Windburn(80)

Peta was right, Blackbird was not a fool. I thought about the final thing my father had said. Even now, with Cassava and Blackbird gone, he couldn’t understand how destroyed our family was.

Dysfunction on a royal level.

“You need to sleep, Lark. Close your eyes.”

There was no use in arguing. Already the warmth of the bed, the comfort of Peta beside me, and the knowledge that my father was back where he was supposed to be, lulled me into dreamland.

Once there, my dreams were anything but restful. I saw Ash banished, Cactus whipped with the lava whip while Cassava shrieked with laughter, Peta skinned and her hide put on Samara’s back. None of the dreams made any sense.

The last was a dream I’d not seen for months. My mother and Bramley killed by Cassava. I held my mother in my arms, sobbing. Her dead eyes stared up at me, empty of soul, empty of anything that made her my mother except the brilliant blue color.

“You have failed me, Lark.”

I shot straight up in bed, panting for air, tears streaming down my face. I wanted to believe it was yet another game of the mother goddess . . . but I couldn’t be sure. And that doubt hurt me as much as the thought of failing her. I pressed a hand to my eyes and struggled to control my emotions, but the heart pain would not leave me.

Peta slept soundly as I dressed and slipped out of the room into the hall. The night beckoned to me as I walked out of the barracks. The pull of the dark was a visceral sensation that tugged my feet forward until I stood in the center of the blasted field, where everything lay dead around me. Slowly, finally, the dream faded.

My ears caught the shuffle of cloth on cloth, and the faintest snap of a twig underfoot. I held my ground, even as my body tensed. I called the power of the earth to me and held it tightly.

“Blackbird, I’m surprised you would show your face.” I kept my back to him.

“Lark, please. Call me Raven.”

“You are not my brother.” I turned then to stare at him. He wore his cloak, though it did not cover his face for the first time.

His face was drawn in lines of fury. “You think you killed her. You think you’re stronger than her?”

“Cassava?” I snorted. “She is nothing without the emerald stone.”

“Do not push me, Lark. I could kill you where you stand,” he snarled. Lies, they filtered through the air to me. He couldn’t reach the earth’s power here where the land was dead. I could. And I held the sapphire stone still. I had three elements to his four.

“Then why don’t you?” I took a step toward him and he moved back. “That’s what I thought. Even with all that power, you are a coward at heart. Every time we’ve faced each other, you’ve run. Any time you’ve been hurt, you flee with your tail tucked between your legs like the incestuous cur you are.” I stalked him with every word.

“I will rule the Rim, Lark. I will be named as the heir. Even now Father is writing a new will. Not this piece of dog shit.” He shook a piece of paper at me.

The note I’d seen my father writing in his memory. Blackbird truly was a fool to still be carrying it around. Or maybe . . . maybe he couldn’t believe what it said. That I was the one Father had loved the best.

“I have no desire to rule, Blackbird, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you take the throne.”

He held out his hand and red lines of power raced up his arm. With a snap of his fingers, fire burst up in a full circle around us.

“Then let us see who is truly stronger once and for all. Does your promise still stand? That you would never hurt me? Or are you a liar now too?”

My jaw ticked as I struggled for words. “A promise predicated on a lie is no promise. We end this now.”

A flickering figure to the right of us walked through the flames. The mother goddess glowed with power, her dark hair floating on an unseen and unfelt breeze.

“You are both my chosen ones. I forbid you to fight.”

I raised my eyebrows but did not take my eyes off Blackbird. “You are the reason he ran from the other fights, aren’t you?”

Blackbird sneered. “I am no coward. I am obedient. To both my mothers.” He gave her a bow from the waist.

I took a step back and drew in a breath. “I suppose that makes one of us, then.”

His eyes snapped to mine, glittering with a perverse pleasure. “You would fight me still?”

I twitched the fingers on my right hand and the trees pulled back around us. The fool didn’t notice. “I would do more than fight you. I will kill you.”





CHAPTER 26





he trees at the edge of the blasted land shot forward, whistling through the air with the velocity of a hurricane. Blackbird dodged the first two, but got caught on one I’d pulled from behind him. I didn’t wait to see if he would get up. Bolting forward, I yanked my spear from my side and whipped it around.