Windburn (The Elemental Series #4) (28 page)

I bent at the waist and kissed Ash. “Give her my love. Tell her . . . tell her we’ll make this right somehow.”

He winked. “Maybe she can come with us for that pedicure.”

The laugh that escaped me surprised me. “Yes. It’s a deal.”

I dug my heels into Shazer and he leapt into the sky with a buck that had Peta gripping my thighs with her claws.

“Stupid horse!” she shrieked, which only made him whinny with laughter.

“Dumb-ass cat!”

The baby woke and I fed her the only bottle I had, the only milk Elle had sent with us. A single bottle was not enough to take us far. “Head to the east coast. We’ll stop when I can’t console her.”

Shazer stretched out. “I have no desire to listen to her scream.”

“Nor do I,” I said, running my finger down the little girl’s face and soothing her back to sleep.

Three hours ticked by and she woke, her hungry cries nothing I could console.

We circled an area of brick houses and tall fences. Midday with the sun high was not the time to be strutting about the human world. But there was no choice. I had to put the girl somewhere safe.

We landed in a green space with the same strange manicured grass and perfectly kept flowers and trees that did not produce anything we’d seen the last time we’d stepped into the human world. I leapt from Shazer’s back. “Wait here.”

Peta stretched and bounded out ahead of me. I hurried after her, and my walking soothed the baby to a soft whimper. There was no time to be picky about where she went.

“Peta, can I cover her with Spirit? Make her invisible to the supernatural world?”

Peta came to a full stop and craned her head around. “I suppose it would be possible. But it would wear off after a time, I would think.”

“How long?”

Her eyes went thoughtful. I jiggled the baby to keep her from fussing. “Peta, think faster.”

“Depending on how much you put into it, you might be able to keep her covered for a decade. Maybe longer.”

“It will have to be enough.” Sweat popped out on my forehead as I thought about what I was about to attempt. Using Spirit had not gone well for me in the past.

Licking my lips, I held the baby close to me and called Spirit up. “Protect her from harm, from those who would hurt her for as long as possible.”

A flickering answer beckoned from the baby’s Spirit. From what made her mother a Tracker, from what would make the babe a Tracker one day. Spirit flowed through me like a gentle creek curling around us both, tying us together. I went to my knees as my energy was pulled from me. I let it go, knowing it would protect her. Keep her safe.

And even if Elle hadn’t asked me, I would have done it. There was something about the child I couldn’t quite put my finger on . . . but I knew she was special. The daughter of a Slayer, the daughter of a Tracker, a joining of two powerful blood lines. I opened my eyes and stared into her face. She lifted a hand and touched my nose.

“You . . . I think are going to need all the help you can get, my little friend,” I whispered to her.

Peta butted her head against my thigh. “Over there. Two women talking about not being able to have babies.”

The scene was too perfect to not have fate’s hand in it.

I lifted my head to see a slender young woman with long blonde hair almost as pale as my own. Tears hovered in her eyes as she pressed a hand to her belly and shook her head.

I felt a pull toward her and listened to my instincts. “Peta, we will come back for her. To check on her.” I didn’t have to say why. We both knew Elle wasn’t coming for her daughter. Not in this life.

Peta bobbed her head in agreement. “Of course we will.” As though there was no other possible solution.

I strode up to the woman. Her friend had left and she was alone on the bench. “You wish to have a child?”

Her head jerked up. I stared down at her tear-stained face. “What?”

I didn’t wait for her to say anything else, just placed the baby into her arms. “She needs a mother. Take her.”

The woman’s mouth dropped open as I backed away. “You need her too.”

She clutched the baby to her. “How . . . why?”

“Because sometimes . . . things have to happen. Good and bad. This is one of the good things. Love her. Protect her. Teach her. Be her mother.”

I kept backing away, a part of me feeling as though I’d abandoned the little one.

“Does she have a name?”

Smiling, I nodded. “Her name is Rylee. A warrior’s name for a warrior’s heart.”

The world seemed to still around us, as though the universe had paused to take note of that exact moment. I knew it for what it was; a fork in the road, one I would look back on and wonder if I made the right choice.

I should have been terrified.

Peta and I spun at the same time and ran back the way we’d come.

“She will love her,” Peta said. “I saw it in her eyes.”

“If she doesn’t, it won’t matter. We’ll be back and if I have to . . . I will raise her myself.” The words popped out of me and I realized I meant them.

I would take the girl into my care if the woman proved to be false.

Perhaps the most concerning thing was I almost hoped that would be the case.

he Eyrie was as we’d left it. Chilled by the wind, hidden by clouds and ruled by Queen Aria.

“Where are we landing?” Shazer banked to the right, circling the Eyrie, moving with the air current.

“The throne room.” I’d barely said the words and he dropped, tucking his wings and swirling through the clouds in a looping spiral. I clutched his body with my legs, and Peta sank her claws into me. Her hair fluffed up around her body and her green eyes watered.

“I hate this horse. I regret suggesting him.” The words were hard, but there was no heat in them.

He laughed and snapped his wings out wide. They caught us only a few feet from the floor of the throne room. With a delicate prance he landed, snorting and blowing.

I slid from his back. By the scene in front of us, we’d interrupted something rather important. There was a row of four women on their knees at the feet of the queen. Her blind eyes came up and somehow seemed to meet mine. To the left of me, Cactus stood between two Sylphs. He gave me the slightest of nods.

“Ah, Larkspur. You made it in time, I see.” Aria laughed softly. “I had hoped you would come.”

I strode forward, snapping my spear together at my side. “I’m here for my father. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Child, I told you the truth. He is not here. Both then, and now.”

She did speak the truth; I could feel it in her words. I pointed my spear at her and the Sylphs around us shifted. Enders dressed in their white leathers ghosted forward, their long sharpened staffs pointed at me. I should have cared, should have worried.

Yet I felt no fear.

“I know you speak truly. That does not make you right.” I lowered my spear, pressed the butt of it into the ground at my feet.

She clapped her hands together once. “Enders, ease off. She means me no harm. Where have you been, Lark? Two years you were missing, everyone thought you dead. Yet now you are here, back searching for your beloved father.”

I wanted to rage at her that he was anything but beloved. That he was needed only to fulfill his duty and name a proper heir. But those words would not form.

“An oubliette held me.”

A solid gasp went up through the room.

Aria leaned back. “How in the world did you survive?”

Bands of fear tightened over my chest at the mere thought of my prison. “I am here for my father. Either you will allow me to search for him, or I will tear your home apart. It is your choice.”

Beside me, Peta sucked in a tiny breath. Surprise filtered through the bond between us. From behind us, Shazer stomped a foot on the tile. “I will catch you if need be, Lark.”

The four women on their knees in front of the queen watched us with wide eyes. Except for one. She was on the far left and she stood. “I will not stand for this. I am the heir to the throne. Get back to the ceremony, Mother.”

“Noma, calm yourself, my daughter.” Aria spoke with a calm tone that brooked no argument.

“Old woman, you have been on the throne too long,” Noma snapped, her hand lifting as she turned her back on me. A flash of sapphire blue danced over her fingers and up her arms.

I had no doubt about what I saw. Noma could call water to her aid through the use of the sapphire stone. The fifth and final gem of the elemental world; she carried the Undines’ sapphire. She raced up the stairs to her mother’s side.

Those thoughts flashed through my mind in less than a single beat of my heart. I connected to the earth and the power rushed into me, filling me. I pushed off the ground in a leap and the stone beneath me buckled, but it didn’t slow me. I shot through the air toward Noma who had climbed to her mother and wrapped her hands around her neck. Water surrounded the queen’s mouth and nose in a bubble. Too thin perhaps for anyone else to see; but it didn’t matter.

I thrust my spear down as I sailed through the air, the blade aimed at the juncture of Noma’s neck and head. A perfect kill shot, one she wouldn’t even feel, it would happen so fast.

But a snap of wind caught me midair and sent me tumbling sideways into the mountain. The wind was knocked out of me and for a split second I thought it was a Sylph taking my air. I gasped in a breath and used it not for myself. “She is killing your queen!” I screamed.

White Enders leather filled my vision. “Then our queen should not have called her forward as a potential heir.”

I blinked up at Samara. She’d changed in the two years. Her eyes were hard, and there was a scar across her chin, jagged and white with age. “She’s using water to kill her. Not air.”

Samara spun. From where I sat, I threw my spear, drawing from the mountain. The spear shot from my hands and slammed into Noma’s lower back. Hardly a clean death, but she jerked away from her mother, a cry escaping her as she fell to the ground.

Aria stumbled backward, and the sound of water splashing to the floor seemed to fill the throne room. “Take her,” Aria gasped out.

The Enders were on Noma in a flash. Three pointed spears fell on her at the same time. Boreas, the queen’s favored Ender, and two others.

Aria wavered to her feet. Boreas went to her side and helped her stand. “Thank you—”

“My queen, there is no need,” he murmured with a smug-ass smile on his lips.

She slapped him, hard enough to leave an imprint on his face. “You would have let her kill me. It was Larkspur who stopped her.”

Boreas’s face went white; with anger or shock, I wasn’t sure.

Aria drew in a breath, bent and took something from Noma’s body. “Terraling, you know what this is?” She held it out to me, a stone of blue that swam as though it held the ocean within it.

“Yes.”

“Take it to Finley. The girl will need it.” Aria threw it to me. I lifted my hand to catch the stone, but my fingers never touched it.

A gust of wind caught the jewel and sent it skittering across the floor at Samara’s feet. She bent and picked it up, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. From behind her, a figure stepped out of the shadows. The one person I would gladly kill, and whose grave I would gladly dance on. The one who’d stolen my family from me.