Rootbound

“I do not want any more people in my heart. I want them in my life.” I brushed a hand over the wall; it came away black. I scrubbed it over my jeans, leaving a long dark smear.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. My heart shriveled.

Peta grabbed my lower leg with one paw. “You are filthy. I think it is time to get you cleaned up.” She tugged me backward and I went with her, though there was no real contest between us when she was in her housecat form. I followed her out of the room and into the main training area. Cactus was gone.

“Small mercy,” I mumbled.

Peta glanced at me, but kept moving. “There is a hot spring under the Spiral, is there not?”

She’d been there. But I knew what she was doing, forcing me to respond to a question we both knew the answer to. Forcing me to pull myself out of the mire, at least a little bit.

“Yes.” My lips were numb and even that single word was difficult. Ash was gone. Would I have not felt his passing? Would my heart not have cried out as its other half was stripped from the world? I could not believe he was dead, refused to. Even though there was no reason for Bella to lie. No reason to think Griffin would mislead her. There was a body. They’d buried him.

But still, I couldn’t believe it.

“The hot spring is for healing, is it not?” Peta said as she led the way into the Spiral. The guards at the front wouldn’t make eye contact with me, not that I cared. I could barely move my legs, as if I’d been drugged. As if everything I’d faced in the last twenty years had finally come home to roost.

The pain, fear, and loneliness, the hope that kept me moving, was gone. Whatever motivation I had to fight was swept away in those few words Bella uttered.

I stumbled down the long stairwell that led to the hot spring, the torches on the side wall flickering as I passed. I stared at the flame, thought of Cactus, and even my anger with him and his selfishness was a mere spurt before it was swallowed in my misery.

My bare feet hit the fine sandy beach and I went to my knees. Peta was there in an instant, her head tucked under my chin, her paws on my chest. “Lark, into the water. Let the heat soothe some of this ache. Besides, you stink.”

I blinked down at her. “I stink?”

“Horrible. How long were you in that oubliette? Have you bathed since you got out?” Her words were mundane, the everyday tasks of life. Forcing me to be aware.

“I haven’t.”

“I can tell.” She butted me again under the jaw. “Strip and get in that water.”

I did as she told me, peeling the clothes from my body one by one, shedding them with an almost painful slowness.

Naked, I stepped into the shallows, the heat enough to pink my skin immediately. I kept moving until the water reached my waist. Taking a breath, I dove in, the liquid heat rushing over my head. With big strokes, I drove my body through the water, deeper, closer to the source of the heat until it was too much, my body crying out for the cool brush of air. Rolling in the water, I swam toward the surface.

Stroke after stroke, I should have been at the surface already. A strange sense of detachment rolled over me as I realized someone was trying to kill me. I didn’t care. Ash was gone and it was the final loss . . . I no longer cared what happened to me.

Peta. Her panic lit a fire in me, and I drove my body forward through the water. I would not give up, if not for myself, then for her. Ash was my love, of that there was no doubt. But Peta was my soul, and I would not leave her behind. A current, like a pair of hands, wrapped around me and drew me down to the source of the heat. I didn’t close my eyes, didn’t stop swimming, but the dark water blurred my vision, the heat seared my lungs as I could no longer hold out, but drew in a breath.

Flipped upside down, I broke through the surface of the water, coughing, vomiting the fluid in my lungs. The cries of seabirds called to my ears and the cool ocean waves lapped against my skin. Crawling forward, I made it to the edge of the water before I looked up.

I knew what I would see. I was just putting off the inevitable. The woman in front of me looked like my mother, Ulani, with her long blond hair and blue eyes, trim body and faintly pale blue gown. Though it was just a mask, a covering for the woman she truly was.

My eyes met hers. “Hello, Viv.”

The mother goddess smiled back, her eyes full of a soft sorrow. “Hello, Larkspur. Are you ready to save the world one more time?”

CHAPTER 4

curled my fingers into the wet sand, but felt no thrumming power of the earth respond to my call.

“Here, I rule, Lark. You cannot touch your powers unless I allow it.” She crouched in front of me. “I know you are hurting, child. I know you think I have betrayed you. I know all these things. But you see only the trees in front of you, not the forest as it spreads around you, as it threatens to swallow you whole.”

“You think that because you see everything, and I can’t, I shouldn’t grieve for him?” I stayed where I was, the water lapping at my feet and legs. I wasn’t sure if she was deliberately trying to piss me off, but if she was, it was working.

“Grief,” she tucked her fingers under my chin, forcing my head back at a sharp angle, “it is a tool like every other emotion.” Her eyes became thoughtful. “I have grieved for thousands of years, for things my children have done. For what they have become. And now . . . I have one last task to ask of you.”

The last time I’d seen Viv, I’d told her to get stuffed. That she was asking for my help told me volumes. “Blackbird turned on you, didn’t he?”