Elemental (23 page)

“For My purpose.” The words were out before
I could stop them. I didn’t even feel my mouth open to whisper
them. But they were there and now everyone knew them.

I was overwhelmed by the truth of the words
and the release they brought. Death and destruction followed me
around because El meant them to, to prepare and test me. I had been
imprisoned on
Sho’ful
because El had plans for me. I’d
needed to be there. The Auri had locked themselves up on their
planet for thousands of years. Had I remained, I never would’ve
known Manoo had named me Shadra. I never would’ve had reason to
fear him, hate him. And as I gazed into Meir’s fear-filled eyes I
realized I never would’ve had something to fight for… to die
for.

Every action had a reason behind it. I knew
that now. And I no longer cared that I was probably going to die.
No, I wouldn’t offer my life to Manoo as I’d planned just days ago.
Instead, I would offer my life to El.

Chapter
Eighteen
:

Lost and Found

No one said anything for two hours. We were
all a little shocked and weary. Myself especially.

I just needed to sit alone and think. So
much had happened, and I was only starting to understand it.

My eyes drifted to Ranen, wondering what
part he really played in it all. His fingers lazily picked at that
glowing mark on his arm as he stared at the opposite wall with
glazed eyes. With everything that’d happened over the past few
days, I’d forgotten about it. Seeing it again, though, piqued my
interest.

After a few seconds his eyes caught mine and
he dropped his hand.

“What is that?” I asked.

He waved his hand in the air as if to wave
off my question. “It’s a ComTat.”

“A ComTat?”

“Communications Tattoo.”

I pushed myself off my cot and sat next to
him to see it better. The markings were fine and raised just
slightly above the skin. Thin lines swirled around like paths in a
maze, and some parts glowed more brightly than others. “Does it do
anything?”

He raised his eyebrows and chuckled. “It
communicates.”

Okay, so that should’ve been pretty obvious
to me. I tried to recover some sense of dignity. “But how?”

He fingered one of the larger swirls on the
ComTat. “It picks up a signal and transfers the message through
vibrations throughout my body’s nervous system until the
information is then translated in my brain.”

“That’s interesting.”

He nodded.

“Is that how you knew about the palace?” It
seemed so obvious now—the way he’d just frozen, like he’d been
listening to something.

Ranen frowned and dug deeper at the
ComTat.

“What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t heard anything for a while now.”
He dropped his hand to his lap. “It has me concerned.”

I focused on the swirls and lines on his
arm, unwilling to go there with Ranen. I refused to think the
Mamood could have won so quickly and easily. The bluish glow
emanating from the image swelled and receded along a constant path
around the tattoo.

I followed its path so long, I’d memorized
it long before Ranen opened his mouth again. “I think I’m going to
take a nap.” And with that, he turned away from me, hiding his arm
under the length of his body, making it clear he wanted to be
alone.

I stood up and went back to my own cot. Poor
Ranen. Everything about him annoyed me—especially the fact that
every time I looked at him I knew how I must appear standing next
to Cailen: weak and broken, hardly the champion he’d have chosen.
But still, I didn’t want this for him. I didn’t want this for
anyone.

I sat down on my little bed. Before resting
my head against the wall, I caught Cailen’s gaze just as he looked
away, hiding something from me. I thought I heard him mumble
something like “white wings,” and shake his head. So my wings were
white, that didn’t mean he had to be so horrified. And yet, he was
definitely horrified. Since the whole embarrassing “event,” I’d
caught him sneaking glances a few times. Sometimes he looked so
disgusted, I thought he was going to be sick.

I turned my back on him, crushed. We’d come
so far since meeting I’d thought we really had a chance. Apparently
not. I made the boy ill—not much hope for romance from that.

I closed my eyes, ignoring the gazes I felt
coming from Malik and Meir. Neither one of them had stopped staring
at me since the great reveal. I wasn’t just Ella to anyone
anymore.

“Time to go!”

My eyes popped open to see Ranen’s
previously sedentary body jump off the cot and scuttle around the
bunker, picking up blankets, grabbing food.

“Go where?” Meir’s voice was slow.

“The Block, of course. They’re sending
shuttles around now.” It was impossible to miss the sound of relief
in the old man’s voice. Ranen opened a door, revealing stairs going
up to a hatch along the ceiling. He stuck his head outside and
called down, “We’ve lucked out. It rained all day today.”

“What’s the Block?” Malik said from just
behind my shoulder. I tried to ignore the tingles that set off in
my stomach.

Ranen looked back and gestured for us to
follow him up the stairs. “It’s a secure underground haven for
Ladeshians and the military.”

I grabbed my bundle of clothes as Meir
pulled me with him. Fluffy ran past us and disappeared into the
woods behind Ranen’s house—at least, what was left of Ranen’s
house. Broken stone and burnt timbers littered the ground. Water
sloshed under our feet. It’d rained a
lot
.

Black clouds hovered low in the sky, hiding
the mountain peaks in the distance and threatening to dump their
contents on the ground at any moment. Meir rubbed my cold shoulders
and guided me around the burnt skeleton of the palace to the road.
Dozens of people swarmed onto a vehicle. Under normal
circumstances, I would have considered the shuttle quite large, but
with all the people crowding inside and around it, it looked almost
tiny. I wondered if there would be room for us, or if we’d have to
wait for another one to come by.

Ranen sped up and I figured out this was it.
We ran behind him and shoved our way through. Most of the people
moved aside when they saw Ranen. It looked like even when lives
were at stake, royalty couldn’t be ignored, but a few parents with
children clinging to their sides frowned, disinclined to lose their
places.

We made it inside and wormed our way to the
back. Many of the people were covered in blood, their clothes torn
into shreds. I caught a few of them giving me wary glances and I
realized I wore something quite literally fit for a queen—not to
mention the fact that none of us had a scratch on us. Surely these
people wondered why we’d been so lucky.

I was quickly reminded of my dislike of
crowds. Hands and shoulders pushed against me, prodding for a way
through. I recoiled away from them and sank into Meir’s chest. He
wrapped his arms around me and turned so I faced the window. I
breathed in and out to calm the terror.

The shuttle lifted off the ground and moved
out. I turned away from the staring eyes of the people left
outside.

I turned to Ranen. “Are there other
shuttles?”

“Not for them.” He cocked his head toward
the window and the crowd of people we slowly passed. “All the
shuttles are moving in now. Those people will have to find safety
elsewhere.”

Bile lurched up into my throat. There were
children in the crowd.

Minutes passed and my mind filled with
thoughts of all those who had died—and those who
would
die.
The Mamood cared nothing for their lives. I wondered how depraved
someone had to be to stop caring.

I stared out the window as we passed the
devastation. Most of the homes had been completely destroyed—only a
few still had some standing walls. None were livable, though, and
nothing offered protection.

A flash of color in the corner of my eye
caught my attention. I twisted around to look at the near blind
spot behind the shuttle. Another flash of color—a red beam—ripped
through the sky much closer to us. My eyes widened as every last
muscle in my body froze. More red beams—at least a dozen—touched
the ground all around the Old City. In a flash of instinct, I knew
what they were targeting: the shuttles.

I gasped.

Cailen ripped me away from Meir. “Grab onto
me!” His green and gold wings burst out from his back, conforming
to the crowded space.

I looked at Meir in horror just as a red
beam sliced through our shuttle and he was knocked away from me. I
struggled against Cailen to grab him, but he and everything else in
the vehicle disappeared.

Chapter
Nineteen
:

Nothing

Light swirled around me, weaving in and out
in a never-ending dance of color. Voices boomed then faded like
thunder in a storm. Malik, Ranen, and I huddled together with
Cailen’s arms wrapped around us. The swirling light moved in time
with his whooshing wings.

After a few seconds, the swirling colors
solidified into recognizable shapes. Men and women in form-fitting
silver suits stood around us in a wide silver tunnel. Most of them
carried weapons and gawked at us. Some of them were pointing those
weapons at our chests.

Cailen released his arms. Malik and Ranen
stepped to either side while I pressed myself closer to him.

One of the silver-suited men in the back of
the small crowd said, “It’s a Mamood!”

At that point
all
the rifles came
up.

A few clicks and the room started humming as
the laser weapons warmed up.

I twisted around to grab Malik. I didn’t
know how I was going to protect him, but I knew I had to. Cailen’s
arms tightened around me, holding me in place.

At no signal I could detect, all the
soldiers clicked the off buttons and lowered their weapons. A man
in similar dress to the other Soltakians, but at least a head
taller, stepped forward as everyone parted for him. I recognized
him immediately and groaned—Commander General Lastrini.

Malik pushed his shoulders back and raised
his chin a fraction of an inch.

The giant leered at the Mamood. “Well, well,
well. I was wondering when we would meet again.” His cold, ice-blue
eyes turned to me. I sank deeper into Cailen’s arms. “I would
recognize that tiny little form anywhere. You must be his Tarmean
companion.” He turned back to Malik. “Now where’s the other one?
These two are not him.”

My stomach twisted. Meir. He was… gone. No,
not gone. He
couldn’t
be gone. He was just still out there,
but we’d find him and he’d be all right. El owed me at least that
much. Yes, we’d find him. We had to find him.

But I’d seen the beam hit our shuttle.

I gasped for breath. No, he had to be alive.
Not Meir!
Not Meir!

Cailen’s restraining arms no longer
comforted. I needed to run from there. I twisted against his hold,
but it remained firm.

“Shh,” he whispered in my ear, so low only I
would be able to hear. “Not now. We’ll find him, but not now.”

Not now. We’d find him, but not now. Yes,
we’d find him. We’d deal with our problem at hand and then go look
for Meir. I could wait, as long as it wasn’t too long.

Lastrini stared at me, perhaps thinking I’d
lost my mind.

If I couldn’t get Meir back, I probably
would.

With his eyes still on me, he turned his
head in Malik’s direction. “We found your dead friend hidden by the
storage containers, along with the weapon that killed him.” He
shrugged and turned his gaze away from me. “Now I don’t mind so
much that you killed one of your own, but I do find it suspicious
that so shortly after you sneak into Soltak, the Mamood—your
people—decide to attack.” He took one step toward Malik. “Now, why
is that?”

Ranen—who had up until that point been
standing slightly behind Cailen—stepped up to the Commander
General. The confidence radiating off of the little man was almost
comical. The other Ladeshian was at least two feet taller than him
and twice as wide. I would’ve been scared for Ranen’s well-being if
Lastrini didn’t immediately drop to one knee upon seeing him. The
crowd of soldiers followed his example.

Ranen said something in what I assumed was
Ladeshian and everyone returned to their feet. “This man is a
friend. You have my word on that,” he continued in the common
tongue. It was nice that he thought to include us in the
conversation. Perhaps Ranen wasn’t so bad after all.

Lastrini eyed Malik with a wary glance as he
returned to his feet. After a few moments of speculation, he put
his hand out for the Mamood. Malik didn’t take it. “Forgive my
hasty and somewhat rude interrogation. It is my responsibility to
protect my troops and my emperor.” He gestured toward Ranen.
“Though I respect Master Orsili’s judgment, I did not become leader
of the entire Soltakian force by not gathering all pertinent
information merely because someone has given me their word. I
really must know your name and why you chose to sneak into
Co’ladesh.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I ripped
myself out of Cailen’s loose hold and stared up at the enormous
Ladeshian. “His name is Malik. He was only helping me escape the
Mamood. We have a common enemy, General Lastrini. Please, we mean
you no harm.”

He glared. “And who might you be, Little
Miss?”

Malik’s teeth snapped shut and Cailen’s
hands were pulling me back.

“She is Ella,” Ranen said. “She has been
named Shadra by Manoo.” He paused and folded his arms. “And she is
an Auri.”