Ash (The Elemental Series, Book 6) (23 page)

Granite’s eyes barely even flickered. “Perhaps that would be better. She’s too good at controlling me, boy. That was the problem all along. She knew my heart and knew I loved Ulani, too.”

Ulani . . . Lark’s mother, and the reason Cassava hated her so and had ultimately killed her. Ulani had been the king’s true love, the one he held above all others, but she was a mistress while Cassava had been the queen. To say it was a bad situation was an understatement.

Norm was shaking his head, his eyes closed tightly. “No more blood, please. No more blood.”

Granite sighed. “I came here to get away from her, and she seems to have followed me. Ash, you cannot possibly stand against her. She is strong, but more than that, she is wildly unstable.” He didn’t move from the sword. “I cannot help you.”

Norm grabbed Granite’s arm. “You said you would help me.”

He closed his eyes and slowly nodded. “Let me go, Norm.”

The Yeti dropped him. It was only then that I saw the wounds on Granite. Huge slashing claw marks.

I kept my sword pointed at him. “Peta got hold of you?”

“No. The rakshasa. That stupid Miko called the demon forth, thinking it would bend to him. And it didn’t. That is the help I give you. Fair warning.” He slumped to one side. “I cannot help you more than that. Use Sandlings against the demon, Ash. That will be your only hope to fend it off long enough to get away.”

“You can’t kill it?” I asked, wondering what had made Miko call on such a demon. There was only one answer I could think of. Cassava.

Norm and Granite both shook their heads.

I did a quick flick through my recollection of the rakshasa. A demon native to the area, it was clawed and had an insatiable appetite that happily included cannibalism. Wonderful, just what I needed on top of dealing with the bitch.

I wanted to run Granite through and finish him off. I wanted him to pay for his crimes, and as an Ender, it was my right and duty to do so. Yet I could not make the final blow. I backed toward the tent door and pointed a finger at my old friend, feeling something strange come over me as I spoke. “There will come a time when it is your life or hers. For the sake of your soul and the world we care for, you will need to make the right choice, or we will all pay for it with our lives.” I backed out of the yurt and Norm slowly followed me.

“We aren’t going to get any more help from him, are we?”

“No, we aren’t.” I tucked my swords into their sheaths. “Norm, I’m going in to find Cassava. She has long dark hair and dark eyes. While I do that, you find your family and do your best to get them to safety, do you understand?”

He nodded once. “Okay, I got it. What about after?”

I shook my head. “One step at a time.”

We headed back the way we’d come, banking to the right as we approached the side of the mountain that led up to the place the Yeti called home. The air around us flickered and danced, sepia-toned, because the fires burned high as if the world was viewed through a yellow-tinted lens. I slid off Norm’s back and pointed to the left, sending him around the side. I went straight up, climbing through the snow and heading into the place I knew I would find her. I could feel the vibrations of her power through the thickness of the snow.

It was as if the ground below my feet guided me, as if my Ender’s senses had finally come back online now that I’d erased whatever fault lines Talan had placed in my mind and heart.

I crested the ridge and stared down at the scene below, horror cutting through me. There were Yeti piled beside a huge bonfire, their bodies flung about and broken like oversized dolls. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare. There was no sign of the rakshasa. I drew a breath, almost choking on the smoke-filled air.

Memories roared up through me, long forgotten, the past came to life in the flames.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see through the smoke in the forest. All around me people cried out. The lightning strike had hit several trees, and with that, many homes were on fire, tucked against the redwoods as they were.

Ten years old, I knew I couldn’t do much to help. But my mother was strong with her connection to the earth. She could call the dirt up and put the flames out in an instant. She was at home with my siblings. I ran through the forest, the sound of beating wings in my ears and the heat of my fear burning my lungs.

I lifted my hand and pushed through a thick huckleberry bush to where my home was on the furthest south edge of the forest.

Orange, red, and yellow flames rose into the sky. Words choked in my tightening throat.

The smell of burnt flesh ghosted across to me from the clearing. I bolted forward. The door of our home had been blasted off and was rimmed in fire. I lifted a hand to shade my face. On the floor ahead of me lay my mother, her arms around my two siblings. Their chests did not rise and fall, and there was a black scorch mark running across their backs.

I had to get them out. Take them to the healers.

“No, Ash, you can’t!” A pair of hands grabbed at me as I moved to leap forward. The girl from the planting fields. The one who slipped me fresh berries when no one was looking.

“You can’t, Ash. They’re dead. I’m so sorry.” She hugged me to her, dragging me away from the flames.

“No, I want to help them!”

She cried softly. “You can’t. No one can now.” With one hand, she called up the earth around the tree and threw it at the raging fire. A thump resounded through the air, as the flames were put out completely. No one came running from the home, thanking her. I watched, hoping we were wrong. That one of them had survived.

We sat there and she rocked me softly as I cried. “Why did they have to die?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I don’t know. I lost my family when I was young, too.”

I blinked up at her; she wasn’t that much older than me. A few years at the most. Her face was streaked with tears for my family, and her lips trembled. I leaned my head back against her, and together we stared at the remnants of my home. She’d saved my life. I would never forget that.

Cassava had saved my life.

She walked with me away from the only home I’d ever known.

“Where will I go?”

A moment passed before she answered. “I think you will have an important role one day,” she said softly. “Maybe you could even be an Ender, Ash. You could protect our family. You’re strong like your mom, you know.” Her words were meant to distract me, but as the Enders barracks came into view, I knew she was right. I knew where I belonged.

The memory let me go and I gasped. How could I have forgotten that? Or had I just not thought of it for so long? I shook my head, doing my best to clear things.

None of that mattered now. She wasn’t that girl who’d saved my life so many years ago.

Was she?

“Cassava, I am here for you!”

A cry from a voice I knew as well as my own shattered the morning, and Lark stumbled out from around the fire, her eyes filled with tears, her face streaked with soot. She limped, but I could see no injury. It didn’t matter. She was here. Lark was here.

“Ash, we have to go. I cannot hold her back. She’s too strong.”

I didn’t think, I just ran across the bridge, grabbed her arm, and pulled her with me. “The mystic’s cave,” she said. “We can hide there.”

I nodded and turned, heading straight for Miko’s home. The doorway opened and we slid through the tunnel, into the main room. I spun Lark around and crushed her to my chest. “How did you get here?”

“Cassava, I followed her.”

I needed nothing else. I kissed her, holding her tightly as I held onto her for all I was worth. Her hands slid over my shoulders and pushed off my cloak and leather vest. A part of my brain screamed at me that something was off, Lark wouldn’t do this, not in the middle of a fight.

But I wanted to believe so badly that she was here. That I had not lost her completely. I took her there on the ground and she cried out under me . . . and then as my heart slowed its wild pace she began to laugh. I jerked my head back as her voice changed and the laughter pealed out of her. Her face shifted, and she was no longer Lark, but Cassava.

“Oh, goddess, this could not be any better, Ash. Do you remember the last time I forced you to bed me? How you swore you would rather die than touch me again against your will?” Her eyes glittered up at me and I scrambled back, reaching for a weapon.

“Tsk, now, that’s not the way to treat a lover
,
is it? Certainly not one that could be carrying your child?” She slid a hand over her bare belly and splayed her fingers there.

“No.” I breathed the word and grabbed a sword. I stood, not entirely sure of what I was going to do, because the horror of what I was staring at froze me as surely as the weather outside would have. Only this I couldn’t seem to shake, couldn’t move past. The ice over my soul was too thick. What had I done?

Cassava smiled up at me, her eyes crinkled around the edges in pure pleasure. “You see, you do not have the heart it takes to end a life when it really matters. One thought of a would-be child, and you are undone.”

A would
-
be child. I almost believed her, until I grasped hold of the image of Lark in my mind. The truth whispered through me.

Cassava was barren.

Her words were lies.

How the hell could she still be controlling Spirit?

She frowned and stood slowly, her body wavering for an image like a heat wave. As if she were still using Spirit.

I blinked over and over, trying to clear the image. She continued to frown. “How are you fighting me on this?”

“How are you doing it at all without the ring?” I countered, bringing the sword up slowly as if through mud.

“A secret our world doesn’t want to be known, Ash. We are of all the elements, are we not?” she whispered, her words silken, easing their way through me. She reached up and brushed a hand over my cheek. “I’ll admit, it is easier with the pink diamond.”

I shouldn’t kill her; she was my queen.

No! Those were her words. I stepped forward, bringing the tip of the blade to within a few inches of her heart.

Her lips twisted. “You know nothing, Ash. Nothing. To your knees.”

I dropped as if stoned in the head. Her hands slid over my face and tipped my chin up so I looked into her eyes.

“You love her?” she asked, and for just a moment, I saw something in her eyes that scared me more than hatred.

Compassion. Her fingers slid over my face, smoothing my hair back. “You love her, and I can understand wanting to protect her, wanting to save the one you love the best.” She crouched in front of me. “You were always like that. But you can’t protect her. Neither you nor Peta can. We need her stripped bare of all she loves.”

The softness of her voice blended with the hard edge of her words and I struggled to understand what she was saying. I kept seeing the girl that had saved me from the fire. “Are you going to kill me?”

She tipped her head to the side as if considering. “Not yet. I need you, we all need you to stay alive a little longer.”

That made no sense. Even I knew that the longer I was alive, the more chance I would have at killing her. I glared at her as I fought to gain control of my body. While it looked like I could keep my mind to myself, my body followed whatever control she had over it.

“Such a fighter, such a warrior.” She sighed and shook her head, long dark hair sweeping over her bare shoulders. “But I cannot let you leave now, and I cannot kill you yet. Which presents a problem. I cannot ask him to keep a hold on you forever in the binding of Spirit.”

My eyes widened. “Raven is here?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, my son . . . he follows his own path now. Or at least he thinks he does.”

From the back shadows of the room stepped a man I knew only briefly, but I hated him anyway with the heat of a thousand suns.

Talan gave me a sad smile. “Hello, Ash.”