CHAPTER 21
I had a split second to decide how to handle Finley. I could try to use Spirit on her again, or I could fight her.
Spirit was not going to work. The ties Viv had wrapped around her were obviously too tight. Sadness and grief flew across the bond between Peta and me. We both knew what was going to happen.
“Ash, fly!” I called out, and he launched from my shoulder into the ceiling rafters.
“Don’t make me fight you,” I whispered to Finley. Because I knew… I knew this time there would be no bringing her back. If I lost, she would go on to wipe out the humans as she’d been commanded.
The water of the Atlantic Ocean swept in through her window, coming for me.
I dove for Finley, tackling her to the ground, softening the stone to encase her within it. At least, that was the plan.
The water blasted me off her, lifted me and held me in midair in a bubble of the cool liquid.
Finley’s voice was clear, echoing through the water like a microphone. Peta was in her own bubble of water away from me. Her eyes narrowed as she fought to swim to the edge. I knew she was not worried about getting a breath of air so much as she was worried about taking Finley out.
Tears streamed from my eyes, mixing with the salt water. This was not what I wanted to happen. This was not how it was supposed to end. Finley was a good queen. A powerful queen who didn’t deserve to die.
I didn’t want to be the one to end her reign.
I closed my eyes as the water pushed in on me from all sides, the pressure increasing on my ears, chest, and limbs. My eardrums burst and my heart began to falter under the lack of oxygen. But I had one thing Finley did not. I knew the name of the elemental who’d created this power.
Realm.
Just his name, nothing else echoed out of me, forming bubbles in the water.
Finley was still speaking, but her voice was growing dim, fading as spots of darkness blackened my vision.
A part of my brain whispered that it was always destined to come to this for me. Water would be my death.
Realm. Again, I mouthed his name, the last of my breath leaving my body.
I blinked, and below me, Finley was unmoving and the water around me no longer pressed down on my body.
A presence slid through the water. I twisted where I was to face him. He floated in front of me, the scene below me frozen as it had been in the hot springs below the Spiral. His body was powerfully built, but lean, and his skin was the lightest of greens, his eyes brilliantly blue and his hair that same shade of violet as Finley’s. His fingers and toes were webbed, but even so, he didn’t seem to have to move much to stay where he was.
His voice was clear, as clear as if we were not floating in water. “That you know my name is interesting. Not interesting enough to keep you alive, but enough that I am curious. That I would speak to you before you die.”
I stared at him, gathered my strength and asked the one question I hoped would help him see my cause. “Realm, are you going to let me and Olivisha die?”
He jerked back through the water as if I’d struck him. “You have two of our true names… you are of that demon spawn’s ilk then?”
I laughed, bubbles floating away from my mouth. “No, I am against Vivica. Olivisha… she gave me her power to use. For a time. Until the false mother goddess is dealt with. She fears Viv too greatly to stand against her.”
“And me?” He spread his webbed hand against his bare chest. “What is to be done with me?”
“I would free you if I could find you,” I said. I glanced at the bubble Peta was in. Her eyes were on us, and I could see she was keeping close tabs.
“I don’t even know where she stuffed me,” Realm grumbled. “She knocked me out, and then when I woke, I was in an oubliette.” His eyes were not on mine any longer, but on Finley. “That one is a good queen, of that much you are right. But you cannot break the hold Spirit has on her. Not without killing her.”
I didn’t fight the tears. It wasn’t like he could see them. “She is my friend; I’ve known her since she was a child.”
“And so you do her a great disservice to leave her in the care of that bitch who is breaking our world apart.” A sigh slipped from him and he swam closer to me. “You know my name, and Ollie trusted you. That is enough for me. Take what power I have left and do your best, child of the earth.”
He kissed me then, not on the forehead as Olivisha had done, but on the lips, catching me off guard. His hands swept up to hold my face and the caress of water over my entire body turned from pain to a sweet pleasure that left me wanting. Realm pulled back. “Beautiful soul, ah, I see now what Ollie saw in you. Stand in my place against the bitch who confines us,” he murmured. I found myself following him through the water, wanting, needing that sensation of connecting again. He gave me a lopsided grin, his lips calling to me. “You are dangerous… another time, perhaps, child of the earth.”
I held a hand out to him. “Wait.”
He did as I asked. “Yes?”
“How, how are you and Ollie able to come to me when your bodies are caught in the oubliettes?”
“You were in an oubliette more than once. Did your spirit not find a way to watch over the world?”
I nodded. “But I could not affect anything.”
“But you could have given your power to someone, if the situation was right. Immersing yourself within my power allowed you to reach me as nothing else would have. Did you burn for Ollie?”
I nodded again. “I did.”
“And she found you strong enough. You have her life, and now mine. Do not waste them.”
I blinked and once more I was alone in the water. Only now its power was mine and it no longer fought me, but begged to be used. Begged. Like a man on his knees holding tightly to me, wanting a kiss.
The image was so strong, I would have smiled if not for what I knew was going to happen next.
I pushed the water away from Peta first, because I was not sure she would carry the ability with it as she had done with Fire.
She dropped to the floor and raced toward Finley. Finley stood there, shocked as the cat shifted in mid-leap, tackling her to the floor as a snow leopard.
I was dropped and landed in a crouch. “Peta, hold her.”
Peta had her mouth on Finley’s neck, her canines digging into the soft flesh. I stood and strode to them.
“Finley, you have been deceived. That was not the true mother goddess who gave you orders. She has bent your mind, twisted the truth.”
Peta’s sadness flowed to me along with a single thought. You cannot change her mind.
“I have to try.” I spoke because the pain in me was too great to hold the words in. “I have to try.”
Finley glared at me. “You are turning your back on your people. We should be ruling the humans and it is time they knew our true power. It is time we took them down to where they belong.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of all the elemental families, the Undines had retained human slaves in the open, almost as though they were proud of what they’d done.
I could barely swallow past the grief strangling me. Would it always be my fate to have to end the lives of those I loved?
I turned away from them and made my way to the far wall where a stack of weapons was spread out. There on the wall was a spear not unlike my own. I pulled it off the wall with a jerk, and spun it once, then looked at it closer.
Correction, it was my own spear.
Talan had put it here? Was that possible?
Anger surged through me. “Peta, I’m going to try to break the hold on her first.”
“There is no hold on me!” Finley screamed. “Guards!”
I flicked a hand at the door, cementing it closed with stone from the floor, and then sealing it with fire so the block was solid, heated to a temperature that locked the doors from all that would try it.
I went back to where Finley lay on her back and I saw just how far in Peta’s teeth had gone. One wrong move and she could kill Finley with barely any more pressure.
I went to my knees and put my hands to either side of Finley’s face. “Let her go, Peta.”
She pulled back and I pushed Spirit through my hands and wove it into Finley’s mind. I found the lines of manipulation Viv had laid on her, found the knots that held them together. Complicated and fierce, the power of Spirit had been overlapped and overlapped so many times, I could barely see where one piece began and another ended.
I dug into the mess, pulling the strands off as fast as I could while still being careful. I felt as though I stood in front of a doorway covered with a thousand years’ worth of vegetation with only my bare hands to remove it.
Well, I’d been a Planter and a nurturer of the earth for the first part of my life. This was no different. I would not let Finley go without a fight.
If I had anything to say about it, I would not let another of my friends die.
I bent over Finley. More and more layers I found within her mind, wrapped around my friend, until I realized there was so much more to this than just a single moment of manipulation. I found the root of the net Viv had laid on the Undine queen.
From the time Finley had been a child, the false mother goddess had warped her mind, feeding her subtle lies that became a part of who Finley was.
“Peta.” I whispered her name. The shock of what I was seeing was too much for anything louder. “I don’t understand. What am I seeing? Can you see this?”
“Oh shit.” Peta sighed the words. The door behind us rocked hard as the Enders of the Deep slammed their bodies against it.
“What is this?” The more I pulled away the threads covering Finley, the less I saw of the girl I’d known, the child I’d saved and loved as surely as if she were my little sister and not from a different family.
“Her life was never her own,” Peta said, putting a paw on my hands. “What you are seeing is simply a creation of Viv’s. She was never Finley, not from a very young age.”
I bowed my head. The door behind us cracked as the seal I’d placed on it began to fail. I bit my lower lip. “If I take it all away?”
“There will be nothing of her left,” Talan said softly. I spun around, anger flying through me. If I hadn’t been elbow-deep in Finley’s mind, I would have attacked him.
“That can’t be,” I snapped at him. “There is always a way to bring someone back!”
He nodded once. “This is what happens when a mind has been manipulated from such a young age, there is nothing left that is real. She was never real, Lark. She has been Viv’s creation from the beginning, just waiting to be used. Just like the gargoyles.”
I glared at him. “What about me then? I was manipulated since I was very young too. Am I not myself?”
Talan shook his head. “Certain memories, certain things were changed in you. Not everything. That is the difference. Vivica manipulated almost every aspect of Finley’s life. We took your memories, but we never tried to change the core of who you were.”
Despite my arguments for Finley’s life, I knew what Talan meant. There would be no convincing Finley to not attack the humans. There would be no keeping her safe. There would be no letting her live. Slowly, I delved my power with Spirit into Finley’s mind searching for the pieces that kept her moving, breathing.
“What are you doing?” Talan’s voice was sharp, and I knew without looking Peta stepped between us.
“I’m ending this,” I said, “with as little pain as I can for her.”
I put her to sleep first and wove for her a memory, one of her own I knew had made her happy, one of the few I could see were her own. A time when she was with her father and mother, when they held her tightly and loved her so, that they could not see the dangers around them. They were happy. They were safe in that ignorance before Viv got her claws into Finley.
I left her memory at the front of her mind and began to pull apart the threads that held her life force together. One by one, I plucked them away, tears sliding down my face with the removal of each.
Killing her didn’t take long. Her breathing, then her heart slowed, and she slumped into the stone. But I didn’t stop there, and behind me Talan sucked in a sharp breath. “Lark, what are you doing?”
“I’m giving her back to her element,” I said. I pulled apart the molecules of her body as I’d pulled apart the gargoyles, a piece at a time until her body shimmered, breaking down into nothing but the water droplets of an ocean, the salty water of tears. Her body slipped from my hands, leaving nothing but a puddle of water and a pile of clothes.
Behind us the door broke open and the Enders spilled in.
Dolph was in the lead, an Ender and friend of mine. He cried out first. “She’s killed the queen.” A wave of water swept up with a movement of his hands.
I held up my palm and stopped it as if it were nothing, as if I’d been using my connection to their element my entire life. “Dolph, be still.”
I placed my other hand in the water that had been Finley only moments before. “Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered. “I am so sorry I couldn’t save you.”
“What has done this?” Dolph choked on the words. “If not you, then who?”
Talan cleared his throat. “The mother goddess is not who we thought she was. She is a false leader. She is to blame for this.”
Dolph dropped to his knees beside me, his head bowed. “She was our best queen…”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I know. I tried to save her, Dolph. I did all I could.” Despite my grief, there was no guilt in my heart. I knew who to blame for this, and it was not me. Viv would pay for her crimes; I would make sure of it.
Dolph blinked and looked up at me, his eyes full of tears. “You carry our element. How is that possible?”
I drew a breath as I pushed to my feet. “I will carry it for a time while I face the false mother goddess.”
He was on his feet only a second after me. “Then I will stand with you.” The other Enders nodded, repeating his words. “We stand with you, Larkspur.”
Talan moved up beside me. “This is not how it is meant to be.”
Without a thought, I pushed him away, not with my hand but with Water, Fire, and Earth. I wove them into a single blast that sent him flying, slamming him into the wall. “It is not what I wanted, Talan, yet it is how my life is turning out. Your siblings have put their faith in me. They have given me their power to do what I can to stop the false mother goddess. We do this my way, now, from here on out.”
The Enders behind me stiffened, their weapons sliding out one by one.
I let Talan go, the three elements in me vying for my attention.
“My siblings.” Talan put a hand to his chest and rubbed at the spot where I’d pinned him. “That cannot be.”
“Realm,” I said and held my hand out, calling water to my palm, spreading it outward and upward until it was a shimmering wall between Talan and me. “He kissed me and gave me a connection to his power, and with it, his life.”
“And Ollie?” The look in Talan’s eyes said it all. He couldn’t believe even what was in front of him.
I lifted my other hand and held it out, a burst of flame circling out and around the water in a twisting tornado that heated the room instantly. “She gave her life also, and with it, her blessing. They are afraid, Talan. They are afraid because of what Viv did to them.”
He went to his knees. Behind me, Dolph reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Lark, we have a problem here, and we need a leader to deal with it.”
“I am not your leader.” I brushed his hand off, and he put it back on.
“You are, whether you like it or not. Finley would have wanted you to take her spot in this time of unrest.”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
Below our feet, the Deep rumbled. I went to my knees and shot a look to Talan, frowning. “An earthquake?” No, that didn’t feel right.
He shook his head, his eyes so sad, I almost believed the sorrow in them.
“Humans.”