“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t leave you.”
I helped her up, took her hand, and after another careful survey of the area, led her across the dangerously open area toward the fence. It was a significant barrier, but not for an Earth Warden; I had no more fear of disguising my power, because I knew that in order to allow Zedala’s escape, I’d have to betray myself.
It felt like a positive step, until I remembered the friends I’d made, the peace I’d felt here. Until I imagined the look in Will’s eyes when he learned of my betrayal.
“Are you okay?” Zedala whispered. We were at the fence, and I was at the moment of truth now. No more delays, no more doubts. I had to do this, or the child wouldn’t survive her next encounter with her teachers.
It would cost me my chance at Pearl if I did this, but if I stood by and allowed a child’s death as the cost ...
No. I was willing to pay a high price, but not that. Not that.
I extended my hand, exerted a delicate flow of power, and the metal mesh of the fence began to split and peel back like the edges of a sharp, dangerous flower.
Something hit me in the back of the neck with a stunning blow, and then again, even harder. A wave of disorientation, darkness, pain, and then I was falling to my knees, struggling to turn my power on the one who’d attacked me ...
... until I saw Zedala’s face, alight with triumph and malice. She still held a bloody rock in her hand. She raised it over her head and screamed in triumph—a warrior’s cry, chilling from such a small, fragile girl.
“Why?” I asked. I was clinging to consciousness only with the greatest of effort, and there was something terribly wrong with my head. The world tilted, sliding me toward the black edge.
For answer, Zedala hit me again. I heard answering cries, hot with approval, and this time, I couldn’t hold on to the world at all.
Cass. Cass! Wake up!
Luis’s voice, whispering urgently in my ear. I didn’t want to wake up. The darkness was kind; it cloaked the pain and dulled the betrayal, but the whispers reached me even there, dragging me into a dull twilight full of agony. The pain drove me upward, into a harsh light that made me groan and twist aside from the glare.
“She’s waking up,” someone said. Not Luis. I ached to feel his presence, his comforting, healing touch, but instead there was only pain, and isolation. I couldn’t move far. I was tied, or otherwise restrained. When I opened my eyes, the blaze of sun made me want to retch in anguish. There were dark shapes around me, distorted and sinister. “Block her! Don’t let her get at her power!”
A child-sized hand flattened against my forehead, and I felt a cold, iron-hard wall come down, severing me from the reservoir of warm golden power that had accumulated within me. Luis had been feeding it to me, I realized; he’d been trying to heal me from afar, but now I was adrift and alone, and without that constant pulse of power, I was beginning to die. Oh, it was a slow process. It would take days of agony and terror, but my flesh would rot, and then the core of me would starve and flicker out like a blown flame.
I blinked away the glare, and the shadows wavered into the shapes of faces and bodies. Zedala’s face came first. She was kneeling next to me with her hand on my forehead, and it was she who was cutting me off from my source. From Luis.
Zedala looked up, and I saw a boy of about her own age standing there staring down at us with a cold, remote expression. The Earth Warden boy, the one who’d staged that elaborate charade in the field to draw me out. There were two more children as well—a small, delicate girl who almost vibrated with the energy of Fire and a golden-skinned boy with silky black hair who radiated ... nothing. Absolutely nothing.
There was something terrifying about him, and the look in his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than nine years old, but that was an ancient, awful thing inside of him.
There was an adult woman with them as well, one of the teachers in a red bandanna. She was standing back, head bowed, hands clasped together. I thought for an instant that her obedience was directed toward the children, but then I realized that there was another presence in the room, standing farther away and somewhere past my aching head.
I pulled in a shaking breath as I felt the tidal force of her presence wash through the room.
I’d sought Pearl here.
I’d found her.
“No words, sister?” Pearl walked slowly into my field of vision. She was tall, graceful, beautiful as a blinding star; the dream vision I’d had of her had been an accurate representation of her human avatar, except that she wore her thick, silky black hair piled in intricate knots on top of her head to emphasize the long sweep of her neck. Unlike her followers, she was dressed in lush patterned silks that swept the floor as she walked. Her feet were bare and perfect. “No threats? No apologies? I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t expect you to give up so easily.”
I held my silence, since it bothered her. My head felt wrong and tender, and I was almost sure that my skull was fractured. The pillow beneath me felt sticky with blood, and I could smell the iron reek of it. Nausea twisted inside me like smoke, but I contained it. I couldn’t heal myself, and cut off from Luis, I had no chance of surviving such an injury. Pearl knew that.
She was enjoying it.
Zedala and the other children looked at Pearl with expressions of utter devotion. In turn, Pearl trailed her long, lovely fingers over the hair of the smallest girl and favored her with a slow, cool smile. “Do you know what I’ve done, Cassiel?” she asked. “Do you understand the astonishing thing that’s been accomplished here?”
“You’ve perverted and destroyed children,” I said. My voice sounded weak and dry, no match for her elegance. “It’s not so astonishing. Humans have been doing that to their own for millennia.” A pulse of hot, stabbing pain bolted through me, and I tensed and cried out.
Zedala gave me a wolfish grin. “Don’t be rude to the Lady,” she said. “You’re not good enough to look at her. I should put your eyes out.”
For an awful second, I thought that Pearl would allow that; she considered it, as she wandered over to the Earth Warden boy and caressed his face with idle affection. “No,” she finally said. “Show me her base human form first.”
Zedala cocked her head, staring at me, and then power burst out of her like a flood from an exploding dam, such astonishing power that it overwhelmed and drowned me, ripped me apart in its turbulence, then subsided in a slow, sticky tide. I felt myself changing. Bones shattered and re-formed. Skin melted and healed. I screamed; I couldn’t stop the flood of agony, or my body’s primal, visceral response of horror.
The only part of me that didn’t suffer was my left arm, from the forearm down. Instead, the fleshy disguise I’d adopted melted away, leaving a cold, gleaming bronze appendage in all its minutely crafted detail, down to the whorls of artificial fingerprints on metal fingers. I’d sliced away my arm to save myself, and replaced it with a Djinn-crafted duplicate; it seemed the only respite now from the pain Pearl and her children seemed intent on causing me.
I could move it, just a little.
By the time Zedala burned her way down my body, I had gained a foot in height, and my skin had been restored to its ivory color. My hair as well—it had grown out, and been bleached to its normal ice-white.
“There you are,” Pearl said, and shrugged. “Or the human vessel of you, at least. Tell me, sister, how long since we’ve been together, even in our Djinn forms? Human time has no measure, does it? So long ago that you killed me.”
I had killed her, or at least I’d believed it was so. And it had been the only possible response to her crimes, which had driven Mother Earth mad with pain. I’d destroyed her, and I’d thought I eradicated all traces of her ... but some part of her survived, tenacious as the roots of a weed. It had taken her aeons to gather her strength, but finally she was here, present, physical again.