Read Online Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg - Free Book Online Page B

satisfied smile as she did. “What was it you said about not hurting yourself?” she asked.
    “I would have been fine had you not kept ara from me.”
    She snorted. “You think I can keep you from the elementals?” She strode over to a tree, now covered in shadows. Thin streamers of moonlight filtered through the branches of the tree, not enough to see more than shades of darkness.
    Where had she taken him? Not far enough to get away from Ethea. The city glowed softly far in the distance, far enough away that he felt isolated. The connection to Amia came to him as a distant sense, as if his mother’s shaping had severed the intensity of his connection to her.
    A few scattered trees rose around them, but otherwise, they were surrounded by brown grasses with splashes of green muted in the night. Tan reached out with earth sensing, straining to learn where she’d taken him, and was surprised to realize it was Ter. He’d been through here one other time, when returning to Ethea with the kingdoms’ shapers. Then, Ferran had led the group and Tan still had the hope that the king could be saved and that maybe he’d learn how to control his shaping.
    “The elementals choose their connection, Tannen. I don’t know how it is with fire, with your draasin, but ara must make a choice. Why do you think it took me so long to know whether I could return to help the kingdoms after the lisincend attacked Nor?”
    “I thought because you’d died.”
    She turned to him and jumped the distance between them on a breath of air. The easy way she shaped still amazed him. She had control over the wind that he only dreamed of having. The closest for Tan was his ability with fire, but even with that, he struggled compared to what he saw from his mother.
    “Must we continue to go through this?” she asked.
    Tan took a deep breath and shook his head. “You needed to reach ara before you could escape from Nor?”
    “I didn’t think ara would respond to me. Not as it once had.”
    “Why?”
    His mother tilted her head and Tan had the vague sense that she spoke to ara. Then she nodded. “I was bonded once.”
    “Once? As in before?”
    She nodded. “When I served the kingdoms. You asked me why I was allowed to remain in Nor rather than being drawn back to Ethea? My bond was severed from me. The pain of it nearly killed me. Without your father, I think it might have.” All these years later, there was pain in her words.
    “How was it severed?” The idea terrified him. He’d grown so accustomed to feeling the presence of Asboel, of Amia, that he didn’t know if he could tolerate the solitude.
    “Elementals can die, Tannen. They can fight with us, but they can die with us, as we can die with them. The breaking of the bond in either way is devastating for the one who remains. Some scholars think that is why the elementals no longer bond as they once did.”
    “How? I mean, how did your elemental die?”
    His mother moved on a cloud of air, hovering above the ground. “It was a difficult time. The war with Incendin… there were shapers lost on both sides. I was lucky, if you can call it that.” She sighed, looking out into the night. “So when I learned that hounds had come to Nor, know that I understood what it meant. There was little I could do until I bonded again.”
    “You can do that?”
    She turned and seemed to talk to the air. A slight smile came to her mouth. “I had been Ephra for so long that I didn’t know, but ara remembered Zephra. I was too late to save Nor, but I can still save you. That is the reason ara allowed me claim another bond.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    She sniffed. “There is much you don’t know.” She swept her arm around and wind rustled the leaves of the trees. A steady drawing to the air told him how she shaped, as did the constant pressure in his ears. “You’ve worried that you won’t learn shaping without the elementals. And I understand that fear. Without my connection to ara, I’m