Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(60)

I held a hand out to him. “Wait.”

He did as I asked. “Yes?”

“How, how are you and Ollie able to come to me when your bodies are caught in the oubliettes?”

“You were in an oubliette more than once. Did your spirit not find a way to watch over the world?”

I nodded. “But I could not affect anything.”

“But you could have given your power to someone, if the situation was right. Immersing yourself within my power allowed you to reach me as nothing else would have. Did you burn for Ollie?”

I nodded again. “I did.”

“And she found you strong enough. You have her life, and now mine. Do not waste them.”

I blinked and once more I was alone in the water. Only now its power was mine and it no longer fought me, but begged to be used. Begged. Like a man on his knees holding tightly to me, wanting a kiss.

The image was so strong, I would have smiled if not for what I knew was going to happen next.

I pushed the water away from Peta first, because I was not sure she would carry the ability with it as she had done with Fire.

She dropped to the floor and raced toward Finley. Finley stood there, shocked as the cat shifted in mid-leap, tackling her to the floor as a snow leopard.

I was dropped and landed in a crouch. “Peta, hold her.”

Peta had her mouth on Finley’s neck, her canines digging into the soft flesh. I stood and strode to them.

“Finley, you have been deceived. That was not the true mother goddess who gave you orders. She has bent your mind, twisted the truth.”

Peta’s sadness flowed to me along with a single thought. You cannot change her mind.

“I have to try.” I spoke because the pain in me was too great to hold the words in. “I have to try.”

Finley glared at me. “You are turning your back on your people. We should be ruling the humans and it is time they knew our true power. It is time we took them down to where they belong.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of all the elemental families, the Undines had retained human slaves in the open, almost as though they were proud of what they’d done.

I could barely swallow past the grief strangling me. Would it always be my fate to have to end the lives of those I loved?

I turned away from them and made my way to the far wall where a stack of weapons was spread out. There on the wall was a spear not unlike my own. I pulled it off the wall with a jerk, and spun it once, then looked at it closer.

Correction, it was my own spear.

Talan had put it here? Was that possible?

Anger surged through me. “Peta, I’m going to try to break the hold on her first.”

“There is no hold on me!” Finley screamed. “Guards!”

I flicked a hand at the door, cementing it closed with stone from the floor, and then sealing it with fire so the block was solid, heated to a temperature that locked the doors from all that would try it.

I went back to where Finley lay on her back and I saw just how far in Peta’s teeth had gone. One wrong move and she could kill Finley with barely any more pressure.

I went to my knees and put my hands to either side of Finley’s face. “Let her go, Peta.”

She pulled back and I pushed Spirit through my hands and wove it into Finley’s mind. I found the lines of manipulation Viv had laid on her, found the knots that held them together. Complicated and fierce, the power of Spirit had been overlapped and overlapped so many times, I could barely see where one piece began and another ended.

I dug into the mess, pulling the strands off as fast as I could while still being careful. I felt as though I stood in front of a doorway covered with a thousand years’ worth of vegetation with only my bare hands to remove it.

Well, I’d been a Planter and a nurturer of the earth for the first part of my life. This was no different. I would not let Finley go without a fight.

If I had anything to say about it, I would not let another of my friends die.

I bent over Finley. More and more layers I found within her mind, wrapped around my friend, until I realized there was so much more to this than just a single moment of manipulation. I found the root of the net Viv had laid on the Undine queen.

From the time Finley had been a child, the false mother goddess had warped her mind, feeding her subtle lies that became a part of who Finley was.

“Peta.” I whispered her name. The shock of what I was seeing was too much for anything louder. “I don’t understand. What am I seeing? Can you see this?”

“Oh shit.” Peta sighed the words. The door behind us rocked hard as the Enders of the Deep slammed their bodies against it.

“What is this?” The more I pulled away the threads covering Finley, the less I saw of the girl I’d known, the child I’d saved and loved as surely as if she were my little sister and not from a different family.

“Her life was never her own,” Peta said, putting a paw on my hands. “What you are seeing is simply a creation of Viv’s. She was never Finley, not from a very young age.”

I bowed my head. The door behind us cracked as the seal I’d placed on it began to fail. I bit my lower lip. “If I take it all away?”

“There will be nothing of her left,” Talan said softly. I spun around, anger flying through me. If I hadn’t been elbow-deep in Finley’s mind, I would have attacked him.