ease the sharp pain his words caused.

“I tried to stop her,” I whispered and he shook his head, slowly, disappointment heavy in his eyes and the way his brows dipped low.

I closed my eyes, tears trickling, stinging the cuts on my face, stinging the spots where Cassava had slammed her beak into my skull. What more could I have done? Would I ever make him proud?

The answer, as simple as it was painful, filled me. I would never make him proud. I was a half-breed, bastard child.

“Basil, I can’t believe you would say that to her! Have you lost your mind? She just saved you and our people, and you would demean her?” Fern snapped. “Is that how you would treat our child? Because if that’s the case, I will so go back to Eureka and live there with the humans.”

My eyes shot open to see Fern standing beside me, her arms crossed over her bosom, which also accentuated the swell of her belly. My father stared hard at her. “Our child will not be a half breed who cannot even touch his power.”

A pair of hands helped me to sit up, the musky scent of wolf surrounding and soothing me. Griffin gave a grunt. “She’s got her claws too deep into him, even now the lies she spun are truth in his eyes. It’s going to take some time for him to sort it out.”

I nodded, but still, it hurt. “Fern, your place is here, with him.”

She turned and dropped to her knee. “You saved me from her, Lark. I won’t let him treat you this way.”

My heart swelled and I realized maybe, just maybe, I did have some friends here. Raven and Briar circled around and crouched beside me. “Lark, you saved us too. We were next, she told us.”

I looked over their heads at my father, his eyes shadowed with doubt and something I’d never seen in him.

Fear.

He didn’t understand. Or maybe he understood too well.

Griffin helped me to stand, and Raven slid an arm around my waist. “We need to get you to a healer.”

Beside me, Griffin snorted. “Here, got a bit of this left,” and before I could say yes or no, he jammed the flask to my lips and poured the contents into my mouth. I swallowed convulsively. The healing hurt, like before, my body writhing as the bones cinched back together. I ended up on my knees, ears buzzing with the shouting that had erupted in the room.