Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(64)

I blinked and let go of Talan. “Why can we travel directly out of the Deep?” I asked the question as I strode in the direction where my tiny hut had been. A place to start, that was all I needed.

Talan kept an easy pace with me. “Viv shattered that protection on the Deep. I don’t know how, but she did it I think with Finley’s help. That was how I got in.”

“And placed my spear there?”

“Yes. I was fairly sure you would show up there eventually.”

I didn’t like that he could read me so well. “You didn’t know?”

“I did. You are always going to your friends, to your family, to try to save them first.” He shrugged. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you went to the Deep to try to stop Finley from starting a war.”

“And why didn’t you stop her?” Peta snapped. “You could have done something with all that power of Spirit.”

“I saw the ties that Viv had put on her. I knew they were literally everything that made Finley who she was, and that untangling them would make it so she was nothing but a shell.” He shrugged again. “I am not a killer.”

My jaw tightened and I threw a punch, a perfect left hook that slammed into the side of his face. He stumbled back and went to his knees.

I glared at him. “And Shazer? Was that not a murder? Does he not count because he’d been alive for so long?”

Talan’s hand went to his jaw. “Finley and Shazer are two very different creatures. Shazer’s fate was written in stone the second he—”

“Don’t you make excuses for what you did!” I took a step. “I may be a killer, but so are you. You just don’t want to admit it.”

He stood slowly, and then gave me a tight nod. “Fine. You are right, I killed him to keep us all safe. The same reason you killed Finley.”

Her name, and the truth of the situation, I didn’t like and couldn’t change. I was a killer, and I was damn good at it. Nothing would change that now. We started walking again, keeping a good distance between us. An uneasy truce was all we had now. He may have been my uncle, but in my mind, he was far from family.

We were closing in on the hut I’d stayed in for so many years. Two of the sides were busted in and the forge and anvil had been stolen. None of that mattered, they were just items. I moved to the center of the room and beckoned the earth up around my feet. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my racing heart. Racing because I was afraid we were too late. Again.

“Are you sure he is here?” Genuine concern was in Talan’s voice. I had to remind myself this was his brother we were looking for. A brother he had searched for, for thousands of years.

“She took him out to hurt him.” I added softly, “Which means there could be some of his blood on the ground near the oubliette.” Maybe I couldn’t Ride Spirit right to Frost’s feet, but I could still find him. There was always a way.

I just had to think the impossible.

Peta clenched her claws several times. “You think you can trace the blood?”

“It has ties to the earth like nothing else,” I said. “Ties to my own bloodline.” I wove Spirit and Earth together, blending them gently, carefully, until there were almost no seams between the two powers. I pushed them into the earth and sent them in a wide arcing spray searching for Frost. I held my breath while the power threaded through the desert like lightning seeking a mark.

A reverberation came back to me ever so softly, a bare quiver that if I hadn’t been watching, I would have lost it completely. “I’ve got something.”

I grabbed Talan and jerked Spirit through us, taking us to the place where the reverberation had come from. The sides of the valley were made up of broken and jagged rocks like the teeth of a gargoyle as they snapped down, shattering against the valley floor.

At my feet were flecks of blood that all but glowed in their vibrancy. “Peta, can you follow this?”

She was off my shoulder in a flash and raced up the slippery and winding slope. I raced after her with Talan only a step or two behind, Ash winging ahead of us all.

He let out a hunting cry that chilled my heart.

The fear we were too late and Frost was already lost to Viv was enough to keep us moving, even though we all knew… there was no way.

“Here!” Peta leapt on top of a boulder and disappeared over the other side. Ash sat on one of the large boulders, his golden eyes wide and full of sadness.

I climbed over the rock and found myself looking at a hole that barely covered the edges of the oubliette. Crafted from materials that were anything but natural, the oubliette blocked an elemental’s ability to connect with their power. A punishment to make you pay penance for any wrongs you may have done.

I put my hands on the earth and used the ground below the oubliette to push it out until the door became clear. I grabbed the handle and jerked it open. He had been stuffed back in, but his blood, his blood had been what I’d locked onto.

Reaching inside, I found Frost’s hands, and as gently as I could, pulled him out. Talan stepped up and helped me lift his brother into the light. We laid him on the ground on his back.

In his chest was a dagger still pulsing with each ragged breath he took. The dagger was bejeweled with emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and the blade was thin like a razor. Horror at what I was seeing flickered through me. “Mother goddess, how do we get this out of you without doing more damage?”