Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(24)

My whole life had been a fucking game to him. I was just a piece on a chessboard to be manipulated and positioned, to be used and discarded as if my life and the lives of those I’d loved meant nothing.

What about Bella and her children? Would they be safe? No, I knew they weren’t. For all I knew, he was positioning them to use them… to hurt them to break me. Images flashed through my mind of all the people in my life, all those I’d loved. Their eyes, and the spirit behind them broken, maimed and begging me to keep them safe.

And I’d failed them all.

The roar of blood pounding in my ears and the rush of air in and out of my lungs blocked out every other noise. Talan’s mouth moved but I heard nothing. I bent and grabbed him by a foot with my mouth, my teeth digging through the flesh. I jerked him hard to the side, which spun his body out in a wide arc. He slammed into the wall, but was up in a flash. He held his one leg gingerly, barely balanced on it as I slunk on my belly to the floor and stalked forward.

He said something. I didn’t hear him; the words didn’t compute. He held a hand out, and there was a flash of pink that lit up the room.

And then I was on my knees, in my human body, my head bowed to my chest. Pink lights flickered and sparkled around me. He was using Spirit to subdue me.

I screamed again, the rage nothing I could control. Cactus, my childhood friend, had pissed me off once so badly, and not able to fight the rage and the power that went with it, I nearly brought down a mountain. That was a candle to this roaring bonfire that consumed me.

“Keep fighting me, Lark.” Talan’s words finally reached my ears. “I want you to break through my hold on you. You need to connect to all the power in your reach.”

But there was no breaking through his power. He was too strong. I could feel his power like a weight on me, holding me down. Pinning me to the cold rock. I couldn’t even lift my hands, or twitch my fingers, never mind lift my head.

I managed to roll my eyes up to glare at him through the strands of my hair that had fallen over my face. Slowly I found the words I needed, though I had to sort through to find the exact thing I wanted to say. “Are you happy with your creation, then?”

His eyes widened, shock filtering over his face. “I did not create you, Lark. And I would no more hurt you than I would hurt a sister of my blood.”

Peta crept forward in her housecat form and put herself onto my lap. “That is a lie, Talan.”

“Is it? Lark can hear the lie in people. Am I lying, Larkspur? Did I want to hurt you?”

Every muscle in my body trembled as I knelt there sitting on my heels, Peta clinging to my legs. He took a few steps forward and crouched in front of me. “What would you give to save them all, Lark? Would you give your life?”

“Yes.” I stared at him, hating that he was right about not lying.

“Would you give up the life of your parents to save your siblings?”

My gut lurched and I didn’t want to answer. I struggled to breathe, but I refused to look away from him. “I could have saved them all if I’d known what I was up against.”

“No, you can’t. No one can save them all, Lark. I ask again, would you give up your parents to save your siblings? To save Bella and her children? To save the Rim? To save our world?”

I knew the answer, we both did. I would give up whatever I had to if it meant I didn’t lose them all.

I swallowed but couldn’t get past the growing lump in my throat that threatened to burst into tears. Talan reached out carefully and tipped my chin up with one finger.

“If you could save them all, would you be willing to suffer for them, to have all your joy, all your laughter, all your love taken away if it gave you the key to protecting those who survived?”

Peta let out a long, low hiss. “You’re a bastard, Talan. You are her family!”

He nodded. “I know. But I’m not asking you to give up, to be hurt by anything I have not experienced myself. Are you willing, Lark? Now that you know why it was done?”

I closed my eyes because I could not turn my face from him. A hot tear slipped from one eye, the traitorous reaction of my heart and the lump in my throat. What would I give for those who remained? Would I give up Ash to save Bella? Would I give up River to save her mother? I bit my lower lip and finally opened my eyes. Talan was blurred through the watery vision of my tears.

“How can you set one life above the others?”

He sighed and my body slumped, his hold on me gone. “Because in many cases, that was their wish. Your mother’s, your father’s… they knew what they were agreeing to. It was the only way to help you. To keep you safe from Vivica.”

I wasn’t sure I totally believed him. But there was no deceit in his words, no lies on his tongue. Maybe it wasn’t the truth, but he believed his own words.

And for now, I would have to as well.





CHAPTER 10



Talan and I knelt on the rock across from one another deep in the mountain where he’d brought me. Where he was holding me against my will. And while I didn’t want to kill him at that exact moment, I suspected it had something to do with whatever influence he’d put on me with Spirit. Or maybe it was because I knew now that he was my uncle, my blood.

None of which did anything to soothe my tumultuous emotions. Peta pulled herself onto my shoulder, her tiny claws digging in for a tight hold. She spoke for me. “Let me get this straight. You did horrible things to Lark all her life, in an effort to… train her?”