Her words triggered a thought that had been burrowing for some time in my brain. I had responsibilities I needed to check in on.

I was in the possession of not one, but two precious stone rings. Long before I’d ever been born, the Elementals had been a bit naughty. To remind them of their place, the mother goddess went to the five nations of man. For each, she fashioned a powerful stone to be held in times of need to help rule a portion of the elemental world and keep humans safe. The humans with the stones helped keep the world in balance.

Those stones were supposed to be legend, yet I’d found four of the five. They weren’t all rings, but they were all powerful. The two I still had in my possession controlled Spirit and Air. I’d hidden them away so those who would abuse their power would not get their hands on them. And I needed to make sure both stones were hidden still.

I couldn’t allow that much power to fall into the wrong hands.

Twisting on my heel, I changed direction and headed out to the Planters’ fields. As early as it was, the Planters were already doing their job, tending to the seedlings, bringing water from the ravine and working the soil for late fall planting.

I’d spent most of my life here, struggling to make a plant even sprout. For so long I’d been blocked from my connection to the earth, but the Planters, for the most part, had accepted me as one of their own. Yet as I walked past them, not one lifted their eyes to me. I looked for Simmy, my old friend, and saw her one daughter. Waving, I caught her attention.

“Petal, where is your mother?”

“She died when the lung burrowers spread,” she said, her tone more than a little frosty.

I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer to the mother goddess for Simmy’s soul. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

I was more than a little dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”

“I said you should be.” She poked at my chest with her hard, soil-blackened finger. “Cassava wouldn’t have done that with them burrowers if there was no interference. She would have been a strong queen. And now what do we have? A king who’s gone on a walkabout with no one to rule but his useless wife, or worse, his untested, pregnant daughter. Pregnant with an Undine’s baby. Yet another half-breed to pollute our world.”

I took a step back. Not out of fear. At least not in the conventional sense. I was afraid I’d wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze until either she retracted her venomous words or she stopped speaking altogether. “That is your soon to be queen. I’d watch your tongue if I were you.”

“I doubt it, half-breed.” She spat at my feet.

Peta’s tail flicked around my neck and her cold, damp nose shoved into my ear, hiding the fact she spoke. “You can do nothing right now, and fighting would only prove them right. Ignore them and keep walking, Dirt Girl.”

Forcing my feet to move, I walked toward Petal, forcing her either to step out of my way or get trampled.

She moved at the last second, so I ended up thumping my shoulder into hers.

“Half-breed freak,” Petal said before she spat at my feet a second time. The two pieces of my spear hanging at my side beckoned me with a deadly whisper. One quick twist and the weapon would be whole. I could hold the blade to her throat and force her to apologize.

Before Peta could say anything, I’d already tamped the anger down. We were clear of the planting fields now. “Peta, how can they be so blind? Cassava was the one who brought the lung burrowers, then held our family hostage with the cure.”

Peta was quiet for a moment. “The humans have a funny saying I heard once, and I didn’t understand it at the time as I was very young. But more and more I see it to be true. ‘The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.’ They knew Cassava, knew she was horrible and out of her mind.”

Slowly I nodded, understanding what she was getting at. “And so they would rather deal with Cassava than an unknown factor. Even if it’s Bella.”

“Or your father.” She shook her head. “From what I’ve gleaned in the last few days, he didn’t rule much. Cassava ruled through him. In his own way, he is an unknown factor to his own people.”

“Damn.” I breathed the word out. She was right.

“So bringing him back doesn’t really give them a measure of peace, because in their minds, you are bringing back a puppet.”

Her words didn’t have long to echo in my ears before a new problem arose, one I’d been dreading. The blasted field section of the Rim was where the earth had died. A plague long before I’d been born had eaten away at the dirt and now nothing was left. No power to draw, no nutrients for plants and animals. And it was where I had hidden the two gemstones.

The gray earth had footprints all around, crisscrossing back and forth.

“Oh, this is bad, Peta,” I whispered. “How in the seven hells did anyone figure out where I’d hidden them?”

“Hidden what?” She leapt from my shoulder and sniffed the ground. “I smell nothing. I see footprints but there is no scent. There is only one Elemental I know who can do that.”

“Blackbird.”

Him wanting the two gemstones didn’t make sense. Blackbird was the only elemental who carried all five elements. He was the child Requiem had been trying to breed in the Deep. A monstrosity of power and destruction.

“Explain what is hidden and why Blackbird wants it.” Peta trotted in front of me, her gray fur blending with the ashen earth, creating a strange camouflage where moment to moment she almost disappeared.