Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(12)
“I will let you go, Lark, eventually. I’m not keeping you here forever to act as my sex slave.” He grinned and a part of my brain knew he was trying to make me laugh, trying to make me like him, which only made me angrier. This was not a laughing matter; lives were on the line. The lives of people I loved.
I glared at him, hating what I had to ask next. Hating that I could not fight my way out of here. “When will you let me go, exactly?”
He bent and touched Peta on the head and her body shifted down to her smaller housecat form. He scooped her up and handed her to me, careful not to touch me. I tucked her into the crook of one arm. My spear was across the room, and I knew the way my body was reacting to the pain, I would have no chance at getting it. Humiliation burned through me. How long had it been since I’d been beaten in a physical fight? I couldn’t remember the last time.
“Are you going to answer me?”
Talan sighed. “We are on a time crunch, Lark. So yes, I am going to let you go. No, I don’t know when, other than we need you to learn as fast as you can so I can let you go and know you won’t be killed before you do what you must.”
The muscles in my jaw ticked and jumped. But before I could say anything, he went on.
“You think you’re the best fighter out there, and you’re not. I think this little exercise has shown you that, yes? There is always someone better, someone faster, someone stronger.”
Peta lifted her head, shaking it slowly as she came around. She let out a hiss before she spoke. “You think chastising her like a child is going to win her over to your side? That treating her with condescension will make her want to learn from you?”
Talan stared at us both. “No. You are correct, Peta, and that is not what is happening here. I am not chastising her. I am pointing out the obvious. Things you both already know but are choosing not to see.”
I would have spun on my heel and left him there if I could have, but I could barely move. The pain in my body was not letting up and I didn’t understand why. Elementals healed fast, but it was as if my body was healing human-slow, and even worse, the pain was growing. It didn’t make sense, not at first.
I blinked several times as the realization dawned on me. “You’re keeping my pain levels up, aren’t you?”
His violet eyes hardened ever so slightly. “Yes, that is one of the things you need to learn to do. Your enemies can’t fight you if pain cripples them. I am going to teach you how to keep them hurting. It’s ugly, but necessary, and part of that lesson is feeling it yourself, knowing where your breaking point is.” He rolled his shoulders.
Peta shook her head. “Talan, you are not giving her any reason to want to stay. You hurt her, you humiliate her, you knock me out and you have imprisoned us both. There is no reason not to keep fighting to find a way out, you idiot.”
I was glad she spoke because I was struggling just to breathe past the shuddering pain in my body. The last time I’d hurt this badly was when I’d still been blocked from my connection to the earth, when every time I tried to use it, I was slammed with an agony that threw me to the ground.
Worm shit and green sticks. That was partly what Cassava had done to me—she hadn’t just blocked me from my power, she’d made the pain too. The realization nearly took me to my knees. I wanted to ask him if he’d trained her too, if he was the source of Cassava’s abilities. I didn’t get a chance because he answered Peta.
“All right, I will give you more incentive to willingly stay with me to train.”
He turned to the water pouring through the ceiling and passed his hand through it. Slowly, the water darkened, multiple colors spreading and painting a picture of a place I knew very well.
“The Rim… how is that possible.” I limped forward, my anger with him momentarily forgotten under what I was seeing. The images wavered and danced with the rushing water, but it was my home.
And it was in utter chaos, people were running, fists were flying. Elementals were on the ground, flat out, while others fought over them. “What the hell is happening?”
I touched the figure of my sister, Belladonna, as she stood in front of not one group of people, but two. The Salamanders—fire elementals— had come to live in the Rim after their home in the Pit had been destroyed. By the look on my sister’s face, things were not going as planned, though I’d been gone less than a day. Her hands were above her head, and even though her betrothed—Flint—who was the new king of the Salamanders, stood with her, the elementals around them were obviously agitated. Flint had his mouth open and clearly yelling, but I could hear nothing.
Behind them both, fire erupted in the trees. Flint spun and the fire was gone, and then the images faded into water again.
“That is not incentive to stay, but to leave!” I wanted to yell at him, but big breaths in and out were too hard.
He said nothing, only raised his hand again in the water. This time the image was that of the Deep. All around the pristine city circled human warships. Finley stood in front of them, her hands raised, her face grim.
“She’s going to kill them,” I whispered and again put my hand into the water as if I could stop her.
Talan ran his hand into the stream, and again, the image changed. The Eyrie this time, the glittering silver and gold spires reaching through the low-hanging clouds. No snow on the ground, and there should have been this time of year.