Rootbound

I crouched in front of her. “Are our people that malcontent? Perhaps this is perception on your part?”

She closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. “Perhaps. The Traveling bands stopped working immediately after we returned. They all said it was the curse of the mother goddess, that she was angry I was on the throne and not another.”

Peta slipped up beside us and put her paws on Bella’s knees. “Who did they think should take the throne? None of them would want Lark.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” I snorted.

Bella smiled, but it slipped away. “They want a new family to take the throne. They say ours is so rotten, so corrupted, that we should be cast out.”

That didn’t sound right. “Bella, are you sure?”

She stood so quickly, she tipped her tea off the table, and if not for Peta’s reflexes, she would have had a hot tea bath. “I hear them, Lark. I hear them.” She spun the large emerald stone on her middle finger. The stone allowed the wearer to connect with the power of the earth, and in the case of an elemental who already had a connection to the earth, boosted that power tenfold. It had started out as a necklace when I gave it to Bella all those years ago. Somewhere along the line she’d had it reset as a ring.

I put a hand over hers, the bump of the emerald she wore, underneath my fingers. “Be calm, Bella. I doubt this is as bad as you think. I will help you, you know that.”

She jerked her hand away from me and clutched her fingers to her chest. “I know nothing of the sort.”

What had come over her?

“Ask your question.” Peta pressed her head into the back of my calf as if to urge me forward.

Bella glanced at her, whatever anger she’d had, gone in the blink of an eye.

“What question?”

Strangely enough, it took me a moment to gather the words. “Do you have any idea where Ash might be? He was not at the battle. I know you lifted the banishment on him but . . .”

Her eyes widened and then closed in a soft flutter of her lashes. “Oh, Lark. I thought . . . I thought you knew.”

My heart thumped hard against my ribcage as I struggled to breathe. “Tell me.”

She held a hand out and took mine as I’d done for her only a moment before. My hands were suddenly cold, icy in her warm grip. I couldn’t move. I wanted to, but my feet seemed rooted to the floor.

“I sent Griffin to find him, you know that much?” I nodded and she continued. “When he came back, Griffin that is, he . . . I told him to spread the rumor that Ash had not been found. That he was missing. I didn’t want—”

“Spit it out.” I bit out the words, feeling the pressure growing behind my eyes, and deep inside my belly. My heart cracked.

“Ash was killed. Cassava did it. He’d been hunting her, we knew that . . . Griffin found her and she gave him Ash’s body. We buried him here in the Rim.”

For me. Ash had been hunting Cassava for me. After I’d destroyed the Eyrie, Cassava’s body had never been found. I knew she was out there, Ash did too.

I reeled away from my sister, the room swirling. The dreams I’d been building, dashed on a single word. Buried. They’d buried him, he was dead. Gone.

“No.” I refused it, as if a single denial would make it not so.

“Lark, I am so very sorry.”

I stumbled away from her, rushing from the room, blinded by pain that rocked the very center of who I was. I was outside, and without thought I ran to the place that meant the most to Ash, and because of that, to me.

The Enders Barracks.

Though it was a burnt-out shell, the air still filled with the scent of charred wood and leather, I didn’t care. It was Ash’s home.

My home.

Distantly I knew Peta was with me, even though she didn’t speak. I felt her pain with my own. When I’d been in the oubliette the first time, she and Ash had been companions as they’d hunted for me. I knew she loved him, could feel it. I scooped her up in my arms and fell to my knees. The wood below me groaned, and a puff of ash whooshed into the air but the ground held.

A set of arms wrapped around me and I stiffened. I jerked my head up. “Cactus—”

“I heard about Ash,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, Lark. I know you cared for him.”

His words were conciliatory, but the look in his eyes was barely disguised happiness.

I snapped a fist forward into his nose. “You are an ass, Prick. Get the hell away from me.”

He fell back with a yell, clutching his nose as blood poured around his fingers. “What is wrong with you, Lark? I tell you I’m sorry you lost a friend—”

“Worm shit! You’re damn happy he’s gone. You think with Ash dead, you can just move right into my bed? You’re out of your ever-loving mind! He was not just my friend, I love him.” I stood and pressed the back of one hand to my mouth. I shook all over, the adrenaline and anger, grief and pain mingling into a dangerous blend of energy.

With a quick turn, I had my back to him and strode away, deeper into the burnt barracks. Ash’s bedroom wasn’t far from the main training area. Maybe there was something remaining of it. Something he’d left behind for me.

Hope flared and fled just as quickly when I stepped into Ash’s room. The walls were black, the bed a bare pile of cinders. Even with Peta beside me I struggled to not break down. “Nothing. There is nothing of him left.”

“That is not true.” Peta swiped at some of the char on the floor in front of her. “You know that. He is in your heart, and as trite as it may seem to say right now, he is safe there. As are your mother and little brother.”