Elemental (15 page)

Someone knocked on my door.

I barely lifted my head from the pillow as I
told whoever it was to come in. I wasn’t even sure they could hear
me, but after a few moments, the door opened and Malik walked
through. I sat up.

He looked worn, like he’d been up for days.
He ran his fingers down his face, stretching the skin. “May I
sit?”

I moved a little to give him room. He sat
next to me and then lay down with his hands covering his face. I
didn’t say anything; I figured he would talk when he was ready.

After a few minutes, though, he still hadn’t
said anything and I began to worry. I leaned down to look closely
at his face. I didn’t think he was asleep, but it was hard to tell
with his hands in the way. He must have felt me hovering because he
moved his hands and looked at me with sad, tender eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

He took in a deep breath and then let it out
slowly. He smiled. “I was just thinking about something Ranen
said.”

“Oh.”

“But I came here to talk to you about
something.” He shook his head. “Well actually, I came here to guard
you
and
talk to you.”

“Guard me?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t think I
haven’t noticed those little wheels turning in your head, Ella. I
know you’re still planning on turning yourself in.”

I bit my lip. Why did Malik have to notice
everything? “So you’re just going to stay in my room from now on? I
hope you don’t mind the floor.”

He chuckled. “No, I don’t mind the
floor—I’ve slept on worse.” He became serious. “I wouldn’t have to
do this, though, if I trusted you to do the right thing.”

“I’m
trying
to do the right thing,” I
whispered.

“No, you’re trying to do the stupid thing.”
He propped himself up on one elbow and I leaned away, uncomfortable
with the sudden closeness. “Just what do you think is going to
happen if I let you do what you want?”

“I know what’s going to happen.” My chin may
have gone up an inch or two as I said that. “I know they’re
probably going to kill me. I
want
that to happen. You of all
people should understand.”

He rolled his eyes.

“How can you so easily disregard a human
life?” I leaned away from him, itching to be as far away as
possible. Where was his honor now? “I
killed
that woman,
Malik. How can I go on living knowing there’s something inside of
me that enjoys hurting people?”

His face hardened. “You don’t enjoy it. If
you did, I would’ve agreed with you. But look at how you’re beating
yourself up, Ella. You just need to control what’s inside of you,
not get yourself killed.”

I looked down at my hands, away from his
watchful eyes. “I don’t think I can control it. I’ve tried, but
it’s too strong.” I looked up. “What if I hurt Meir? How many more
people have to die because I chose to leave
Sho’ful
?”

“Don’t blame yourself because you wanted a
life and the Kofra has done everything in his power to stop that.”
He shook his head, disgusted. “But answer my question: what do you
think is going to happen to you if you go to them?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I thought I
had
answered that question—I was going to die.

“They won’t just kill you,” he said, reading
my confusion. “You’re Shadra. Only one other person in the history
of the Fiefdom has been named Shadra, and the ceremony is
specific.” He shrugged. “Every Mamood knows the story of the
Destructor; the one destined to kill Manoo. Of course we know it—we
know it better than the Praeori. They say Manoo is terrified of his
coming judgment, of the one powerful enough to kill him. He thought
he’d found him with the first Shadra. I guess you gave him reason
to doubt that assumption.” He smirked. “But Manoo’s not human; he’s
spirit. So, the one who can kill him must be utterly destroyed in
order to make Manoo safe.”

“
Utterly
destroyed?” I felt my pulse
quicken.

“The story goes that Manoo will possess the
Kofra, strap you down with spiked restraints digging into your
neck, wrists, and ankles, and eat you alive. First, he has to cut
symbols, spells to trap your soul, all over your body and let your
blood leak out—slowly, because you
must
stay alive through
as much of it as possible, and then he’ll eat you one piece at a
time, saving your heart for last.”

All the blood drained out of my head. I
don’t know how I didn’t pass out, but I was close to it because the
room spun and I swayed. Malik reached his hands out to grab my
shoulders and prop me up. I prayed for the numb bliss of
unconsciousness, but it didn’t come. Instead, I was forced to play
Malik’s words over and over again in my mind.

Eat me alive. Destroy my soul.

What kind of world had I broken into? How
could anyone stand to live like this?

Malik’s arms wrapped around me and I felt
him pushing me down to lie against the mattress. As soon as my head
touched the pillow, I was out.

A thick, steel door stood between me and my
predator, but as claws scraped against the cold metal, it didn’t
seem enough to protect me.

Thud.

Hinges creaked under the weight of the hound
as it slammed its body into the door.

Thud.

The room shook under the weight of the
beast. I cowered in the corner, my knees pressed against my
chest.

Clang.

One of the hinges broke loose and fell to
the floor. The hound’s savage digging at my door intensified.

Thud. Scratch. Thud.

I pressed myself against the wall. Despite
the darkness, I knew the hound would find me. It would never cease
in its bloodlust.

Crash.

The door burst open. Red eyes stared back at
me from the void.

I screamed as it lunged for me. Foamy lips
and sharp teeth wrapped around my neck while razor-sharp claws tore
at my belly, spilling my innards.

Flames erupted around me and consumed the
beast. Its ear-piercing howls filled the room and spread outward,
splitting the void.

I clutched my head and screamed. The flames
had vanished and the hound’s death throes had ceased—only the
memories remained. But still, I screamed. When I finally realized I
was in a room in Ranen’s home, and not on
Sho’ful
, I clamped
my hand over my mouth.

A nightmare. So now even my dreams weren’t a
refuge.

I whipped my head around, scanning the room
for Malik. He wasn’t there. I waited to hear footsteps outside my
door—surely someone had heard me—but no one came.

I moved my hand away from my mouth and
grabbed the back of my moist neck. The room was too dark—I hated
it. I didn’t ever want to live in the dark again. I leaned over the
side of my bed and fumbled with the floor lamp.

Precious light flooded my room. I wrapped my
arms around my waist and held tight to control the spasms rocking
through my body. Sweat poured out of my limbs, cooling my skin. The
goose bumps made my hair stand on end.

I’m not on Sho’ful. I’m not on
Sho’ful.
I had to say this at least twenty times before my
pulse steadied and my breathing calmed. It’d all been so real,
though. I could still feel the hound’s teeth pressing into my neck,
the flames that had burned…

I ripped my covers off and swung my legs
over the edge of the bed.

There was no going back to the Mamood—I knew
that now. I wasn’t brave enough to do what I probably should. Let
the universe burn; I wasn’t going to become some ego-bloated god’s
tasty little snack. But if I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself, that
meant I had a destiny to fulfill. Sure, the details were a little
fuzzy and I didn’t exactly know what Manoo had done to warrant
destruction, but I could guess. If the Mamood god was anything like
his followers, he deserved to die. But Manoo wasn’t going to give
up, I knew that more now than ever before. He would follow me
wherever I was. That meant I had to be prepared.

And at that point, I wasn’t even close. I
could barely hold down my food, walk up a flight of stairs—or
across a completely flat surface—without tripping, let alone
control the power inside me. How was I going to go up against
someone who made heroes a lot more foreboding than me huddle in the
shadows in terror? Manoo wasn’t someone to take lightly, nor were
his followers.

I needed some fresh air. The stuffy room
with its clouds of dust hovering in the air weighed me down and I
couldn’t stand it anymore. I’d had enough of closed spaces and the
idea of a nice walk in Ranen’s gardens cheered me. I jumped out of
bed and rushed out of the quiet, sleeping house. How long had I
been out? My aching and rumbling stomach wasn’t a good indicator
for the passing of time. I’d grown too used to the feeling. The
house had been dark before I’d fallen asleep—though it’d been early
afternoon—but as I walked through the echoing halls, the oppressive
quiet hinted at a late hour.

It wasn’t until I stepped through the front
entrance and into the chilly night that I realized just how late it
had gotten. My eyes instinctively went up. Soltak’s moon—an odd
shade of green—hung in the center of the sky. So I’d been asleep
for a while, then. It didn’t feel like I’d been out for more than
five minutes.

I stumbled down the front steps and dug my
bare feet into the soft, cool turf. I moaned.

There was something odd about the air that I
couldn’t quite place. The cool breeze brought goose bumps up on my
flesh, but my blood was warming, tingling in my limbs. The feeling
was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember where or when I’d
experienced it before. I took a deep breath, letting the air
saturate every cell in my body.

I suddenly had this crazy urge to run, not
out of fear or a sense of danger, but because I knew that I could.
The soft grass beneath my feet called to me and I knew that running
across Ranen’s rich, green lawns would be the most splendid thing
I’d ever done.

I took off and hit a wall. There was nothing
in front of me—I wasn’t blind—but the air around me constricted and
kept me in place. I tried twisting myself out of it, but the wall
surrounded me.

I panicked.

My blood started doing something I
recognized immediately: tingling. I welcomed it, let it take over
my body. I released it before it had a chance to burn and bright
blue points of light dotted my vision. The wall around me was one
solid blue light, tight and bound together. Rather than breaking it
apart, I formed my own wall in the tiny space in front of me and
pushed at the solid blue light.

Thunder and lightning ripped through the air
as my wall tore at the other wall. I ignored the intense heat and
turned to face a cloaked stranger, hiding in the dark.

I ordered the scattered blue lights into a
funneled chaos and directed it at him. He stood his ground,
untouched. New lights formed in my vision. These I recognized, too.
They were red. I swept my hands through the air, calling the red
lights to form around my palms. Flames danced around my fingertips.
The stranger took a step back and brought his own hands up in
defense.

“Ella, stop,” he said.

My power stuttered and the tempest died out.
I recognized the voice. Cailen pushed his hood back and stepped
into the green glow of the moon.

Chapter
Twelve
:

Questions

“Cailen?” I blinked twice, afraid I was
staring at a mirage. My lips stretched into a natural smile and my
heart fluttered. Cailen was here. He was real. He was standing
right in front of me, although the wings I’d remembered seeing
weren’t visible. And he felt like home, though I’d never realized I
knew what that felt like.

He smiled back at me, his white teeth
gleaming against his pale skin.

And then a sudden, irrational anger surged
through me. “Why did you leave?”

His face hardened. “It wasn’t my plan to
leave you there, but something happened and we were called back to
my ship.”

“What happened?”

Cailen frowned and spoke slowly. “Our King
died.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “I’m sorry.” I blushed. My
anger seemed very silly now. I shouldn’t have felt so slighted
because he hadn’t taken me with him. It wasn’t fair. Not everything
could always be about me. “I didn’t know.”

Anger flashed across Cailen’s face for an
instant, but he shook it off just as quickly and smiled at me. “How
could you have known?”

With a single step, he closed the small
distance between us and wrapped his arms around my waist. I curled
up against his chest, letting the warmth pass through me, saturate
me, make me stronger. An electric current hummed between us,
vibrating every cell in my body. There was just something about
being around him, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Everything
about it felt good, but more than that, it felt
right
—like I
wasn’t really living unless he was there with me.

That tingling sensation I had come to dread
swelled in my body, but this time it wasn’t at all sinister.
Instead of scorching my blood, it seemed to pass through it to
Cailen, leaving only pleasant, intoxicating heat.

Cailen’s broad hands clenched my back,
pressing me closer to him. It wasn’t enough for me. I needed
more.

I looked up to stare into his eyes and was
not at all surprised to see his warm, almost burning, gaze looking
down at me. My breath caught as I realized what was about to
happen.

He lowered his face to mine and brought his
hand up to cup my cheek while his other hand maintained its
unbreakable hold around my waist. With the tip of his nose, he
caressed my other cheek, moving up and down slowly, teasingly.