I had to get to the Spiral before someone else grabbed me.

And with the odds a thousand to one, my chances were not good.

Not good at all.

Chapter 20

I ran for the Spiral, but my feet slowed as I drew close, slowed, as my mind told me what I already knew.

I couldn’t run from this. Griffin was right, and I knew it. My father would have been one of the first infected, and I couldn’t depend on him to take care of this for us.

Even if I managed to survive, Cassava would still be after me, she’d still be trying to kill my father. Breathing hard from the emotions more than the run, I spun in a quick circle, mind racing. Then I bent my head back and looked straight up. The trees stood tall and firm, their branches touching one another in many places. The other children had played in the branches, safe in the knowledge that if they fell, they could soften the ground to ease their landing. I’d never played like that, not after Cassava killed my family.

“Come on, Lark, you can do this.” I prepped myself. The kids used their connection to the earth to be able to cling to the trees like monkeys. There was no time like the present to see if I could.

I ran straight at the closest tree trunk, digging my hands and boots into the bark. At least, that was what I tried to do.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Ash spoke with an authority I knew wasn’t his. “Don’t you want to see what we have in store for you?”

I didn’t look down, didn’t say a word, just fought for purchase on the bark, a cry slipping past my lips as he grabbed my ankles. “Please!” I screamed, hoping for the mother goddess to hear me, to answer me.

Nothing.

He gave a sharp yank and I fell hard, hitting the dirt, an explosion of air erupting from my lungs, leaving me breathless.

I rolled to my back to look up at him. His eyes had that strange pink glow, the same as the mob. “Ash, she’s controlling you, you know she is! You can fight her.”

His jaw twitched and he gave his head a shake. “You don’t know; you’re immune to her.” He fell to his knees beside me, and I grabbed his shoulders, my hands on his bare skin, feeling how cold he was. Clammy, as if he were sick.

“What are you talking about? What am I immune to?”

“Something in you keeps you safe from her spells, it’s in her ring, Lark. The ring she wears gives her power over people’s minds. She can’t compel you like she can the rest of us. That’s why she has kept you alive, she’s trying to figure out—” He gave a cough and a worm slid out of his mouth, pasty and wriggling. The worm was two inches long and swollen from feasting on Ash’s flesh and blood, the red glow to its thick squirming body making me sick to my stomach.

“Ash,” I whispered his name, hands tightening on him. “You’re sick, we have to get you to a healer.” Even though I knew a healer could do nothing, it was at least something.

“You have to stop her.” His eyes met mine, clear of the pink glow. “You’re the only one who can stand against her.”

I dropped my hands and the glowing pink haze returned to his eyes. He backhanded me, snapping my head so hard I thought he might break my jaw. Reaching down, he grabbed my ankles, the same as Coal had done, and dragged me to the Ender barracks.

“I think it’s time you did some penance for your disobedience. Time you learned your place, Useless. I think we will wait to kill you, to show you the devastation after we are done.” He jerked me hard and my head hit a protruding rock, stunning me.

In the Ender barracks, he pulled me across the training floor and I scrabbled at the dirt, twisting and flipping my body around. Trying to break free. But even sick, Ash was too strong, and I had lost all my weapons. He took me down to the lower levels where the brig was, a dingy hole full of dust and rust. More of an object lesson than anything, it hadn’t been used since before my father’s time. Hadn’t needed to be. The cells were cut out from the world, an oubliette of sorts that made it so you couldn’t touch the earth, and you couldn’t be drawn out of the cell through the earth. The cells were a place of non-existence. Where a criminal could be tossed and forgotten about for years.

He heaved me into the first cell and I grabbed at the doorframe, screaming, “Ash, snap out of it! Please!”

“He can’t. She’s holding him in thrall to her. Rather tightly at the moment,” a voice I knew all too well said. A voice that gave me hope. I wasn’t alone in this; Granite would help me.

The shock made me lose my grip on the cell’s edge and Ash threw me in. I hit the far wall hard. Granite strode in, his body straight and strong, no sign of the lung burrowers in him. “Granite, you have to stop her,” I said, pulling myself to my feet as the door behind us clanged. I let out a groan. Now we were both trapped.

“Lark, do you know why she wants to kill you, do you understand what’s going on?” He crouched in front of me, his eyes full of compassion.

I shook my head. “Ash just said she couldn’t compel me, like she could everyone else.”

He gave a wry twist of his lips, hardly even a grin. “Well, that is part of it.” From his waist he pulled a few items and placed them on the floor in front of him. Motioning to me to come closer, I did, wondering what he was doing.

He laid a small, dusty red, hollowed out bowl, a pouch, and a flask. He mixed the ingredients from the pouch with that from the flask together, slowly, as he spoke. “You are one of the last, Lark. You are one of the only ones in the elemental world who can control not one, but two elements in equal portions. You are a half-breed, but not like your friend Cactus. He can barely touch his power with the earth, I doubt he could even make a seedling sprout.”