Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(54)

“Lark!”

I would have answered back but my lungs were collapsing. The fire on the sand curled up my legs, eating away everything I was. Bella was screaming and I went to my knees. Peta was silent in my arms and I knew she was slipping from me, her heart slowing. I managed to crack one eye open, tearing at the edges.

Peta’s body was charred, her fur gone, ear tips and tail blackened to a stub.

My ending was now. There was nothing more I could do. Just let her live. Take my life and let her live, she is strong enough. Mother goddess, let my Peta live. Save her so she can save Bella.

The words were gathered in my mind and I sent them out with Spirit, a final plea to whatever power resided in the flames. Let Peta live. She could get Bella out. She was a child of the flame, a familiar that had resided within the Pit, with the power of the Salamanders. Let her live.

Please, goddess, let her live.

I blinked and stood. The pain was gone as suddenly as it had started. I stood in the fire still, but there was no heat. Peta sat on my shoulder, her body no longer charred, but whole and free of wounds. Bella was across from us, frozen in place, trapped behind a wall of flames as she stood in the water of the hot spring. Her arms were stretched out to me as tears seemed to have stopped on her cheeks.

“Mother goddess, it can’t be,” Peta whispered, and I turned in the direction she looked out over the water.

An elemental stared back at me. Her hair was the red of blood in all its vibrancy and her eyes were the color of flames, flickering from yellow through to blue and back again. Slim, her body had a whip-like shape that, as she stepped in my direction, gave her movement as if a flame itself. “It has been a long time since a half-breed child of Earth and Spirit has come to me and asked for a connection. The last bound me in an oubliette and locked my power into a stone.”

Cassava had been right, then. This was the moment I needed to see through.

I swallowed hard because everything rode on this. Not only my life, but Bella’s and Peta’s. My family’s lives. I went to my knees, slowly. Peta leapt from my shoulder, sat beside me and bowed her head.

The original elemental of Fire stepped across the water and approached me slowly. “How do I know you will not do the same with the power I give you? She thought to save the world. Those were the words she used to convince me then, and I was the fool for trusting her.”

I kept my head bowed. “I have no such words. The world is ending.”

She laughed and the sound cut through the air. “Then I should just let you die, if the world is ending anyway.”

I did lift my head then. “You were fooled by Viv. As was I. As were all your siblings.”

Her body tensed and the color of her eyes flared hotter. “My siblings were taken as well?”

I nodded. “I seek to free you all. To stop Viv. Because it is not the world she seeks to save. She seeks only her own throne, power over the humans.”

Her eyes flickered, softening to a pale yellow. “The humans should be ruled.”

Shit, I hadn’t expected that.

I drew a breath. “I want to save my sister. I want to stop Viv. I can only do that if you are free. Take the wounds from me, and tell me where you are being kept. I will find and free you.”

She stood in front of me now, her eyes hard on me.

“Call me by my name and I will give you the power you seek. Because I see in your heart you are not like Viv.” She reached out and touched my shoulder where the branding of the lava whip had begun. A tingle slid through my skin.

“I do not want your power,” I whispered. “I want only to free you.”

She bent at the knees so we were face to face. “And that is why you are the perfect one to get the last of my power, and my life, too, little Terraling. You do not seek it.”

“Your life? I don’t want you to die.” I stared at her in growing horror.

She smiled. “My life has not been much of a life for many, many years. If you freed me, I believe my fear of Vivica would be too great to truly face her. You, on the other hand… you have the courage to see this through.”

We stared at one another, the seconds passing by.

“What about all the Salamanders, won’t they die if you die?”

She gave me a wink. “Trust me that they will live. While I am their progenitor that does not mean they need me to keep living, because my life will be wrapped with yours.”

“And if I die?”

She smiled. “Set the power free.”

A shudder went through me. “You truly will not allow me to free you?”

“This will free me, Larkspur. This moment my body will die, and I will be free to rest in my mother’s arms at last.”

I closed my eyes, thinking how it would be to have my own mother hold me once more. I nodded. “Olivisha. Ollie to Talan.”

She smiled softly. “Yes, my name is Olivisha.”

I blinked up at her, feeling the need to be formal. “Olivisha, will you allow me to be a guardian of the flame for a little while?”

“Take it, and save your sister, your cat, and our world, Larkspur. Your heart is transparent and I see no malice in you despite carrying Spirit. The power I give you will rival that within the stone, for I give you my life. Vivica should have never released my flame on the Spiral, it will be her undoing.”

She bent and kissed me on the forehead before I could ask her what she meant with that last line.