Peta (An Elemental Series Novella, 3.5) by Shannon Mayer Page B

do you think you are that you can stop me with words? Are you like the other one?” the firewyrm growled out.
    He lowered his face so he was eye to eye with Lark. My mouth dried up. One bite would cut her in half and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.
    She didn’t lower her hands. “Fiametta is a bitch, a liar, and a manipulator. She’s tried to wipe your people out, punished me with the intention to end my life, and in general being a grade A bitch.”
    I swung my eyes to look at Fiametta. Her face was closed off, giving away nothing. Surely she would strike Lark down for saying that? Even if it was the truth.
    He chuckled. “Yes, all of those things and more. Why do you stop me then from snapping her in half and using her bones to pick my teeth?”
    Lark slowly lowered her hands. “Because the mother goddess wants her alive for some unknown reason. And as her chosen one, I will do all I can to make ensure her wishes are fulfilled. If it were my choice, I would let the queen die and another take her position.”
    He pushed his face forward until they were nose to nose. “You are the one who saved my son and tried to revive my daughter. Spirit walker, your heart is too big for your body.”
    The firewyrm shook his head at the queen. “Fiametta, only because this one,” he tipped his jaw toward Lark, “intervenes and speaks on behalf of the mother goddess will I spare you and your people. But I want my children back.”
    Lark stood, without a single tremble in her body. “The Salamanders have missing children too. Someone is killing them.”
    He shook his massive head, the horns that swept over his neck shimmering from side to side. “Sucked into the lava?”
    She nodded. “Yes.”
    “Then they are not dead. It is how our children were taken too. I feel their hearts beating yet. Come to my nest, and perhaps we can find them, Spirit Walker.” He backed up, his body disappearing into the hole he’d created.
    Of course, just because she’d stopped the firewyrm didn’t mean she was a hero. Not to the Salamanders. Around us, the dissent started immediately. Fools and lava suckers.
    “How did she stop him?”
    “What did they say?”
    “Why didn’t the queen kill the wyrm?”
    Fiametta lifted a hand. “Larkspur. You are the half-breed bastard child that Basileus has kept hidden from the rest of us. Correct? You are Ulani’s child.”
    “Yes,” Lark said, without an ounce of regret. Good girl. Stand firm, this was the time to do no less.
    “Then we will discuss this once we are outside the mountain. For now I will trust you, not only with my home, but with my families’ lives,” the queen said.
    Fiametta turned and looked at her people. “We will exit through the main entrance, and once outside I will send some of my Enders to deal with the wyrms and the lava.”
    No one argued with her, not even the Enders. Lark slipped back to where she’d deposited the two kids and bent to scoop them up. They smiled, reaching for her, but she was pushed away.
    “Don’t touch them, you filthy wyrm lover.”
    He picked the kids up, their eyes wide as they stared back at her. The Salamanders flowed around Lark as if she were an island in a stream.
    I moved up to stand with her. While I’d watched the interaction between Lark and the firewyrm, the little lizard had been taken from my back. “They took her from me too.”
    Ash waited for us, his arms also empty. “Me, too.”
    “Guilty by association,” Lark murmured.
    Those Salamanders who had allowed Lark, Ash, and me to help them rushed away from us as though we had a disease. “Fools, all of them,” I muttered low under my breath.
    I snorted and shook my body, shrinking to my housecat form. Lark held out her and I leapt up to her.
    “You can carry me.”
    Laughing softly, she placed me on my shoulder. “Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
    Ah, the pain under those words. I wanted to claw the eyes out of those who had struck at her in