Rootbound (The Elemental Series, Book 5) (24 page)

“I’m the one putting it to the test? You ask me to come to the Pit, I get injured trying to help you, and you won’t even heal me? What kind of friend is that?” He was yelling and people were looking. If he thought causing a scene was going to bother me, he had another think thing coming.

I put a hand to his chest and shoved, sending him back a good ten feet. “What kind of friend tries to manipulate someone he says he loves? What kind of friend is okay with her losing a
piece of her soul
for the sake of his vanity? Piss the hell off, Cactus, and stay out of my life. Do you understand? Because the next time you come at me, I won’t hold back. You tried to hurt Peta. You tried to manipulate me time and again. I change my mind. We are not friends. I do not want you in my life. Got it, Prick?”

He pushed himself up, and brushed his hands over his legs. “Yeah. I got it. Bitch.” He walked away, without a single look back.

“Finally,” Peta muttered.

I fought the bitter laugh that teased at my mouth. Peta was right.
Finally
was the only word that fit. After all this time, Cactus finally understood that we were done. We could have been friends, but he’d broken that too when he’d tried to hurt her.

Like the idiot he was, he thought I’d forget all he’d done because he batted his green eyes at me.

Shazer yawned. “You have a way with men, you know that?”

“You have no idea,” I muttered, thinking of Coal. And suddenly afraid that maybe I was the asshole. What would happen when Ash and I were together again? Would I chase him off too?

“Relax. I would tell you if it was your fault,” Peta said, obviously picking up on my train of thought.

Shazer nodded. “Agreed. He’s a giant dick. You were right to send him away.”

I smiled, but the edges of it fell. “Right. Let’s get going. There is no way the Eyrie won’t be waiting on us. I’d hate to disappoint them.”

I mounted up on Shazer’s back and tightened my legs around his sides, urging him forward.

He paused. “What about Bella?”

I spotted her a good distance away. “She was with me to play the diplomat. To help things go smoothly. You think the Eyrie will go any smoother than the Deep or the Pit?”

He shook his head. “No, but she’s going to be pissed when she realizes you’re gone without her.”

I urged him forward again and he started his wind-up gallop. Bella spun as the sound of his hooves on the earth filled the air.

“Larkspur!”

I lifted a hand to her. “Be safe, Bella.”

Shazer leapt into the air, and I pointed a finger at Flint. He saluted me, and I knew for better or worse, he was a part of our family. Maybe he always had been. I shook my head at the thoughts swirling through it.

Peta slid down my shoulder to sit in front of me, her paws resting on Shazer’s neck. “Three of the five stones collected. Is the final stone where you left it?”

Shazer’s ears perked up. “You had a stone already?”

“The pink diamond. But I hid it away.”

“Smart.” He bobbed his head as he angled his wings to take advantage of a current of air. “Even though you know they’re addictive, they would still begin to work on you.”

Peta’s tail twitched almost spasmodically. “Lark isn’t stupid. She’s been careful with the stones right from the beginning. Unlike these other fools who wear them as if they aren’t capable of ruling otherwise.”

I placed a hand on her. “Not their fault, either. Not really. None of us understood what the stones were truly for until it was too late.”

And that was the crux of it. In that, what Talan had said was right: it was my fault all this had happened. I’d given the stones to the leaders of the four families without any thought to there being a consequence. I shook my head as the guilt piled on my shoulders.

“Where is Blackbird in all this? We have seen neither hide nor hair of him, though he is hunting the same stones,” Peta asked suddenly, breaking my line of thought.

I rubbed a hand on one thigh. “I’m hoping he is behind us somewhere, the Rim or the Deep, looking and not realizing the stone is gone.”

Peta yawned, her tiny jaw cracking wide. “Wishful thinking. What are you really thinking?”

The thing I’d not been able to dismiss rose out of my mouth. “That he’s waiting for me to gather all five stones and then take them from me. A single fight he knows he will win, rather than tiring himself out on four different rulers.”

“Exactly,” she whispered. “That was my thought exactly.”

There was something that bothered me, though. “There are still things that don’t fit.”

“Like what?” Shazer threw the question back.

“Let’s go through this logically,” I said. “Bella fought me, and then our father lost what was left of his mind. From there, we went to the Deep where Finley set an assassin on me, we fought her, and then two Sylphs attacked us. In the Pit, we faced Scar who was being manipulated and then Fiametta who, like my father, had lost her mind.” I paused and replayed the events over and over in my head, and only two notes stood out. “Each time, there has been a personal connection when I faced a ruler. My father. Scar. Bella. Finley. Except for the Sylphs who showed up at the Deep. They were no one I knew. There was nothing personal about that attack. Which tells me . . .”

“You aren’t dealing with a single enemy, but two.” Shazer’s words were clear in the high, crisp air.

Two enemies, neither of which I was entirely certain I knew. But I couldn’t deny Shazer was right, as much as I wished he were wrong.

I nodded.

“Exactly.”

he Himalayan Mountains reared into the sky in front of us. I pressed a hand against Shazer’s neck. “I think we should land away from the Eyrie and see if we can get a look at the situation before we make any decisions.”

He gave me a quick nod and spiraled out of the clouds. Peta shivered against me, though I doubted it had to do with the air temperature.

“What is it?”

“This place was not good to us. To either of us, and I doubt this time will be any better. It makes my tail puff up.”

I grimaced. I couldn’t disagree with her. To say I’d left the Eyrie on bad terms last time was an understatement. I’d essentially killed their old queen, destroyed their mountain home, and walked away without any form of punishment. And Samara, the new queen, had been clear that if I dared show my face again, my life would be forfeit.

“Peta, did you come back here after I was banished?”

“No. It is the one place I didn’t study. Their library was destroyed when you and Cassava fought, and I wasn’t sure Samara’s threat didn’t apply to me as well.” She sniffed. “I could have snuck in and they’d have never known. But like I said, there was nothing to look at. The library is gone.”

Shazer swept down the last few feet to an open valley that was far enough away from where the Eyrie had been that I thought we’d be unnoticed. He dropped down the last bit, his wings tucked in tight to his sides, and did a double hop that bounced me off his back. I landed in a crouch, but on my feet, and Peta grinned from where she clung to him. “Reflexes like a cat; you’re getting there.”

A half smile turned my lips up as I stood. “How far are we from the Eyrie?”

Peta ran up Shazer’s neck, stopped on his head and lifted onto her back legs, peering toward the mountain. Not that standing on two feet would give her a better vantage point. Like a meerkat investigating the lay of the land for danger, she swayed and bobbed, but remained upright as she scanned the area around us. I raised my eyebrows, surprised that Shazer held still for her to use him essentially as a step stool.

He grunted, as if he realized what was going on, and shook his head. She clung to him with her back feet, shocking me that she was still upright. “Hold still, hay bag.”

“Hay bag? I just flew you two around the world the last few days. Show a little respect. Pussy.”

She tightened her back claws in the top of his head. “The Eyrie is two valleys over. Assuming the Sylphs stayed in the same mountain.”

“They’d have to,” I said. “They are tied to it, as surely as the Undines are tied to the Deep. They would have had to rebuild in the same place to keep their people from going mad with homesickness.”

“Take your stinking, dirty cat claws off me, you dirty stinking cat,” Shazer drawled.

Peta flicked her tail. “Make me, oat eater.”

I rolled my eyes and put a hand to the ground while they bickered like an old married couple. Without thought, I called on my connection to the earth. Would it buck and fight me? The power waiting for me there was thick with the same entity I’d felt before.

A sentient being that seemed to be the mountain itself. But that wasn’t possible. Was it? The mother goddess was the mother goddess, there was no other being—

Illusions, Larkspur. Your world is an illusion that shall soon be shattered in a way you could not understand before now.

I froze where I was, as if I’d been covered in ice for a thousand years. I didn’t dare move. “Who are you? You’ve spoken to me in the Deep and the Pit, as well as twice here.”

Peta meowed at me. “Who are you talking to?”

I didn’t answer her. “Tell me who you are.”

The presence shifted and rolled, tugging at me with the strength of the world behind it.
We are the ones from which your power comes. We are the beginning. And we will be the end.

I swallowed hard. “Are you helping me?”

Peta crept to my side and crawled into my lap, “Lark,
who are you
talking—”

Yes, I was there in the Pit. You fight a battle that no one sees yet, Lark. The one who calls herself the mother goddess is not to be trusted.

Peta’s jaw dropped. “Sweet savory catnip, you aren’t talking to yourself, are you?”

The voice chuckled softly.
Peta, we see you. Your ties to Lark are deeper than any familiar. Your souls are entwined as they were meant to be.

Peta clenched her paws and her tiny claws dug into my vest. “You are the voice I hear when I sleep.”

I am. Be strong, little cat, and do not let the fear of losing Lark overtake you; you will never be without her again.
There was a pause and in that moment, worry slipped off Peta. Through the bond, I felt her relax. I hadn’t even known she was so afraid, and yet now that it was gone I could easily see the way she stood a little straighter, her eyes shining brighter.

Lark’s power has woken us from a long sleep, one that buried us to keep us silent. And now we will guide you both as best we can.

We. I thought there was a feeling of more than one entity. Male and female.

Yes. We represent all.

“The Eyrie, I have to retrieve the final stone.” I paused. “Do you have . . . advice?”

The stones are needed, but not for what you believe.
A shudder rolled through the mountain and the voice fell silent.

I waited for several minutes, on the off chance they would say anything more. Finally I lifted my hands from the ground. “Well, that was . . . interesting.”

Peta nodded and we both looked at Shazer, whose eyes were wide as saucers.