Path to Destiny

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

"You simply cannot kill an Elemental. They're immortal," Titus said, pacing back and forth in my chambers.

Rowan sat against a chair near my vanity, his arms crossed in contemplation. The magical sunlit ceiling was starting to fade, and the lasting glows ignited his curling brown hair. "The Elementals," he said in a quiet voice, "are not exactly immortal."

Titus stopped pacing. "What?"

I recalled what Eden said a long time ago. "They live forever, but they can be killed if..." I closed my eyes when I realized what I was saying.

"The Harbinger is killed," Rowan finished for me.

"And?" Titus leaned against the door. "Mikkel doesn't have a Harbinger."

I frowned. "What about Jada?"

There was silence. I looked at Rowan, but he shrugged. I sighed and assured them that Jada being a Harbinger wasn't exactly logical, seeing as Mikkel was sealed away before Harbingers existed.

"Are there other ways to kill an Elemental?" Titus addressed Rowan and me. "Can you ask one of yours?"

Impotent nymph prince.

"Be quiet," I told Eden. "Answer his question."

No.

Rowan and Titus peered at me, but I was pretty sure they had gotten used to it. I raised a hand for them to wait. "Is 'no' the answer, or are you being stubborn? It's not like I'm going to kill you after I find out, Eden."

She didn't answer. I looked to Rowan for help. His brows scrunched together in a What do you want me to do? expression. "I still can't speak to Illtyd. Curse and all," he added.

I nodded. "Ah."

"How in Aria's name," Titus began, starting his pacing anew, "does Baruch expect you and Rowan to kill an Elemental? Because he seemed to think you'd know, seeing that Mikkel's physical body is here in Tekin...somehow."

I suspected Eden knew that there was indeed a way, but she refused to tell me.

Because we almost died using that power against Mikkel in the first place, she said in my mind.

I tuned Rowan and Titus's speculations out and focused on Eden. When he waged war with the Elementals, you mean? I asked. From the runic script in the Balshoin ruins, I knew the four Elementals waged a war with him, one that likely decimated Etheia hundreds of years ago, far before me, before the Rift Wars, before Therin. In that war, Ashad also fell to Mikkel's darkness...and Eden had to destroy it.

It was the power of the laikana we tried to use, Eden said, the power over fate which dwells inside of you.

The laikana? A chill reverberated along my skin. I couldn't breathe. Why didn't you tell me this?

Because it does not matter any longer, she replied. The beast helped us in our greatest need hundreds of years ago when Mikkel waged war and the darkness took him. The laikana sealed him, and if we had that power, she added, we could either seal or purify him. But you remember what he said in Kharieva.

What he said to me when he grabbed my chain physically hurt in my memory: I killed the laikana and took what was rightfully mine. Power. I took a shaky breath as Eden continued.

She said, Mikkel must have killed the laikana dwelling in the Tekite mountain when Therin freed him. That was 200 years ago. She sighed. He did not have this power when I knew him.