Breakwater (2 page)

Chills swept over me. “No pressure there.” My home called to me, tugging on my body and heart. “I think I need to go back now.” Yet I wasn’t totally sure. What would happen if I stayed? Could I stay with her?

“Yes, you do. There is much to be done to cleanse the world of those who do it harm.” With a single nod, I turned and walked away. My testing was complete. I was an Ender.

I thought when my testing was finished, and having gained the approval of the mother goddess, I would be able to connect to my abilities whenever I wanted. That I would finally be like the other elementals and no longer the useless outsider I was raised to believe.

Apparently, not so much. I stood thigh-deep in the water of the testing room, the damp heat from the underground hot spring curling around my naked body, caressing my skin, and making me shiver. Above my head, the stalactites hung low, moisture dripping from them into the pool. I couldn’t quite bring myself to step out of the water, though. I wasn’t ready to go fully back to the world that awaited me.

I stood there, fingers trailing in the water as my mind wandered.

Already the experience on the other side of the hot springs within the mother goddess’s embrace was fading, and I struggled with my insecurities. My whole life I’d been the weak one, the one everyone mocked for my inability. I’d been the one sent to the Planting fields, and even in that I’d failed. And now the mother goddess told me I was her chosen one . . . “Can’t exactly tell her that I decline, either,” I murmured. No, one did not tell the mother goddess, ‘no thanks, I think I’ll pass. Choose someone else to help you.’

Swallowing hard, I held my hand over the water. My feet were half-buried in the hot spring sand. The display the mother goddess had put on, swirling the sand through the air, had fascinated me. Maybe I could do the same. I reached for the power of the earth, cringing just before I connected, unable to make myself grab hold of it. The pain was still too real to me.

“Damn.” I put a hand to my head, rubbing at my temple. The mother goddess’s voice whispered across the water to me.

“Child, it will be many moons before you can fully break the bonds Cassava has placed on your soul. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself.”

I rolled my eyes so I could stare at the darkness and stalactites above. The conditioning I’d endured had come close to severing my connection to the earth completely. I didn’t know how close, but I suspected there were more than just my family’s lives in the countdown to destroy the lung burrowers. Had that only been a few weeks ago? Cassava had come close to tearing our entire family apart, nearly killed my father, and had weakened our home by wiping out nearly all of the Enders.

All so she could reign as she saw fit, without anyone to naysay her. The only good thing that had come out of the situation was the training I’d been put through. Becoming an Ender had started me on a path to finding out the truth about myself, my abilities, and the secrets of the past.

I shivered again as my body recalled, all too clearly, the pain when mother goddess severed Cassava’s ties to my heart, body, and soul.

In my time with her, I felt like I’d been stripped to the marrow of my soul.

Flicking my hands across the top of the water, I sent my mind along another path, one that didn’t give me the heebie-jeebies.

The last few months still seemed unreal in quiet moments of reflection. I’d gone from being a lowly Planter in the fields, to training to become an Ender—one of the king’s elite guards—faced down my stepmother Cassava, saved my family from the lung burrowers, and now I’d finished my testing. Something I thought I would never do with my lack of power. I looked around, finally taking note of the beach in front of me. The torches that had lit my path to the hot spring had gone out—except for one.

How long had I been in the water?

Flickering and dancing on a breeze that swept down through the halls above, the last flame beckoned me. A hand-like flare reached out, curling fiery fingers toward the beach. I stepped back. Growing and shifting, the flame leapt from the torch, forming itself into a fire tiger.

The big cat stalked toward me, its coat rippling in the unseen breeze, stripes going from a deep blue glow to a strange green and back again. As beautiful as it was, though, I wasn’t getting any closer.

I took a few steps back into the water. “I don’t suppose you just want to talk, do you, kitty?”

The tiger opened its mouth and roared, a fire storm shooting toward me. I fell back into the hot spring, the water rushing over my head. I stared upward as I sunk into the embrace of the water, while the flames rushed over the surface. Distorted and muted, they still illuminated the hot springs the way human fireworks lit the skies several times a year.

I kicked back, pushing myself deeper before lifting my head out of the water. Twenty feet from the shoreline now, the water steaming hot around me, I tread the surface.

I couldn’t resist. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The tiger roared again, flames licking across the distance, dying before they touched me. The big cats were always tied to a fire elemental, or a Salamander as we called them. And seeing how I had killed a few of them in the fight to save my family only weeks ago, I was betting they still weren’t happy with me.

But that was just a guess.

The big cat swatted at the sand, sending sparkling hot tiny embers into the water. Maybe not so much a guess, after all.

Putting the fire tiger’s flame out to get to the shore was possible, but I would have to call on the earth and use the power newly opened to me.

“Couldn’t I have at least gotten a day or two to get used to using my abilities?” I licked my lips, tasting the minerals and salt from the water. I lifted one hand and focused on the ground under the tiger’s pacing feet. Wet and heavy, the sand would douse the fire perfectly.

If I could make it happen and push past my own hang-ups.

The power of the earth hummed just out of reach. “Come on,” I whispered. “Just grab it.”

Fear, icy cold and jarring despite the heat of the hot spring, shot through my body and stabbed at my thoughts. The pain was almost as bad as before, mind numbing in its strength. Cassava had done her work well. I lowered my hand and scissor kicked my legs, swimming backward. “You win this time, cat.”

I reached the far side of the hot spring and pulled myself up on the slick, warm rocks. Shame burned in my gut. On the far shoreline the tiger paced and snarled, its body swirling as the fire flicked off its coat.

Someone had sent the cat to hurt me, to get back at me for what had happened in the Pit, of that much I was sure. I closed my eyes, the memories swirling up and around. I could almost smell smoke and sulfur that had been underneath everything we touched, could feel my spear shiver as I slammed it into the Enders we’d faced. Killing another Ender was a death sentence, one I’d barely escaped. But it looked like I wasn’t out of the fire just yet.

I opened my eyes to see the tiger gone and moved back into the water.

Voices floated down the stairs. “She’s still in her testing, we don’t know how long it will take. You know that!” My tester who’d sent me into the hot springs to meet the mother goddess, Douglas if I remembered his name right, did not sound happy. At least he was trying to defend me to whomever he was with.

“I don’t care if she’s still naked and shaking from the touch of the mother goddess, she
is
going to trial for her crimes. She thinks she is above the law. As an Ender, she is more subject to it than any other. Her training makes her deadly. She is a weapon not to be used for anything other than protection. Her head will roll before this is over.” That voice was familiar, but hard to place with the way it bounced across the water. Female, and husky, I tried to place it but failed. There was no woman I knew in our family with that raspy of a voice.

Sliding along the rocks, I pushed under an overhanging shelf so I could watch without being seen. The mist rising off the hot spring continued to flow upward, helping to hide me. But it meant I couldn’t see as well as I’d hoped, either.

Two figures came to a stop on the beach. They argued in low tones and finally it seemed that Douglas had enough. His back was to me and he was blocking my view of his companion. Douglas put a hand on the other figure’s chest and shoved. Silently, I cheered.

“Tester, you are going to get yourself killed.”

“Then you are no better than what you are accusing our princess of.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. No one in our family had ever called me a princess, even though it was true. A spot warmed in my heart and I clutched my arms around myself as if to hold it there. If nothing else, I would hold this moment to me.

Douglas had his hands in the air, and his back to me physically blocking the other person. “Get out of here. She isn’t out yet. You can see that.”

“She has completed the testing. I know she has set foot on the sand.” A booby trap. The cat was set to attack me and alert its master as soon as my feet touched the ground.

“You don’t know that,” Douglas shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls in the cavern.

Finally, I got a good look at his companion. Bright red hair visible, even across the water and through the mist. And I knew without seeing her orange eyes.

Magma had come looking for me.

Green shit sticks, this really was not a good turn of events. I leaned out so I could get a better look. Magma strode across the sand, her black leather Ender body suit clinging to her. She stopped with her feet at the edge of the water. “I will wait for her here. I don’t want her slipping past us again.”

Douglas looked like he was going to have a fit. “Get out, Ender Magma. I will bring her to you when her testing is done.”

“No.”

They continued to argue and I knew there was no way to get past them. At least, not across the shoreline. A shiver ran through my body as a cool breeze from deeper in the caverns blew across the water. Freezing wasn’t going to help me any. Slowly, I slid back into the hot spring, careful not to make a sound, the heat flushing my skin and body.

My hair spun out around me, floating on the surface like golden seaweed. Using the rocky edge of the pool, I pulled myself back into the shadows of the overhanging rock. How the hell was I going to get out of this?

“What is going on here?” My father’s voice boomed across the water to me. I spun around, the water swirling into eddies about my body.

“Ender Magma thinks to pull Larkspur from her testing to be tried at the Pit.” Douglas’s voice held more than a hint of condescension.

“She needs to be properly tried, Basileus. You convincing the ambassador she did nothing wrong is not enough for Queen Fiametta. She wants Larkspur properly tried, and punished. As is the queen’s right.”

Someone, I assumed Douglas, sucked in a breath so hard I heard it all the way across the water. I knew why.

Magma had called my father by name, and not used “your highness” or even “king.” It was a slap in the face. Below us, the earth growled, and even from where I hid, I saw the subtle glow of green on my father’s hands. The rocks under me rumbled, and the water rippled with the vibrations. Magma treaded very dangerous ground.

I let go of the rocks so I could float free in the water.

“Magma. You forget yourself. I will bring Larkspur to Fiametta myself.” His words were laced with granite and power. I shivered and was pleased to see that not only did Magma leave, but Douglas, too. I waited until their figures disappeared up the stairs cut into the earth before I swam across the water, keeping my movements as stealthy as possible. But he still heard me.

“Larkspur. Get dressed.”

“Are you going to hand me over to them?” I reached the shore and stood, the water lapping around my thighs. My feet sunk into the sand, putting me eye level with my father.

Everything about him reminded me that he was the king. The flecks of gray through his dark brown hair were a mark of age most of our people didn’t see, the deep green of his eyes were filled with knowledge of the past, present, and future, and the power I could see dancing along his fingertips like green flames made the earth hum under my feet.

He flicked his fingers at me, a move that would have the sand push me forward. This was a gift I had—the ability to see when another elemental would use their power. It had saved me more than once already.

I sidestepped the push and stepped fully onto the shoreline. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

He shook his head. “Lark, I would not hand over any of my children to Fiametta. She is a friend of Cassava. They are very close, in fact.” His eyes softened and he got a faraway look that scared me more than if he’d been angry and yelling.

I swallowed hard as I watched the emotions play across his face. “You still love her?”

His eyes narrowed. “She is the mother of most of my children. I cannot hate her.”

“Yet, she tried to kill you, me, and did kill a number of our family. She killed my mother and Bram. So while you might not hate her, I do.” I strode past him to where my clothes were piled. There were flecks of sand over them and I shook out the leather vest and snug fitting cotton pants quickly before putting them back on.