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  The queen spun. “Well, well. Perhaps I won’t kill you after all, Larkspur. Your father told me you were weak, so weak. But I see he was wrong. Or maybe he was just trying to hide you from me.” She tapped a fingernail against her teeth, and her eyes grew thoughtful. “Yes, that is something he would do.”

  Words that were not my own with a voice I didn’t recognize, spilled out of my mouth.

  “Cassava, you will pay for these deaths.”

  The queen stumbled back, her eyes hard, and lips harder. She lifted her right hand to me, her glittering pink diamond ring catching my eye, mesmerizing me. “This is just a dream, Larkspur. You know that. Your mother, she died from the lung burrowers, as did your brother. Pity as it was. And you will no longer be able to reach your power—doing so will feel as if your soul is being ripped from your body. You are weak, too weak to be of use to anyone.”

  My mouth opened to deny her, but then I . . . remembered. “They died from the lung burrowers. I am weak. I am useless.”

  “That’s a good girl,” she cooed, coming closer to me, taking something from my arms, something I didn’t want to give up. I whimpered, “No, that’s mine.”

  “No.” Cassava leaned in close, her breath against my cheek. “It’s not yours. Go to sleep, Larkspur, and when you wake, remember none of this.”

  I lifted my eyes streaming with tears to hers, knowing only that she’d done something horrible. Something I could never forgive, something that couldn’t be undone. “I hate you. I’ll always hate you.”

  She grinned down at me, her beauty stark and cold. “The feeling’s mutual, little bastard.”

  Chapter 2

  I jerked awake, sweat rolling from my hairline and down my neck to pool against the cotton sheets. Beside me, Coal stirred, the lines of his lean body visible through the thin sheet. Thank the goddess he’d stayed over. The dreams were never quite as bad when I had a warm body beside me. I laid a hand against his back, the heat and ripple of his muscles an anchor against the fog of the dream. “This is real, this isn’t a dream,” I whispered to myself, and lay back, the sheets sticky against my bare skin. Flipping an arm over my eyes, I struggled to get my heart rate under control. How many times was it this week? Five nights in a row, the dream had rolled me under its spell and held me there, drowning me with the sheer solidity of it.

  Like it was a memory instead of a reoccurring nightmare. No, I knew it was just a bad dream, a way for my mind to make sense of my family’s senseless deaths. Yet still, it felt so real.

  I peered over my arm. By the little light coming through the window, it wasn’t even dawn yet, but I knew from past experience there would be no going back to sleep, not with my heart rate through the roof and the sweat slicking my body. A sigh slipped out of me and I sat up, the sheet dropping in fits and starts as it stuck to my bare skin, finally settling around my waist.

  “Lay down and shut your eyes, Lark,” Coal mumbled. “You’ll go back to sleep if you try, but you won’t if you get up.”

  Leaning forward, I stretched my back, choosing to ignore Coal. He didn’t understand, and I’d stopped trying to make him see my point of view. That the dreams were real to me, even though I knew they weren’t real. My muscles were tight and cramped from tension, and the stretch helped to get the blood flowing through them. Coal rolled over, his hair, black as a raven’s wing and just as smooth, rumpled from sleep and lovemaking. I leaned over and ran my fingers over his head. “Go back to sleep, I’m going to—”

  “Go find a clue that tells you this isn’t a dream and our queen really is a terrifying killer?”

  I pulled my hand from him as if he’d scalded me. “Don’t mock me, Coal.”

  “I’m not, but this is stupid. It’s a dream, Lark, not reality. You need to get that through your head. It’s just something you made up as a little girl to deal with the death of your mom and brother. Get over it.”

  Get over it. Like losing a loved one so dear to me could be ‘gotten over’. There were times he really was an ass. Times I questioned our relationship.

  He kept talking as I strode toward the armoire. I buried my toes into the golden shag rug in front of it. The fluffy material was all the rage in the human world for the current year according to my half-sisters. I yanked the armoire door open and pulled out my favorite clothes, which also happened to be the ones Coal hated. My human digs I’d bought off an Ender coming back from a Hunt. Blue jean cut-off shorts that sat low on my hips and a neon pink tube top with the word electric zigzagged across the front. I couldn’t even answer Coal. I was so angry and afraid if I did answer him, it wouldn’t be very nice. Actually, I was sure it wouldn’t be nice. Tying my waist length hair into a knot at the base of my neck, I paused and looked over my shoulder. “I’m going to work.”

  “Lark, stop.” He stood, lifted his hands over his head and stretched out his six-foot frame, drawing my eyes to him like a bee to honey. Lean, muscled lines, and the rippled abs that came from not only hard work but great genetics, that dark hair spilling over his forehead, and then those deep green eyes framed with long dark lashes and deeply tanned skin—all of it called to my body. Coal was, if nothing else, as hot as they came. He held a hand out to me, beckoned me to him. Reluctantly, I went, and he folded me into his arms, and kissed the top of my head. “I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry. This isn’t just killing your sleep, you now that, right? And guarding the Edge to keep the humans out isn’t the same as planting seeds all day. Those damn hippies keep getting closer, wanting to commune with nature as they smoke the funky weed to connect with the mother goddess.” He snorted. “It’s my job to keep them away, and it’s hard to do if I’m sleeping on the job, you know? It’s not like planting, which you can do in your sleep.”

  Keeping my breathing even was all I could focus on. Damn him for belittling me—again. Like working with the earth wasn’t good enough. “Yeah, I know I’m waking you up. Look, I’ve got to go.”

  His hands rubbed up and down my arms, then lower to slide under the frayed edge of the jean shorts to the crease between my butt and thighs, tickling the sensitive skin. “Sure you can’t stay a bit longer?”

  My heart began to pound for a different reason and I struggled to shake the hormones off. Was he good in bed? Of that, there was no question.

  A memory flooded over me of the night before, the slow, burning kisses he’d trailed from the soles of my feet, biting and sucking the tender skin on the back of my knees, sweeping along my inner thighs with the tip of his tongue and then higher, slower—

  “I’ve got to go.” I pulled away and all but ran to the door. “Go home, Coal, and sleep at your own place tonight.”

  “Lark, don’t do that. Don’t be like that. Come on!”

  I didn’t hear anything else he had to say because I slammed the door between us. I trotted down the stairs to the lower level, then opened the door that would take me out. My home was different than the rest of the families. Mine was a hollowed out redwood that had been converted into a tree house. Most everyone else had more traditional homes, log houses built snug against the side of a redwood. But not in a redwood like mine.

  All around me, the gigantic trees seemed to sway, though I knew they didn’t do anything of the sort. The cloudbank had lifted just above my house and it gave the illusion of movement. I tucked my bare foot into the loop of woven rope that ran through a system of pulleys and stepped off the platform at the edge of the door. My weight was just enough to take me to the ground thirty feet below in a slow circle that gave me a view of our home.

  The Spiral was at the far end of the Rim, what a human would call a city, or maybe a village. The Spiral, the central part of our little world, was a twist of multiple trees bound together by my father’s power. From the outside, it didn’t look that big, but looks could be extremely deceiving in the Redwoods.

  Inside the Spiral was a sprawling manse with hundreds of rooms, banquet halls, kitchens, and game rooms. Even a full lake on the lowest level, made
from a spring that warmed the water, and perfect white sand that was always warm no matter the time of year. The Spiral was my home for a time after my mother died. But that had changed. Jaw tight, I looked to the other buildings around the Spiral. The Enders, my father’s enforcers, had a barracks to the left. Like the Spiral, it seemed small on the exterior, but I knew from my one visit there that the interior was huge, a complex with a central area designed for fighting, training, and lessons. The lower levels consisted of the healers’ rooms, and holding cells that had been out of use for longer than I’d been alive.

  I shuddered at the thought. My mother had taken me to the prison once, the one time I’d been in the barracks.

  “These cells cut you off from all creation, Lark. You don’t want to ever find yourself in them. So always be a good girl. Don’t fight with your siblings, listen to your father, and always be kind to those around you.” Those were some of her last words to me, before the lung burrowers claimed her and Bramley.

  The homes closest to my father and his Enders housed the members of our elemental family who were the strongest; the ones who had the power to make a difference in our world, the ones who held rank and were a real benefit to our family.

  I sighed and looked at the ground as it came up to greet me. “And here I am, at the farthest edge of the Rim.” Pretty much, I was as far away as one could get from my father. And not because I wanted to be.

  My foot touched the earth, warm and comforting on my bare soles.

  I let go of the rope when a sharp ‘cluck, cluck, cluck’ of a raven turned my head up. Coal hung from my window, bare-chested and frowning. The frown slowly turned up, and I knew him well enough to know he was about to be a jerk. “You need help, Lark. Like serious therapy. Maybe you should see one of the human shrinks, let them examine your head and prescribe you some really, really good drugs.”

  My back stiffened and I glared up at him and his smirking face, as three ladies in my planting group came around the corner and started to titter. Well, if they wanted to laugh, I’d better give them something to laugh about.

  “You know, that sounds like good a plan, Coal. Maybe I can get something for you too. Something to help you in the stamina department. You and I both know it isn’t normal to last only two minutes.”

  His jaw dropped, and I blew him a kiss before I turned my back on him. “Hello, girls.”

  “Larkspur, nice to see you,” the oldest of the three, Persimmon, Simmy to her friends, patted me on the shoulder. “I see you are on the outs with young Coal again.”

  I shrugged. “Nothing new.” The other two gals hurried ahead of us and Simmy hooked her arm through mine, slowing my walk.

  “That boy, he needs a firm hand. If you want to see it through with him, you can never be a doormat. He won’t respect you, Princess.”

  “Respect.” I spit the word out, the taste of it like dung on my lips. “How can he respect me when I’m of so little use? When my abilities are so small I’m hardly good enough for the planting fields?”

  Simmy’s eyebrows arched upward and her eyes sparkled dangerously. “You think you’re too good for the planting fields?”

  “No.” I softened my tone. “No, that’s just it. I’m hardly able to help there, where the children often give a hand. Most of the ten-year-olds are beyond me in skill. You know that.”

  She tugged me to a stop, next to a giant redwood. “Your mom wouldn’t like to hear you talk about yourself that way. She always said you would be one of our best one day. And she would know. She had the sight sometimes, could see what was coming.”

  “Doesn’t matter what she would or wouldn’t like, Persimmon, she’s dead. Too bad she didn’t use her sight to stay alive. And I’d thank you to not remind me that she’s dead.” The words came out harsher than I intended and Simmy pulled away from me.

  Shaking her head, she backed away. “You don’t have so many friends, Lark, that you can treat them poorly. Perhaps you’d best think on that as you work today.”

  Spinning on her heel, she walked away, hunched a bit as if expecting a blow. I watched her go, waiting for her to be far enough ahead that my long legs wouldn’t eat up the distance between us. Shame bit at my insides, shame and guilt. The forest would have been better off if my mother had survived the lung burrowers, and I’d died in her place.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Simmy.” I grabbed at a fiddlehead, broke it off, and popped it into my mouth. I hated that she was right, though, about the ‘friends’ part. As the weakest member of our entire family, I was looked on with a lot of pity, and even more scorn. As the daughter of the king who was the strongest, I should have been living in the Spiral. Should have been helping our family by doing more than digging tiny holes by hand, picking weeds, and moving dirt.

  The day in the planting fields went about as good as could be expected. Without even the meager friendship of Simmy, I worked alone, ate alone, and took my breaks alone. Left alone with my thoughts was not a good thing. The dream played over and over in my head, the fight with Coal, and the flare of irritation every time I caught a glimpse of the Spiral until I was flushed with emotion more than exertion.

  At the end of the day, I’d planted lots of seeds, but not much else. The others were able to get their seeds to germinate and sprout right away. Not me. I just stuffed them in the dirt and prayed to the mother goddess that they wouldn’t rot. The fields, set in a patch where the redwoods didn’t hide the sun, emptied as the sun dipped lower, and I stood alone, my feet partially buried in the soft soil. Every day I stayed when the others left. And every day I hoped something would be different for me.

  Maybe today was the day I’d breakthrough.

  I wiggled my toes, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and reached for that part of me that was connected to the earth.

  Inside my head I could see the power, humming in a spinning ball of flickering green warmth, just waiting for me to dip my fingers into it. It beckoned me closer. I lifted my hand, as if to touch it.

  A flash of pale pink rushed across my vision, like a splash of pink champagne, bubbling and dancing, followed closely by a shock of pain scoring along my skin, so sharp it made my heart stutter. I dropped to my hands and knees, the dirt biting into the bare skin.

  Gasping for air, I lowered my head, tears dropping into the ground about the only thing I could give the seedlings. There were no words I could say that would change the fact I was retarded in my abilities. I would never be what the others were—guardians of the earth, one of the chosen. A useful part of society.

  Footsteps brought my head up to see one of my father’s Enders standing across the way from me. Dark blond hair closely shorn into a spiky mess, and eyes the color of liquid honey watched me with no little amount of scorn.

  He shifted his feet, crossed his arms, his dark brown leathers not making a sound as he moved. Our Enders wore a leather vest and leather pants, and were the only members of our family who wore heavy boots. The boots were a symbol that they would not willingly touch their natural abilities when sent to kill someone. Death by using the mother goddess’s sacred power was taboo.

  Weapons hung from the belt wrapped low on his hips, a dagger strapped to each of his thighs so they wouldn’t swing and make noise. Over his back, above his head, poked a large handled sword. His arms were bare except for leather bracers covering the wrist and forearm, stopping before the bulge of his biceps.

  He didn’t say anything, only watched me, watching him. How long had he been there? Could he sense me trying and failing to reach my meager ability with the earth? The thought galled me and I flushed under his gaze. That he might have seen how weak I was for himself, and added onto that, I was more than aware how much dirt I wore from the day’s work—that I didn’t look anything like a king’s daughter should. “What do you want, Ash?”

  His eyebrows dropped and his lips turned down. “Do not speak to me like you have a right to order me about, cuckoo.”

  The blood drained from my fac
e, I could feel it slide. Cuckoo. A child slipped into another’s nest to be raised, but not of their kind. An interloper leaching the strength and resources of others.

  “I am not a bastard. I know who my parents are.” I was on my feet and striding toward him, anger driving me. “You are an Ender, and you answer to the royal family of which I am a part. Perhaps you should remember that.” I was in his face, my head tilted back. He had a few inches on me and he used them, staring down at me, the contempt written in his eyes plain to see.

  “You are not a part of the royal line. Or you would live in the Spiral.”

  He might as well have slapped me. My jaw dropped and I had to work up the spit in my mouth before I could answer. “I am. The king is my father.”

  “Yet here you are, a Planter.”

  I glared at him, unable to come up with a proper, scathing response. The best my brain would give me was ‘so what’? But I wasn’t going to resort to a childish back and forth.

  “Lark, are you—” Simmy’s voice broke the standoff. “Oh, I see you have company. Ender Ash, how are you this night?”

  I didn’t turn around, and Ash never took his eyes from me. “I’m well, Persimmon, Lady of the Fields.”

  Simmy laughed softly. “Well, aren’t you the sweet one? That title hasn’t been used in a redwood’s lifetime.” She reached us and put a hand on my arm. “Lark, come, you know tonight you must go to the Spiral. It is your night to sit at your father’s side.”

  I blinked and glanced at her. “Goddess, I forgot!” I turned toward her, put a hand on her arm. “Thank you, Simmy. You’re a good friend. I’m sorry, for earlier.”

  She flushed. “Ah, ‘tis nothing, Larkspur.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see Ash tip his head back staring at the tree’s swaying branches above our heads. “Goddess save me from the king’s whims.”

  What happened next wasn’t planned and yet it came together so smoothly you’d think I’d have been prepping for weeks for that one moment. I jumped to the left side of Ash, slammed my right arm across his chest as I drove my right leg behind his.