Windburn

I should have been terrified.

Peta and I spun at the same time and ran back the way we’d come.

“She will love her,” Peta said. “I saw it in her eyes.”

“If she doesn’t, it won’t matter. We’ll be back and if I have to . . . I will raise her myself.” The words popped out of me and I realized I meant them.

I would take the girl into my care if the woman proved to be false.

Perhaps the most concerning thing was I almost hoped that would be the case.

CHAPTER 22

The Eyrie was as we’d left it. Chilled by the wind, hidden by clouds and ruled by Queen Aria.

“Where are we landing?” Shazer banked to the right, circling the Eyrie, moving with the air current.

“The throne room.” I’d barely said the words and he dropped, tucking his wings and swirling through the clouds in a looping spiral. I clutched his body with my legs, and Peta sank her claws into me. Her hair fluffed up around her body and her green eyes watered.

“I hate this horse. I regret suggesting him.” The words were hard, but there was no heat in them.

He laughed and snapped his wings out wide. They caught us only a few feet from the floor of the throne room. With a delicate prance he landed, snorting and blowing.

I slid from his back. By the scene in front of us, we’d interrupted something rather important. There was a row of four women on their knees at the feet of the queen. Her blind eyes came up and somehow seemed to meet mine. To the left of me, Cactus stood between two Sylphs. He gave me the slightest of nods.

“Ah, Larkspur. You made it in time, I see.” Aria laughed softly. “I had hoped you would come.”

I strode forward, snapping my spear together at my side. “I’m here for my father. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Child, I told you the truth. He is not here. Both then, and now.”

She did speak the truth; I could feel it in her words. I pointed my spear at her and the Sylphs around us shifted. Enders dressed in their white leathers ghosted forward, their long sharpened staffs pointed at me. I should have cared, should have worried.

Yet I felt no fear.

“I know you speak truly. That does not make you right.” I lowered my spear, pressed the butt of it into the ground at my feet.

She clapped her hands together once. “Enders, ease off. She means me no harm. Where have you been, Lark? Two years you were missing, everyone thought you dead. Yet now you are here, back searching for your beloved father.”

I wanted to rage at her that he was anything but beloved. That he was needed only to fulfill his duty and name a proper heir. But those words would not form.

“An oubliette held me.”

A solid gasp went up through the room.

Aria leaned back. “How in the world did you survive?”

Bands of fear tightened over my chest at the mere thought of my prison. “I am here for my father. Either you will allow me to search for him, or I will tear your home apart. It is your choice.”

Beside me, Peta sucked in a tiny breath. Surprise filtered through the bond between us. From behind us, Shazer stomped a foot on the tile. “I will catch you if need be, Lark.”

The four women on their knees in front of the queen watched us with wide eyes. Except for one. She was on the far left and she stood. “I will not stand for this. I am the heir to the throne. Get back to the ceremony, Mother.”

“Noma, calm yourself, my daughter.” Aria spoke with a calm tone that brooked no argument.

“Old woman, you have been on the throne too long,” Noma snapped, her hand lifting as she turned her back on me. A flash of sapphire blue danced over her fingers and up her arms.

I had no doubt about what I saw. Noma could call water to her aid through the use of the sapphire stone. The fifth and final gem of the elemental world; she carried the Undines’ sapphire. She raced up the stairs to her mother’s side.

Those thoughts flashed through my mind in less than a single beat of my heart. I connected to the earth and the power rushed into me, filling me. I pushed off the ground in a leap and the stone beneath me buckled, but it didn’t slow me. I shot through the air toward Noma who had climbed to her mother and wrapped her hands around her neck. Water surrounded the queen’s mouth and nose in a bubble. Too thin perhaps for anyone else to see; but it didn’t matter.

I thrust my spear down as I sailed through the air, the blade aimed at the juncture of Noma’s neck and head. A perfect kill shot, one she wouldn’t even feel, it would happen so fast.

But a snap of wind caught me midair and sent me tumbling sideways into the mountain. The wind was knocked out of me and for a split second I thought it was a Sylph taking my air. I gasped in a breath and used it not for myself. “She is killing your queen!” I screamed.

White Enders leather filled my vision. “Then our queen should not have called her forward as a potential heir.”

I blinked up at Samara. She’d changed in the two years. Her eyes were hard, and there was a scar across her chin, jagged and white with age. “She’s using water to kill her. Not air.”

Samara spun. From where I sat, I threw my spear, drawing from the mountain. The spear shot from my hands and slammed into Noma’s lower back. Hardly a clean death, but she jerked away from her mother, a cry escaping her as she fell to the ground.

Aria stumbled backward, and the sound of water splashing to the floor seemed to fill the throne room. “Take her,” Aria gasped out.