Windburn

Her mouth tightened in a thin line and her ears drooped. “I would never.”

Instantly I regretted not trusting her. “I’m sorry.”

“What,” Cactus said, his tone deceptively innocent, “you don’t want her to tell me you’ve slept with Ash?”

My mouth dropped open. I would have spluttered except the boat grounded itself, throwing me backward. I hit the edge of the boat and flipped out. Thoughts of jagged teeth and long tentacles in the water kept me clinging to the edge. Until my feet touched the sandy shore and I realized we were in the shallows. I stood and looked around where we’d beached. The sand, the trees, and bushes. The statue of Zeus staring down at us. This was the place the humans had named Greece.

But we knew it as the birthplace of monsters, a place of mystery and danger even elementals of great power avoided. There was too much wildness in the earth and elements here; too much of the supernatural to be anything but chaotic.

“You sure about this, Peta?” I asked as I pulled the boat forward.

She stood on the prow of the boat, her eyes staring straight ahead. “I may not be a Reader, but I know when a certain path is right. This is the path we have to take if you want to succeed, Lark.”

Cactus leapt out of the boat and helped me pull it the rest of the way up the beach so it was fully out of the water. “You aren’t going to say anything?”

I had a choice. I could give him hell for trying to control me, or I could be honest with both him and myself. I went for the second choice.

I grabbed his face in both hands and pulled him to me. The kiss ignited an instant fire in my body, a flame of love and bonds rooted in my earliest memories. He crushed me against his body until we had to break apart to breathe.

I stumbled back, panting for air. He stood a few feet from me, his hair wild from my hands skimming through it, his eyes dark with a heady desire that still rushed along my skin. “The truth is I love you both. That is all I know.”

Peta groaned. “Why, why did you have to tell him?”

“Because I can’t lie, not to either of them,” I said. “I may be a lot of things, but a liar is not on the list.”

“Fine, but you deal with this little love triangle when we have your father home, and things are settled enough for you to see clearly.” She turned, and stalked up the beach, her long tail twitching like mad.

“I can wait, Lark. For as long as it takes for you to realize I am the one you need.” Cactus grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“So sure of yourself?”

“Lust is not the same thing as love. I don’t care that you bedded him. It doesn’t mean you love him.” He walked ahead of me and I couldn’t help but stare. He and Ash were not so different in height. But the muscle on Ash was thicker from years of fighting and training with weapons. Cactus was leaner, like some of our Runners who took messages.

Neither was weak, but they offset one another. As though one called to my dark side and the other to the side of me that believed fairy tales always ended with a happily ever after.

I frowned as I followed Cactus and Peta, and my thoughts bounced between my situation with the two men, and the situation with my father. I’d almost rather deal with Cassava and my father than decide between Ash and Cactus. My heart had been broken too many times with loss and betrayal to lose another person I loved.

And that was the crux of it: I loved them both in ways I never thought possible. In ways I’d never experienced, not with Coal. My heart stuttered ever so slightly and I gave a silent prayer for his soul. That he would find peace on the other side of the Veil in the arms of the mother goddess. That he would forgive me for not loving him the way he wanted me to. The way I loved Ash and Cactus.

“Keep your eyes open, and tread softly. He didn’t get the name The Bastard for nothing,” Peta said. “We’re close to the glade he uses as his launch pad.”

Around us the trees and brush had grown thick, and the sounds of the ocean had faded to nothing. In all my musings, I hadn’t realized how far we’d come. I looked behind us, and could see nothing but green. No ocean. In fact, we were surrounded by foliage so thick I couldn’t even see the sky. “You get us lost, cat?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. But there are no paths to The Bastard. Would you make one?”

I nodded and did as she asked, tapping into the earth. The power ran up my arms, warm and inviting. A touch of the mother goddess, like a caress of my own mother nearly remembered. The plants ahead of us bent outward, opening a path. I put a hand on Peta’s head. The power of the earth ran through me and into her like a fast-flowing river and she trembled. “I can feel your power under my fur. How is that?”

“I don’t know.” I stepped forward and she moved with me in perfect tandem. A thought occurred to me and I ran with it. I released the earth and the plants closed around us again. “Try, Peta. Ask them to bend for you.”

“Ridiculous. Familiars do not have the power of their charges,” she said, but her words held no real heat.

“Try anyway. Cactus won’t tattle if you can’t. Or if you can.”

“Your secrets are safe with me, kitten.”

She glared at him over her shoulder. “I’d rather you call me bad luck cat than that.”

Kitten. That was what Talan had called her. I made myself focus on the present. “Try, Peta. Try, because maybe there will come a day when you need this connection.” I paused, thinking of how the power felt when I’d touched her. “Run it through me. I think it will work.”