Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(19)

His eyes popped wide and a rough laugh burst from his lips. "See? I knew we could still get along."

I didn't want to feel that budding warmth of a laugh, so I squashed the emotion and took another step toward the water in the center of the room. "Talan, Raven says you two are going to explain to me just what in the goddess's name is going on."

With a heavy sigh, he nodded. "Damn your Terraling stubbornness. Fine, I will tell you the whole story."

Peta snorted. "You aren't that old. Raven says it goes back to before the Veil was created."

Talan smiled at her. "Peta, you kept me company for many years, and you are probably the best familiar I have ever had despite the fact you were given to me as a spy."

Peta gasped and he nodded.

"I cleared your mind of what she would have you do, so you were free to be yourself." He smiled at her. "But I digress; you are not the first familiar I have had in my life. You weren't even the second."

Irritation flickered across her cat lips, like she'd smelled something rotten. "How old are you?"

He grinned and stood up from his throne-because now that I could see it, that was exactly what it was. "Lark is good at guessing games, but I will help a little. I was there when the Veil was created. I was there when the false mother goddess rose to power. She tried to confine me like she confined my siblings." His violet eyes glittered, not with malice, but with humor.

I stared at him, his words sinking in slowly. The pieces of his past, of what he was saying coming together in an impossibility. He was right, I was good at figuring things out, but I had to be wrong about this. I had to be.

"No." I breathed the word and his grin widened.

"I knew you of all elementals would guess this truth. If you could guess that Viv was the false mother goddess, that she was the one behind things, there was no way you wouldn't figure out who I am if I gave you a few clues." He took more steps and ran a hand through the rushing water. "Who am I, Lark? Even Raven hasn't figured that out."

My head whipped sideways to look at Raven. He shook his head. "I have no idea. He's played this game with me, too."

"The Veil was created by Spirit, by those humans we call Trackers now. But you helped them, didn't you?" I arched an eyebrow at him.

Talan nodded. "Keep going, you're almost there."

I was shaking, because I struggled to believe even though the evidence was there. No, that wasn't true. "Trackers are descendants of the first Spirit Walker."

"Good, you're getting there."



       
         
       
        

No, no, no. This could not be. "You have no proof," I said, my throat tightening on the words.

Raven and Peta both stared at me. But it was Raven who spoke. "Proof of what?"

"He's … " I shook my head and started again. "Talan is one of the original five. The last born of the true mother goddess."

Talan swept low into a bow from his waist. "Youngest and most troublesome of the five forebears of the elementals, at your service."





CHAPTER 7



Talan's statement hung in the air of the rock cavern while the water continued to rush by as though nothing of import had just happened. Peta, Raven, and I didn't move, we didn't so much as twitch a muscle.

Talan's eyebrows climbed, and his gaze didn't move from me. "Am I really that terrifying?"

I stared back at him. "It's not fear that holds me here. Shock, I believe, would be more appropriate. Shock and disbelief."

Raven grunted as though I'd punched him in the gut. "You should be afraid of him if that's true. He could be manipulating us even now and we wouldn't know it." As he spoke, his voice rose, and anger flooded his words.

I put a hand out to him, palm facing him. "Stop it. I can see if he's using Spirit. And right now, he's not."

"You sure about that?" Raven threw the question at me. I didn't look at him, but kept my eyes on Talan.

"Yes, I'm sure."

Talan laughed. "It is a gift some Spirit Walkers have, to see the lines of power. It is not a gift I have. It was only in your mother's family and it developed on its own. Strange how the powers did that after they left us. They often twisted on their own, forming to what the elemental needed to survive." He ran his fingers through the water. Us. He meant his other siblings, of course, the other forebears of the elemental world. I shook my head to clear the lingering disbelief.

"Still, there is no proof. You could just be a strong Spirit elemental who has learned to survive all these years, not unlike Viv. I would think that one who was truly the original child of the mother goddess would be able to take Viv out on his own. He wouldn't need to manipulate anyone else." I smiled. "So maybe you aren't so much who you think you are?"