“Drink, it will ease the pain in your arm and speed the healing.”

I gulped the liquid, which warmed in my mouth, and then burned down my throat. A curative from the Pit, if the hint of sulfur was any indication. Salamanders were known for their abilities with healing. Distantly I wondered how he’d gotten it. The Salamanders were not known for letting outsiders into their burrow. We were the only ones who allowed outsiders this close to us. I pushed the flask away. “Enough. You try to kill me and now try to heal me?”

He shifted, scooting back, but still staying crouched low to the ground. “First time you ever touched your power, yeah?”

I thought back to the day my family was killed. “No, but it’s been a long time. A very long time.”

“You’re welcome, then.” He grinned and my jaw dropped open. “It’s the first step back, Lark. And it won’t be easy, but I believe it will be worth it. Unless, you like being weak?”

I shook my head, and drew in a deep breath. “No, of course not.” I flexed my right hand, the pain receding as the bones and muscles knitted themselves together. “What if I hadn’t been able to reach my power? I would have died.”

His eyes were dark and fathomless, sending a chill through me as I saw the unbending spirit of the wolf in him. “Then you would have died. Your death wouldn’t have been a loss if you were truly a useless elemental.”

We stared at one another and the truth of his words curled around my heart. “Maybe to you, no loss. But to me, I am rather attached to this side of the dirt.”

Laughing, he offered me a hand and I slowly gave him my good one. He jerked me to my feet, drawing a sharp breath from me as my bad arm even healed as it was, dangled.

His eyes were hooded as he spoke. “It’s time for you to be retrained, Lark. Your life has bent you to the winds around you, forcing you into an unnatural state. If we don’t recurve you now, you may not ever be able to undo the damage.”

“You say that like there is a time limit.” I clutched at my bad arm.

“There is.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “And?”

“You need only know time is short. Train hard, and come to see me as often as you can.”

“So you can beat the worm shit out of me?”

He laughed and chucked my chin with two fingers. “No, so I can teach you what the others can’t. So I can make you the weapon you were always meant to be. The Enders can only teach you so much, I will teach you the rest, and together we will make you into your destiny.” He paused, tipping his head to one side, drawing in a gulp of air as if he were tasting it, before going on. “You better head back. It’ll take you ‘til your curfew to reach the barracks.”

Wobbling still, I didn’t argue with him, or wonder how he knew so much about the barracks and our curfew. None of that mattered. I climbed the ravine with difficulty, and when I reached the top I looked down to see the wolf was back. He tipped his head back and howled, the sound curling around me, driving into my soul.

Be strong, child of the earth. Death rides on the wind. You escaped him once, and he hungers for a taste of your blood.

I turned my back on him and slowly started for home. My arm still throbbed, and I was beaten and bruised despite the curative I’d drank. His warning should have scared me, but a slow sense of exhilaration began to fill me. I had tapped into my abilities; I wasn’t useless.

I reached for the power of the earth, thinking I could just take hold of it again, that now I could show people I was better.

I was wrong.

Pain lanced behind my eyes, like a thousand stabbing needles. A cry escaped me and I dropped to the ground as I whimpered, unable to even think about moving.

Son of a bitch, the wolf had made it worse.

Chapter 11

Limping into the barracks, long past midnight, I didn’t see Ash until he was right in front of me.

“You’re late.”

I glared up at him, snorted. “What are you going to do about it?” My encounter with Griffin had given me a lot to think about and I’d had a long walk. So when Ash moved as if he were going to hit me, his body tensing, I reacted. I spun my spear out and had it slicing through the air toward his head between one heartbeat and the next. His eyes widened and he dropped to the ground, rolling out of the way, my spear slicing through the strands of his hair as he fell.

He flicked his hands and the green glow that was the earth’s power surrounded his fingertips. I leapt from where I stood, straight back, avoiding the hole that opened up where I’d been standing.

“Why do you hate me?” There it was, the question burning in me for all the time I’d been training.

He sneered and the hate was there in his eyes; an anger so intense I knew I wasn’t seeing things. “Because you think you’re above the law. That you’re better than the rest of us, but you aren’t. Royal blood doesn’t run pure, it runs putrid. You attacked our queen and instead of being killed, you were given the opportunity the rest of us have to fight for. You should be banished, sent far away from here. Better for all of us if you just disappeared.”

“I didn’t attack her, you were there!”

“Liar!”

We circled one another and I didn’t think, just reached for that part of me connected to the earth. The pain would be worth it if Ash was trying to kill me; I had to be strong enough to stop him. I imagined a huge hole under him, one that would suck him down and keep him from hurting me. A hole so deep he’d never dig his way out.