Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(13)

We slammed our spears together, and he reached across and twisted his arms to one side which brought me in close, my arms locked between the two hafts.

"Do you yield?"

His face was right in mine and I answered by swinging my head down, catching his nose with the top of my skull. There was a satisfying crunch of cartilage that made me smile as I reached for my element again.

Nothing, his concentration hadn't slipped an inch.

He stumbled back and my arms were released from the spears.

Talan grunted and blinked as the blood ran down his nose. I kicked out with my right foot, intending to hit him in the chest and send him flying backward. I had to press my advantage now because I realized the only way to get him to release his hold on me was to knock him out.

When I was in midair, he caught my foot and twisted it hard, spinning me to the side so I faced down as I fell belly first onto the stone floor. He jerked my leg upward and turned my ankle farther so my foot nearly touched the back of my head as he pressed a foot on my lower back. I tried to look over my shoulder, but he put so much pressure on me, I could barely move. Shit, I could barely breathe past the crushing pressure. I scrabbled at the rock with my hands, reaching once more for my connection to the earth and again getting nothing back.

"I'll ask again, do you yield, Larkspur of the Rim?"

That burning anger in me had not abated. "Fuck you, asshole!"

"Oh, that's not nice." He laughed the words. "Your choice then."

He bore down on my leg and spine, nearly bending me in half, my joints and bones creaking. I screamed, the pain in my lower back was like a thousand blunt-ended spears jammed in me all at once. I gritted my teeth against the pain, refused to give in. 

"Peta!"

"No. She is not in this fight; this is between you and me. You need to know you are not stronger than me," Talan said.

What he didn't understand was that Peta was me, that she was part of my strength and heart. Besides, he had no say over my familiar. She was mine, not his. Possessiveness like I'd never known swept over me as I called her again. "Peta!"

There was a blur of white and gray and then the pressure on my leg was gone. I rolled to my back and Talan stood over me. Peta was flat out on the floor, her eyes closed and her body still. She'd stopped him, but at what cost? Had he killed her?

Fear lanced me as no weapon ever could have.

"She's going to be pissed when she wakes up." Talan shook his head. "I didn't want that."

Relief was slow as his words sank in. He'd knocked her out, not killed her.

I pushed to my feet but my leg and back screamed they would not bear my weight, and I stood hunched like an old woman who'd been packing baskets of rocks all her life to and from the fields. I took a limping step toward him. He held up his hand.

"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.