Destroyer (The Elemental Series #7)(57)

I sent a thought to Peta, or more truthfully, a memory. Before my time with her, I'd gone into the springs below the Spiral, the seat of power in my family's home deep in the redwood forest. I'd gone into the water as the last test of my Ender training. But in doing so, I'd bound myself to Viv who at the time I'd thought was the mother goddess. I was bound to her.

She could find me anywhere.

And that meant I could find her.

Peta sucked in a sharp breath and a single image came back to me. We could grab Cassava and go, leaving Raven behind. Raven …  I didn't truly want to leave him.

I looked at Raven and caught his eye. "Brother, do you trust me?"

"Always," Raven answered.

Peta tightened her hold on my vest and I didn't take another moment to consider what I was going to do. I stepped up to Cassava, and put my hand on her arm.

"We're going for a ride."

I pulled both Cassava and Spirit close and thought of the one place I'd always call my home, even in my darkest hours.

The Rim. More specifically, the cemetery on the outskirts of the Rim where my mother's body lay.

The last thing I heard was Raven.

"Good luck, Larkspur."

And then that place was gone. But like using the Traveling bands and the Traveling room, I was thrust into memories that were Cassava's. Memories of a woman I didn't want to know any better than I already did.

I'd not counted on this.

*

Unlike with the Traveling bands, I saw Cassava's memories in flashes, and pictures instead of through her eyes as though I were in her body.

Snapshots of her past ran in front of me, one after another.

I saw Cassava as a child, rooting in the planting fields, staying long after dark to make the seedlings grow. Saw her run away into the human world to escape the confines of the Rim …  and the moment she met my mother. They were both young girls and they connected immediately on the edges of a bustling human city.



       
         
       
        

"Sisters of spirit," my mother said to her. "You are the family I've been searching for, Cass."

They traveled the world together, and always my mother looked over her shoulder as if she were being chased. I saw the moment she told Cassava the truth, that the mother goddess was false and she was trying to kill Ulani. One of the last Spirit Walkers …  the images flashed long and hard and I saw years of their friendship together. The laughter. The stories. The desire to protect one another and to see each other through the darkness that closed around them.

Cassava had no other family besides my mother.

Orphaned.

Alone.

They'd even shared the same man, willingly.

Her only sister, one not of the same blood, but of the same heart.

And she'd been forced to kill her.

I fell out of the memories as the cemetery of the Rim opened in front of us. I lay in the familiar dirt, the smell of cedar and green things filling my nose, next to my stepmother as tears streamed down my cheeks, her pain becoming my pain. I struggled to think straight through the memories that evoked so much unexpected emotion.

I wanted to tell her I'd seen all those memories, but one look at the tears pooling around her closed eyes told me I hadn't been the only one to relive the past.

"I can't control that," I said. "I'm sorry." Damn, who'd have ever thought I'd be apologizing to Cassava?

Her eyes slowly opened and she brushed the tears away. She said nothing of the memories we'd both seen. "You brought us to the Rim? Why?"

I sat up, knocked the dirt off my pants, and looked away from her to give her time to pull herself together. "Several reasons." Which was totally a lie. I'd just taken us to a place where I thought we'd be able to gather ourselves. The Rim had always been the place I'd circled back to.

"It isn't safe here. Viv left a nasty surprise and no doubt it is in play," Cassava said. Then she seemed to truly notice where we were. "Your mother … " She looked across the graves to where my mother lay buried. "She loved you and your brother fiercely."

"Where is he?" The question popped out and she was already shaking her head. "Tell me, please. His body isn't here."

"No, it's not." The pain in her voice told me the truth.

"Please." I whispered the word.

She drew a breath. "He went to Aria and the Sylphs. They hid him for years, but he found out about …  Viv. I don't know how, but I suspect Talan."

My heart was beating faster than ever. Then it hit me. Talan's son wasn't the one who died going after Vivian. It was Bramley. "He went after her, didn't he?"