I stared at him, my heart pounding as the words sank into me. Sank into my bones as if they would break each one apart from the marrow outward. Shaking from head to toe, I stared at him, unable to fully fathom at first. Because he couldn't mean they'd manipulated my life from that early point on … did he?
I struggled to get the words out, to question him while the air I fought to keep breathing seemed to clog my chest and throat. "You … broke my world? You stole my family from me? You're my uncle and you did this to me?"
Talan didn't have a lick of sorrow on his face. If anything, his eyes hardened, and his lips tightened. "Yes, it was planned from the beginning."
The air between us all but crackled, as if those words were an ignition for action. I didn't know what was going to happen. I lost my mind in that moment.
I dropped Peta and launched myself at him with nothing more than my body and fists. All I could see was my past and the horrors I'd faced from such a young age. My mother falling from the sky as the wind was ripped from her lungs and her life taken, Bramley crying for me and then-dead or alive-his body stolen away, my father dying in my arms, having to kill my siblings, the oubliettes, Death Valley, being kept away from Peta, Ash. Ash.
Ash.
The scream that ripped from my throat was sheer pain, agonizing loss after loss exploding out of me like a monstrous burst of uncontrollable lava from a mountain that was too small to contain the violence.
There was no finesse about my attack. I drove my fist into his solar plexus and sent him backward through the falling water. He tumbled and landed on the other side with a wet thud, but I was already there, swinging a foot at his head. He rolled, and I followed, snarls ripped from my throat.
Never had I felt rage like this and my body could not contain the animal anger as it spilled upward. I'd only taken form as my animal counterpart a few times, and only when I absolutely had to-like when fighting Raven in the Eyrie. Right then, there was no controlling the shift as my body slipped its human shape and I landed on four large paws. As a snow leopard, I had no doubt I could destroy Talan. I would tear him apart starting with his treacherous mouth.
My whole life had been a fucking game to him. I was just a piece on a chessboard to be manipulated and positioned, to be used and discarded as if my life and the lives of those I'd loved meant nothing.
What about Bella and her children? Would they be safe? No, I knew they weren't. For all I knew, he was positioning them to use them … to hurt them to break me. Images flashed through my mind of all the people in my life, all those I'd loved. Their eyes, and the spirit behind them broken, maimed and begging me to keep them safe.
And I'd failed them all.
The roar of blood pounding in my ears and the rush of air in and out of my lungs blocked out every other noise. Talan's mouth moved but I heard nothing. I bent and grabbed him by a foot with my mouth, my teeth digging through the flesh. I jerked him hard to the side, which spun his body out in a wide arc. He slammed into the wall, but was up in a flash. He held his one leg gingerly, barely balanced on it as I slunk on my belly to the floor and stalked forward.
He said something. I didn't hear him; the words didn't compute. He held a hand out, and there was a flash of pink that lit up the room.
And then I was on my knees, in my human body, my head bowed to my chest. Pink lights flickered and sparkled around me. He was using Spirit to subdue me.
I screamed again, the rage nothing I could control. Cactus, my childhood friend, had pissed me off once so badly, and not able to fight the rage and the power that went with it, I nearly brought down a mountain. That was a candle to this roaring bonfire that consumed me.
"Keep fighting me, Lark." Talan's words finally reached my ears. "I want you to break through my hold on you. You need to connect to all the power in your reach."
But there was no breaking through his power. He was too strong. I could feel his power like a weight on me, holding me down. Pinning me to the cold rock. I couldn't even lift my hands, or twitch my fingers, never mind lift my head.
I managed to roll my eyes up to glare at him through the strands of my hair that had fallen over my face. Slowly I found the words I needed, though I had to sort through to find the exact thing I wanted to say. "Are you happy with your creation, then?"
His eyes widened, shock filtering over his face. "I did not create you, Lark. And I would no more hurt you than I would hurt a sister of my blood."
Peta crept forward in her housecat form and put herself onto my lap. "That is a lie, Talan."