Breakwater (4 page)

“If Barkley is dead, then find his room and search it. Just be wary, his lover is an Undine. Do you understand?”

I hate to admit my jaw dropped. “His lover is an Undine? And you knew?” Half-breeds like me were not common, and the higher up your station, the more likely you were to be forced to marry as you were told. Which, of course, was why it was all that much worse that my father broke his own rules by bedding my mother who was anything but an earth elemental.

My father frowned at me. “I approved, yes. You’ll understand when you meet them.”

I nodded again, though I wasn’t sure how I could understand him approving a relationship that would produce a half-breed. I wouldn’t wish that life on any child. “And the other thing?”

“You will protect the ambassador I’m sending with you at all costs. I have not decided who is to be my heir to the throne, but she is in the running. As are all of my children.”

The door slammed open and Belladonna strode in. “Surely you don’t mean
all
your children, do you, Father? No one would stand behind a bastard on the throne.”

Belladonna’s voice might have been smooth as silk worms spinning their threads, but it grated over my ears. I straightened, my vertebrae cracking and popping. Not that I’d been slouching, but I refused to look like I was taking any crap from her.

And then her words and my father’s hit me. If Belladonna was here, she was the one Father was talking about. For a stupid moment, I’d believed I was taking Briar with me. Why couldn’t it have been sweet, kind Briar?

“Belladonna,” Father said her name softly, “try to be kind. She is still your sister.”

Belladonna sniffed the air as if something stunk, her gray eyes narrowing. “I am always kind. Ask your people, Father, they’ll tell you I am nothing but sweetness and light.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “More like you terrorize the children when you think no one is looking. Giving them nightmares with stories of lung burrowers coming to eat their hearts if they don’t bow to you when you go by.”

She stomped her foot, fists clenched at her side, her demeanor slipping. “You sneaky ugly weevil! What are you doing, following me around? I will take you outside and beat you as you should have been beaten years ago!”

I stepped toward her, using my height to an advantage, looking down at her. “Belladonna, say the word. Say it.”

Father cleared his throat and put his hands between us, gently shoving us apart.

“Girls, whether you like it or not—and I see by your faces you do not—you are going to work together.” We stood across from him but as far apart from each other as possible. Belladonna was as opposite to me in looks as she was in personality. She was petite and curvy and had long dark brown hair and light gray eyes. The top of her head barely came to my chin, but her looks weren’t really what concerned me.

No, she was her mother’s daughter, through and through. I knew she was lying when she said Cassava had tricked her too. But our father wouldn’t hear me say a word against her, or any of my siblings, for that matter.

Belladonna smiled sweetly. “But Larkspur is so new to being an Ender. Wouldn’t it be better if someone more experienced came with me? Someone . . . like Ash?”

My whole body stiffened. I’d seen his memories of her and if I was anything of a friend to him, I couldn’t let him get sucked into this. “Ash can’t go. He’s running things here for Father.” My voice was sharp and I struggled not to yell at her. I had seen too clearly how she had treated Ash in the past.

As if saying his name had called him, my senior Ender and mentor stepped into the room. Dressed in the dark brown leather vest and lighter brown cotton pants of our order, he cut quite the figure. Even I could admit that about him. Dark blond hair and honey-colored eyes gave Ash an exotic look in a family of elementals where dark hair and eyes were prevalent. He gave my father a quick nod. “Your Majesty, the ambassador and her Ender from the Pit are waiting for you in the throne room.” He didn’t look at me, or Belladonna, but stared straight ahead.

My father let out a sigh. “Daughters. You will do as I ask. Belladonna, you are the acting ambassador. I want to know all you can decipher about the two who are battling for the Deep’s throne. From what I understand, they are both children of King Marianas, do your homework on them before you go. You will promise them nothing, understand?” His eyes flicked to mine. “And you will protect your sister.”

As if my life was worthless. But I knew that wasn’t the case, as much as the words stabbed at me. He had to have a way to get me out of the Rim long enough to defuse the situation with the Pit. Our fiery cousins might be good at reining in their tempers, but when they finally blew their tops . . . the world was not a safe place for anyone. Especially not the person they were pissed at, which in this case was me.

Father strode from the room, the carpet of grass muffling any sound his steps made. Ash snapped his fingers then pointed at Belladonna and me. “You two, meet me at the Traveling room in one hour.”

“Gladly, pet,” Belladonna purred, and I had to fight the sudden urge to reach over and strangle her.

With a swish of her skirts, she sashayed past Ash. At the last second she ran a hand down his arm. “I wish you were the one coming with me. At least then I’d know I was safe.”

She couldn’t see his face, but I could. He swallowed hard, as if he were trying not to vomit. “Princess, thank you for the compliment, but I’ve trained Larkspur. She will do her job,” he said, but the revulsion was in his eyes. Rape is not something our people condoned in the least, but as Ash had said, who would believe the princess had forced him to pleasure her?

No one but me. I knew my family too well not to believe him.

“Ash, hold on,” I said, “I want to speak to my father.” I didn’t stay for Ash’s answer, just ran after the receding figure of my father.

I caught up to him just before he reached the throne room. “Father. Wait, please.” He stopped and glanced back at me.

“Larkspur, I do not have time for this.”

He was right, there was no time, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and fix what I already knew was going to be an epic disaster. There was no way Belladonna and I could work together.

“Send Raven instead. Belladonna will make things worse in the Deep. I know that.”

“Belladonna is trained to be an ambassador, you are not. How would you know who would be best to send?” His voice rose in intensity with each word, his eyes flashing with emotion.

I refused to back down. “She is her mother’s daughter. You don’t know she isn’t still doing as Cassava wishes. And it’s not my fault that I wasn’t trained as she was! I could have been if I were treated as your daughter and not as some outcast cur!” I snapped at him. His eyes widened, then narrowed with a speed that made me doubt the hurt I’d seen in them.

“You go too far, Ender. Remember your place. A princess by blood? Perhaps. But not by any other standard.” He stepped through the door and into the throne room, slamming it behind him.

Stunned, the shock of his words slowly filtered through me as I stared at the closed door. Once more, put in my place by someone who was supposed to love me unconditionally. I made my way back to my father’s rooms where Ash waited for me. He took a single look at me, but asked no questions as to what I’d needed to speak to the king about. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. What did my face give away? I hoped nothing, but I had a feeling Ash saw far more than I wanted.

I didn’t know what to say, how to break the growing silence between us.

Ash looked me over again. “Testing went well?”

I nodded, grateful he broke the awkward quiet. Grateful he hadn’t heard my father speak to me like I was still nothing to him. Was this part of the act to keep me safe, or did he really mean what he’d said? I might not ever know. I replayed Ash’s question in my head. “Yes, I guess the testing went well. I wouldn’t know if it hadn’t, would I?”

“You wouldn’t be here so quickly if it had gone south.” He turned and beckoned for me to follow. “A week is a fairly short time to be in the mother goddess’s embrace.”

I stumbled to a stop. “A week? I was gone a whole week?” At least that explained the gnawing hunger and thirst. The whole time with the mother goddess had felt like hours. And though the pain part had seemed to last longer, I was already forgetting it.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “My testing, I was gone ten days. If you had taken longer than a month we would assume you were lost. Our bodies can’t stand to be within her embrace for longer.”

Damn, I had no idea that was even possible. “No one told me about that.”

“It’s not spoken of until you come through. You need to go in blind to the dangers.”

I frowned, thinking about the time I’d spent with the mother goddess. None of it had seemed particularly dangerous. Painful, yes, but I never thought I was truly in danger.

Ash led the way through the Spiral, the place my father and his children called home. Our family’s version of a castle, it was made up of all species of trees wrapping themselves around one another in a massive spiral that reached through the redwood giants. The interior was far larger than the exterior, driving deep into the earth and expanding beyond reason within the Spiral. A magic older than our family had created it and its expansive nature. The hot springs were in the lowest level of the Spiral, protected and used only for healing and testing.

We weren’t going to another room within the Spiral, though. The Traveling room where we would meet Belladonna was in the Enders barracks.

We exited the Spiral, the redwoods swaying above us, the soft sound of the trees moving in time with the wind. Several birds called down to us as we stepped into the sunlight, but Ash never slowed as we strode to the Ender’s barracks. I wanted him to slow down. I wanted to just . . . be by him. We had been through a lot together and I felt like I finally had a friend I could be myself around. Someone who didn’t care I was a bastard, or that I would never be a real princess. “Belladonna specifically asked that you be assigned to her.”

Ash stopped mid-stride, and only because I knew what to look for did I see the way his shoulders tightened. “And your father, what did he say?” He didn’t look at me, so I could only guess at the expression on his face. I went with horror.

“I told her you were too busy running things. That you couldn’t go. My father probably would have let her take you if I hadn’t said something.” I walked past him. The main training room was empty except for Blossom practicing with her dual short swords in the corner, so I wasn’t worried about who might hear me.

“What, do you want me to thank you?” Ash bit out and it was my turn to tense.

I turned to face him, and crossed my arms. “Ash, we’re friends. Friends thank one another for sticking their necks out. So yeah, it wouldn’t kill you. Unless you wanted to go with her?”

He snorted and shook his head. “Get your things, Larkspur. You have a princess to protect and I still have to brief you.”

Without another word, he walked away, taking the stairs into the belly of the barracks where the Traveling room was hidden. He said nothing about being my friend. Perhaps I was wrong about that too. Wouldn’t surprise me, it seemed lately my ability to figure out men had slid into the compost heap. A sigh of frustration escaped me before I could catch it.

“Lark, where are you going? You just got back.” Blossom slid her two swords into the sheaths at her side with a soft shush of metal on leather. We were the only two female Enders left after the lung burrowers had swept through wiping out nearly half of our family.

“I’m on assignment, I guess. I have to watch over Belladonna.”

Blossom made a face, her lips and nose crinkling in tandem. I more than agreed with her, but kept my own facial muscles still. “Be careful, I don’t want to be the only girl here to keep the men in line.” She gave me a wink and went back to her practicing. Not so long ago, she was thinking of quitting, but I’d convinced her to stay. I was glad I had. Maybe in Blossom I’d finally find a true friend. But not today.

“You be careful too.” I jogged away, down the main hall to the living quarters and into my tiny room. Barely big enough for the bed and table beside it, I was surprised that someone was waiting for me.

Coal.

His raven-black hair glistened as he lifted his head, the blue-black highlights catching the light. His green eyes roved over me, a hunger in their depths. I swallowed hard. Knowing him as well as I did, I was very aware of what he wanted and despite my growing understanding that I had to cut him loose, my body responded to him. It knew the tune we played “oh-so-well” together.

“Lark,” his voice was husky and full of desire.

Steeling myself, I kept my voice even. “Coal, I have an assignment. I have to go.”

With his one remaining hand, he reached for me. “Can’t they find someone else? I’ve been lonely without you. I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ve only been gone a week.” I dodged his hand and went to my knees so I could get at the weapons under my bed. In particular, my spear that had belonged to my mother—there was no way I was leaving it behind when I was going into danger.

His hand dropped to my head, digging into my thick hair and tugging at me lightly, bringing my face close to his knees. “Lark, I’ve missed you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

I sat back, spear in one hand and three knives in the other. A part of me expected to feel something other than desire—a pull of my heart toward him. But there was nothing other than the zings of lust, and even with the guilt that ate at me, that wasn’t enough. I had to let him go. Had to make him move on. “I’m sorry, Coal, I have to leave. I have an assignment.”

His eyes hardened, flashing with anger. “Right. And that has nothing to do with this.” He held up my necklace with the griffin tooth dangling from it. The necklace was a gift from Griffin, the wolf shifter who lived on the southern outskirts of our forest. He’d given me the necklace to stave off the lung burrowers while I fought off Cassava.

I reached for it. “I have to return that.”