And here I was rushing in full tilt.
All I kept thinking was that I had to do this. I had to find Bella and I had to find the flame within me, whatever the hell that was. Was I a fool for trusting Cassava? Had she played into my fear for her daughter and my willingness to throw myself into danger for her? What if Cassava was playing again for Viv and this was the perfect way to eliminate me? All the questions raced through me one after another. I could answer none of them.
But my heart said she wasn't playing me falsely. Not this time.
Now there was nothing I could do but cast myself into the fire and pray to the mother goddess that I would be strong enough. That I would be found worthy by an element that had shown me only pain. That Cassava had been honest with me for the first time in my life.
I leapt through the first wall of flames, expecting to come out on the other side and maybe find a place within the Spiral not burning.
I was so very wrong. There was no break in the heat, nowhere to go, nothing to feel but the heavy embrace of flames and heat over my entire body, cutting through me, melting through my clothes. I drew breath to scream Bella's name one last time and gulped in a live flame that scorched my mouth and burned a path through my lungs.
The pain in my body was in overdrive. It hurt everywhere. I could not identify just one part of it. My skin charred, my fingers were melting at the tips, my lungs seared from the inside out, and through it, I heard only one thing. I heard Peta suffering in my arms, crying out, writhing but not moving to leave me. She would die with me if I didn't find a way to show my strength, if I didn't find a way through this.
Goddess, help me.
I kept my eyes closed as I pushed to my feet and stumbled farther into the Spiral, my lungs burning for more than one reason. Each time my foot picked up off the burning floor, I left behind layers of skin and flesh and I cried out, only to have a little more air stolen from me. I didn't get far. I didn't even know just where I was headed exactly until I felt the stairs under my feet. Stairs that led to the hot springs.
I let my body tumble down the wooden framework. They cracked and groaned under me, the flame having eaten out the underpinnings of the structure. I crashed through the wood and fell, landing on the sand that surrounded the hot springs. I'm not sure I even truly understood why I felt the need to go there. Eyes closed, seared shut, I heard her cry out my name. Though, how she recognized me I had no idea.
"Lark!"
I would have answered back but my lungs were collapsing. The fire on the sand curled up my legs, eating away everything I was. Bella was screaming and I went to my knees. Peta was silent in my arms and I knew she was slipping from me, her heart slowing. I managed to crack one eye open, tearing at the edges.
Peta's body was charred, her fur gone, ear tips and tail blackened to a stub.
My ending was now. There was nothing more I could do. Just let her live. Take my life and let her live, she is strong enough. Mother goddess, let my Peta live. Save her so she can save Bella.
The words were gathered in my mind and I sent them out with Spirit, a final plea to whatever power resided in the flames. Let Peta live. She could get Bella out. She was a child of the flame, a familiar that had resided within the Pit, with the power of the Salamanders. Let her live.
Please, goddess, let her live.
I blinked and stood. The pain was gone as suddenly as it had started. I stood in the fire still, but there was no heat. Peta sat on my shoulder, her body no longer charred, but whole and free of wounds. Bella was across from us, frozen in place, trapped behind a wall of flames as she stood in the water of the hot spring. Her arms were stretched out to me as tears seemed to have stopped on her cheeks.
"Mother goddess, it can't be," Peta whispered, and I turned in the direction she looked out over the water.
An elemental stared back at me. Her hair was the red of blood in all its vibrancy and her eyes were the color of flames, flickering from yellow through to blue and back again. Slim, her body had a whip-like shape that, as she stepped in my direction, gave her movement as if a flame itself. "It has been a long time since a half-breed child of Earth and Spirit has come to me and asked for a connection. The last bound me in an oubliette and locked my power into a stone."
Cassava had been right, then. This was the moment I needed to see through.
I swallowed hard because everything rode on this. Not only my life, but Bella's and Peta's. My family's lives. I went to my knees, slowly. Peta leapt from my shoulder, sat beside me and bowed her head.