Elemental (17 page)

“All right.” He shook his head with a smirk.
“If you think you can handle it, I’ll give you your answers.”

“Thank you.”

A playful growl escaped his lips and he
inched closer to me. “Auri are pretty good at finding each other
because we know what we’re looking for, and,” he raised an eyebrow,
“we’re not like other humans.”

Malik scoffed.

I rolled my eyes at the both of them. “I
kind of guessed the being different part already.”

He ignored me. “We emit a certain
radioactive signature all the time, though it’s stronger when we
use our ability. We couldn’t find you for years because some type
of shielding must’ve been blocking your signature, but we picked it
up three days ago.”

“
Sho’ful
,” I murmured.

“What?”

“I was on
Sho’ful
.” I bit my lip. “It
was a prison ship.”

“Hmm… interesting.” He didn’t sound very
interested; he sounded mad. “Well, when we picked up your
signature, we went straight for the planet you were on, but you
were gone by the time we got there. It was very dangerous for us to
enter the Mamood-controlled territory because we knew their sensors
would pick up our ships, but we didn’t know how long our chance
would last, so we ignored our law and followed you.”

“So why didn’t you take me with you when you
found me?”

His teeth snapped together. “Stupid rules
made years ago stopped us. I would’ve broken them if I’d known what
Olorun and Leor were doing.”

“What rules?” And why would they apply to
me
?

Cailen stared at the empty fireplace for
several minutes. I was about to prod him—thinking he’d chosen to
ignore me—but he turned back to me and said, “Do you remember what
I told you about our King?”

“That he died.” I reached out to comfort him
when he lowered his eyes to his lap. “I’m so sorry, Cailen. I can
see how upset you are. Did you know him personally?”

He looked up again and guilt, or fear,
stared back at me. “Ella… the King… he was your father.”

I gasped. “My father?” And then it all
clicked together. All the clues that should’ve been terribly
obvious from the moment I’d heard them rushed to the forefront of
my mind. I was an Aurume, the one who could control all three
elements, the only one who could rule the Auri. The King was
dead—my father was dead.

“How many Auri are born with the ability to
control the three elements?” I whispered.

His voice was grave. “Only one every
generation. And only to your family.”

“Only one.” I swallowed the lump in my
throat. “Great.”

“That’s why we couldn’t take you. As the
ruling Aurume, we need your express permission to transport you.
And with that man waking up, we were in danger of being
discovered.” He growled. “Stopped by our own stupid rules.”

“Uh-huh.”

Cailen was clearly too caught up in his own
self-loathing to see that I was falling into hysterics. My body
bent over as I clutched at my waist. I gasped at the air, but not
nearly enough entered my lungs.

“Ella?” Malik’s anxious voice came from
close behind me. “What’s wrong with her?”

A pair of arms wrapped around my middle and
pulled me up so I was standing. If it weren’t for those strong
limbs carrying my weight, I would’ve fallen back to the floor.

“Shh…It’s okay,” Cailen whispered in my ear.
He muttered something under his breath, too low for me to hear.

Was everything okay, though? At that moment,
not even close. The expectations kept piling up around me. I
wondered if whoever was in charge was having a good laugh at my
expense. It made me angry to think my life had become a joke. As if
one surprise weren’t enough, let’s keep adding it up to see how
long it takes Ella to really go nuts.

But at that moment, my mind could think with
more clarity than it ever had before. It surprised me, actually,
the way all the details fell into place and how I began to think
through them. I didn’t
have
to be any of these
things—Shadra, Destructor, Aurume—and I didn’t have to run away
from them, either. I could do what I wanted; it was in my control.
And suddenly, I knew that I
could
do them—that they weren’t
too much for me.

A thick headiness swept over me and I felt
with perfect understanding the strength I possessed. The monster
inside me hungered for Manoo’s demise. Nothing else mattered.

My breathing slowed and my legs took some of
the weight off Cailen’s arms. I took in a deep breath and raised my
gaze to him. He stared down at me, his green eyes anxious and
flicking across my face.

“I’m fine,” I said. It was truer then than
ever before. Peace coursed through my blood, mingling with the
numbness already there. The electric current from Cailen’s touch
pulsed through me like oxygen, strengthening my muscles and healing
me from the inside out. I
was
fine, more than fine—I was
strong.

Chapter
Thirteen
:

Cailen

“So tell me more,” I said as we sat back
down on the floor and Malik returned to lying on the bed. Even
before Cailen could answer, the Mamood’s soft snores and heavy
breathing filled the room.

Cailen’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you
can handle more? Don’t you want to space this out?”

I laughed without humor. “I’m hoping the big
stuff is out in the open now. Everything else is just filler,
unless you have some more bombshells to throw at me.”

He smirked. “No more bombshells.”

“Good.”

“So what else do you want to know?”

The one thing I really wanted to know was
what was up with his attitude. Why was he being so cold and aloof
all of a sudden? And why had he kissed me—my heart stuttered just
thinking about it—if he was going to treat me like a pariah two
seconds later? But I wasn’t brave enough to ask those questions.
Not yet. So I decided to keep it simple—and impersonal. “Tell me
about the Auri—their history.”

“
Our
history,” he clarified.

I nodded sheepishly. It was going to take
some time to get used to the idea that I belonged to anyone,
especially anyone so magical, so straight out of a dream.

He pursed his lips, thinking. After several
minutes, he folded his hands in his lap and leaned forward. “The
story goes that El, Himself, taught us how to manipulate the
elements. He was the one to give us our wings. Before that, we were
just regular old humans. This was thousands of years ago, long
before anyone in the galaxy even knew there were other planets and
other humans living on them.” He smiled at me. “The Auri were the
ones to change all that.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “We were pretty technologically
advanced at the time of the transformation, but we weren’t anywhere
close to developing ships capable of traveling deep into space.
Transporting took away the need. With a thought, we could travel
from one point in space to another.

“Being explorers at heart, we wasted no time
in our search for more life. What we found shocked us. The first
explorers came home with tales of other
humans
living on
dozens of lush, fertile planets.

“Oh, the plans those first ones had,” he
said wistfully. “We were to reach out to the other civilizations,
make peace, and offer them our aid.” He paused. “From what the
first explorers had seen, those other humans had not yet reached
our level of technology. We were to be heroes.”

His face darkened and he continued in a low,
foreboding voice, “The wars hadn’t started yet, but the tension was
already palpable. The Auri had separated into three distinct
groups: the Salames, the Sylmes, and the Undinmes.”

“What were they?” I whispered. Cailen’s
solemn tone was catching.

“Most know them better as Firestarters,
Windbringers, and Watergatherers.”

“Oh.” I remembered Ranen talking about the
wars among the three races. He had sounded nearly as solemn as
Cailen did now. Those days must’ve been horrible.

Cailen looked past me with his eyes glazed
over. He was somewhere else, thinking of things I couldn’t imagine.
“Our governments crumbled under the increasing tension and millions
died even
before
the official Firestarter attack. Poverty
and crime chipped away at our society and exploration was
officially halted. How they thought they could have prevented
people from transporting, I can’t imagine.” He shook his head in
disgust.

“When the Firestarters
did
attack
there was hardly anyone left, and those were mostly…” he cleared
his throat and looked away, “…children. In a way, the coup saved
us,” he continued quickly. “The Firestarters were ruthless in their
bid for power over the other two Auri races. They enslaved the
Watergatherers and Windbringers and controlled their populations.
But at least there was some order.

“Generations passed and eventually the
slaves revolted. The wars had started again.” He sighed. “By this
point, thousands of Auri had escaped their bondage and were living
on other planets. Some Firestarters who weren’t in power had left,
as well. Though most tried to blend in and live alongside the
regular humans, some pretended to be gods and ruled whole planets.
There’s one in particular who committed such travesties and led so
many astray, her name has become reviled among the Auri.” Cailen
shuddered, and then spit out the name like it was a curse. “Morgan.
She began the Order of Fae’ri.”

“Fae’ri?”

“It’s from our ancient tongue. ‘Fae’ is the
word for idols, or gods. Fae’ri directly translates to ‘Auri gods’
in the common language.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say to
that. Part of me—maybe a shadow of a memory—cringed just hearing
the name.

“Eventually,” he continued after a short
pause, “we were saved from ourselves.” Light sparkled in his eyes.
His sudden change in emotion was catching and sent little flutters
of expectation in my stomach. “El sent us the Aurume: the Child of
Auru—Elsden. He was the first Auri ever with the ability to
manipulate all three elements.”

“Ranen told me about him.” I smiled like I
was in on some special secret.

“Yes, Elsden—the son of Elysia the
Watergatherer and Zuruk the Firestarter. No one thought such a
union could be possible—with Firestarters being so… temperamental,
you see. At first, most thought Elsden’s abilities came from his
mixed parentage, but when his brother was born only a Firestarter,
they knew El must’ve had something to do with it.

“Everyone loved him and he rose to power
easily. None of the three races had any qualms about listening to
his orders.” He paused. “It took years to gather all the Auri from
across the many galaxies, but eventually he did and he instituted
the new law of isolation. Everyone agreed and swore never to
transport off the planet. Those who broke their vow were hunted
down and killed swiftly—an example to others.

“With transport so limited, our pursuit of
technology resumed. Eventually, we were able to build our
spaceships and travel the more conventional way—all under the
Aurume’s permission, of course. We still didn’t reveal ourselves to
other humans,” he shrugged, “but we watched from a distance,
gathering information and increasing our knowledge.”

I sighed. It was all so sad, not magical
like I’d thought. Their gift from El had become a curse in so many
ways, much like His gift to me: the Destructor—the one powerful
enough to stop Manoo. Perhaps others would’ve given up everything
to have such power—not me. I could already feel the monster
breaking my will to be good. Who knew how much longer I could fight
back the darkness rising inside me?

Several minutes passed before I noticed
Cailen had stopped talking. I’d become too swept away with visions
of rogue Auri using their abilities to dominate the universe. How
could anyone have fought against them? Would they even have wanted
to? These beautiful, unstoppable beings who could appear out of
thin air—their claims of divinity would have been easy to
believe.

“And so it was peaceful after that? After
Elsden?” I needed to know the monster could be beaten.

“For the most part, yes.” Cailen pursed his
lips. “No one’s ever forgotten the wars or the devastation they
caused, but there are some who pop up every few generations who
believe we should reclaim our hold on other humans, reclaim our
godhead.”

“That’s disgusting.”
And yet…

“Yes, it is.”

I tried to imagine what it would’ve been
like to grow up on Auru, to have the horrors of the wars drilled
into me, or to be raised to believe I was something greater than
other
humans. I couldn’t. For as long as I could remember, I
thought I
was
a regular human being—not something great, or
special. Not something even close to being as amazing as
Cailen.

But Cailen did grow up on Auru. He had a
life there that didn’t include me. It felt like my life had just
barely begun and Cailen was already an important part in it. There
had been no life on
Sho’ful
, only a hint of existence. I’d
been alive, but not living.

I needed to know more about Cailen. I needed
to live vicariously through his memories to reclaim some hold on my
Auri self.

“Tell me about you. What was it like growing
up on Auru? What did you do there?”

He laughed out loud, his eyes sparkling.
“That’s a lot of questions.”

Warm blood flooded my cheeks. I looked away
for a second, but turned back to him with pleading eyes.

“Hmm…” He pursed his lips. “You want to know
about me… It’s a long story,” he warned.