A sneer curled his thin lips as he clenched his teeth. “I will not help a bunch of traitors to the crown.”
“Aurora has betrayed her people. She is leading us to our extinction. The humans outnumber us by frightening numbers. It is my belief that even the nightwalkers outnumber us, and there has even been talk of the return of the bori. We are unable to fight this war that Aurora is leading us toward.”
“Aurora’s duty is first to the Earth, and the humans have nearly destroyed her. This is our last chance to save our Mother. I believe in her vision of returning power to the Earth,” Rowe argued, pushing up with his good arm so he was sitting on the downed tree behind him.
“Aurora has no great vision for the future and protection of the Earth. Do you think after years of living with my sister in captivity I do not know her mind? In her thoughts, there is only the destruction of the human race. There is no thought about how to rejuvenate the Earth.”
“I will not side with Cynnia. Aurora is queen,” Rowe said, pushing to his feet.
“I’m not giving you a choice. You are going with me and you are going to listen to what Cynnia has to say. Then I will allow you to make your final decision,” I decreed.
A smirk lifted one corner of his thin mouth as he raised his hand toward me. “I don’t think so.”
I stood prepared, tapping the energy of the earth that flowed around me, ready for whatever spell the wind clan master was going to sling at me. Instead, he cried out in surprised pain as he fell backward onto his butt once again. Glaring at me, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the previously unnoticed iron collar around his neck.
“Iron?” he snarled. “You’ve placed an iron collar on me?”
“Because I knew you would not come quietly, and we have a long distance to travel.”
Pushing back to his feet, he circled around me. “Why do I get the impression that you feel a certain amount of joy seeing me like this?”
I pulled my short sword, hoping it might deter him from attacking. “I should have killed you after what you did at Machu Picchu.”
“And how exactly did I upset you at Machu Picchu? We were both in agreement then. We both believed that opening the doorway was our ultimate goal.”
“Not at the cost of Cynnia’s life!” I shouted, suddenly losing my tight grip on my temper. “When you attacked the nightwalkers during the daylight hours at the foot of the ruins, you not only wasted the lives of our people, but needlessly risked Cynnia’s life. You could have come to a compromise, but you are obsessed with destroying the Fire Starter. This personal vendetta will no longer be tolerated.”
“Cynnia formed an alliance with the nightwalker. She deserved what she got. She turned her back on her people and she dragged you blindly along with her.”
Rowe lunged at me from his seated position against the fallen log. I took a step back and held my short sword out to my side, careful to keep from impaling him on it. I needed him alive for now. If he didn’t side with us, I could always kill him later.
The dark naturi plowed his head and shoulder into my stomach, doubling me over as I slammed to the ground on my back. Rowe instantly rolled off me, ripping the sword free from my hand as he moved away. Stifling a groan of frustration at my stupid mistake, I rolled away from him, regaining my feet while palming a knife at my side.
He didn’t hesitate to attack, barely giving me enough time to regain my feet before swinging the sword blade at my throat. I dodged the blow and parried a thrust at my ribs with the knife. A growl escaped him as he continued to launch one slashing move after another, determined to either remove a limb or my head.
A deep calm settled over me as I blocked each attack or slipped away from the reach of a particular thrust. I watched him, his one eye intently focused on me, but something felt off. I knew Rowe and his intense fighting style. I refused to believe that his wounds were slowing him down that much, having seen him in battle with far worse wounds, cutting down nightwalkers as if harvesting wheat. He wasn’t throwing everything he had at me. It was as if he knew I would block his every move or at the very least evade him.
However, that didn’t mean Rowe wasn’t more than willing to leave me horribly wounded and bleeding in the mud so he could go on his merry way. I needed to disarm him so we could resume our flight from the naturi that had been holding him. We were running out of time. Slipping past one lunge, which was an attempt to plunge the blade between my ribs, I slid across the ground under his guard and slammed a foot into his knee, causing the leg to buckle beneath him. The sword he was holding came straight down, aiming for my chest, but I quickly rolled out of the way. As he knelt on the ground, I kicked the hand holding the sword, knocking it loose. The blade flashed in the moonlight as it flew end over end across the open glade.
Rising quickly to my feet, I stood over him, kneeling on the ground, placing the knife against his exposed throat. “Enough wasting time. You come quietly with me now or I kill you, because I’m not allowing you to return to Aurora.”
“Afraid she’ll welcome me back with open arms?”
“Your best case scenario is that she’ll allow you to hunt me down so I can only kill you at a later date. There will be no hero’s return for you when it comes to my sister.”
A smile grew on Rowe’s face, sending a chill down my spine. “It seems you must first save my life.”
I was about to ask what that meant when I heard a creak from the tree above us and felt a trembling in the earth. Claudia and the other members of the earth and light clans had caught up with us.
“Damn you!” I lurched away from him and ran across the glade to pick up my sword.
“Aren’t you going to give me a weapon as well, Nyx?” Rowe inquired in all too innocent tones.
“I’m no fool. I’ll not risk having you stab me in the back while I am protecting you.” I tried to refocus my powers, lightning crackling in the air as the wind rose. “Can you fly?” I demanded as wings sprouted from my back, slick with shining black feathers.
“I seem to have an iron collar around my neck.”
“Try it! I truly doubt that all of your abilities have been blocked. Get in the sky and away from here. I will hold them off until I can join you.”
I started to send my powers away from my body again to get a sense of where the clan members were approaching from when a large tree limb swung down toward me. I dove for the ground, narrowly missing being struck in the chest, only to have a swath of smaller branches rake across my arms and back. Twisting around while still lying on my stomach, I saw Rowe also diving to the ground a few feet away as a pair of darts pierced the night, aimed for his chest.
“Get out of here. I’ll hold them off.”
“Last I checked, protector of the people, I was in command, not you,” he said as he grabbed the knife at my side.
“Then what are your orders, commander?”
“You take this damned collar off me and we kill my last captors!”
“Not likely,” Claudia said, announcing her arrival in the small clearing.
I reacted, not contemplating whether what I was doing was right or wrong. I threw out my arm and a bolt of lightning sizzled from the sky, slamming down into Claudia in a brilliant flash of white light. Her blackened body fell over with a sickening thud in the wet, marshy ground.
My soul cringed at what I had just done, but I took my first step toward the remaining three members of the earth clan, and nearly tripped. A root had sprung up from the ground and wrapped itself around my left ankle. It continued to tighten, biting through the material of my pants and into the soft flesh and muscle. A second root shot from the earth then and wrapped its way around my other leg, holding me in place.
I glanced around and saw Rowe engaged with the one male earth clan member, while the two females stood off to the side watched me with grins on their beautiful, elfinlike faces. Raising my right hand, I started to throw my last remaining knife at the one on the left when a third root halted me.
Trapped and certain that they meant to kill me, I had no choice. I tilted my head back toward the heavens, letting the rain pelt my face. A peace spread through my body, as if the water was cleansing me of the act I was about to commit.
The lightning slammed down twice, pounding both of the earth clan members. The scent of burned flesh drifted toward my nose.
This wasn’t what I wanted. I was the protector of our people, a title given to me by my father, the king of the naturi. He had commanded that with every breath in my body I protect the people and carry out the orders of my
