She swaddled the baby. “Lark, hold her for me.”
Before I had a chance to protest, she thrust the child into my arms. I didn’t want to hold her. Didn’t want to feel the softness of the slowly breathing bundle in my arms and want it for myself.
Elle bent and picked up her sword. “Lark, it’s time for you to go. Take her and go.”
“What?” I spat the word out as I stood there holding the baby like an idiot. Elle looked at me her swirling eyes serious . . . and full of tears.
“Take her, Lark. Make sure she’s safe. If I ever can, I’ll find her. You know that. The demons have found me.”
I tapped into the earth and felt the changes there, the shifting of light and dark. I couldn’t be sure Elle was right, but the feeling fit. I took two strides and wrapped an arm around her, holding her to me for a breath. A moment that seemed to go on, stretching into the uncertain future.
“Be safe, Elle. I will make sure she makes it, that she survives no matter what I have to do. Even if she hates me,” I whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back. “That’s why it could only be you to protect her. I knew you were special when I met you, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
I stepped away and mounted Shazer, clutching the baby to me. Ash and Peta leapt up behind me and we launched into the air.
We rose up, Shazer’s wings taking us above the trees in a matter of seconds. I strained to see Elle through the thick canopy.
A shout echoed up to us, then a roar of voices that seemed to sweep in from every part of the jungle. I twitched my heels and rested a hand on Shazer.
“We can’t go back, not with the baby,” Ash said.
I held my hand out, toward our camp. “I can buy her time.”
Peta dug her claws into my leg. “Lark. The demons are no fools. They will know you helped her. They will come looking for you. And then they will find the babe.”
I tipped my head back in an attempt to breathe past the lump in my throat. Pain and grief warred with a rage I struggled to control. “She . . . she did not deserve to die.”
“You don’t know she’s dead,” Ash said, but his voice was hesitant.
Shazer banked to one side. I clutched the baby close to me and made myself look at her. Thick, dark auburn hair and eyes that were the pale gray of most human children. Yet in them was a spark of gold, chocolate and emerald. The spark of colors that would someday lead her down the same path as her mother. I stroked a finger down her cheek. “Sleep, wee one.”
Spirit flickered through me, scaring me until the baby closed her eyes, yawned, fell asleep, and my element retreated.
Below us, Shazer gave a full-body shake. “Where to?”
I made a snap decision. “The Deep.”
We flew without trouble all the way to the hidden island. The early morning sun peeked over the edge of the horizon when we landed on the sandy beaches at the edge of the Deep, home of the Undines.
“Are you sure, Lark?” Ash slid from Shazer’s back and stared up at me from the ground. I gave him a smile that wobbled at the edges.
“Keep Bella safe. Please. I don’t trust anyone else to this.” I’d sent Blossom to watch over Bella two years ago, but I had no idea if she’d followed through. If Cassava had come back and taken over, I had no doubt she would have recalled all her guards and Enders.
I bent at the waist and kissed Ash. “Give her my love. Tell her . . . tell her we’ll make this right somehow.”
He winked. “Maybe she can come with us for that pedicure.”
The laugh that escaped me surprised me. “Yes. It’s a deal.”
I dug my heels into Shazer and he leapt into the sky with a buck that had Peta gripping my thighs with her claws.
“Stupid horse!” she shrieked, which only made him whinny with laughter.
“Dumb-ass cat!”
The baby woke and I fed her the only bottle I had, the only milk Elle had sent with us. A single bottle was not enough to take us far. “Head to the east coast. We’ll stop when I can’t console her.”
Shazer stretched out. “I have no desire to listen to her scream.”
“Nor do I,” I said, running my finger down the little girl’s face and soothing her back to sleep.
Three hours ticked by and she woke, her hungry cries nothing I could console.
We circled an area of brick houses and tall fences. Midday with the sun high was not the time to be strutting about the human world. But there was no choice. I had to put the girl somewhere safe.
We landed in a green space with the same strange manicured grass and perfectly kept flowers and trees that did not produce anything we’d seen the last time we’d stepped into the human world. I leapt from Shazer’s back. “Wait here.”
Peta stretched and bounded out ahead of me. I hurried after her, and my walking soothed the baby to a soft whimper. There was no time to be picky about where she went.