Chapter 38
thirty-eight
One second Rune was crouched on top of that obsidian, and the next he was a blur of shadow and steel, slicing through the air with impossible speed.
He became one with the shadows that clung to the giant’s legs as he darted from one side to the other, dragging his blade along his skin wherever he could.
The giant’s left head roared as his leg buckled, but Rune was already climbing on his back again.
His body twisted midair, dodging a backhanded swipe by inches.
Dark blood splattered wherever his blade cut, but Rune didn’t stop for a second.
He moved like he’d been born for this, each strike perfectly calculated.
A ball of darkness blinked into existence by his side, and from it he drew another dagger, which he then buried in the giant’s forearm when he tried to grab Rune.
Roars of pain echoed off the root-covered stone wall, but now the crowd was silent.
Rune was winning.
Hope is such a wonderful, deadly thing. My heart was soaring, my hands on my chest, my mind almost made up all the way that Rune was really going to make it. He was going to kill the giant and he was going to walk out of that death trap alive.
My eyes were on him. I never once looked away, so I saw every stab of his daggers into the body of the giant. I saw how he evaded the huge, monstrous hands that came for him from both sides.
I saw the shadows that had climbed higher and higher onto the legs of the giant as the creature tried to reach for that massive, curved blade he’d brought with into the arena, but he couldn’t reach it.
The lava had spread all around them, around the shadows that had spilled on the ground, taking away their energy by the second.
But it all happened too fast for anyone to even make a single sound.
Rune was on the giant’s shoulder, one dagger gone, the other aiming for his neck, and I thought he’d get him. I thought he’d deliver the final blow and be done with it.
Then the giant jumped.
In an attempt to free himself from the shadows, he no longer tried to grab that weapon from the ground.
Instead, he jumped, and at the same time he reached for the chain of bones around his hips, broke it off himself, and lashed it like a whip at his own back—at Rune.
He moved to the sides with uncontrolled speed, too, and the ground responded with a deafening groan.
A blink was all it took.
A blink, and the ground caved right underneath the giant’s feet. The shadows disappeared, and the lava climbed up.
It swallowed the screaming giant completely—and Rune with him.
For a moment, I couldn’t move if I tried.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but watch the lava rising and rising, filling up this large hole that the caved ground had left behind somewhere close to the middle of the arena where the giant had been, with Rune on his shoulder.
Where the giant had so easily collapsed, gone like had never even been there, completely vanished, in its place bubbling lava that was spreading fast throughout the entire arena.
Drums sounded somewhere in the distance.
People screamed—whether they were cheering or crying, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter anyway.
What mattered was that I had to get to Rune.
My muscles unlocked. I ran, and I couldn’t even tell you whom I passed or how I made it to the other side of the box, just that I basically launched myself at the opening in the floor.
There were stairs and there was light floating over my head, a corridor that stretched in front of me, so that’s where I went.
Rune had to be down there somewhere, underneath this arena.
I could find him—I knew I could. That box up there had somehow stopped me from releasing this heat that had built up inside me, but it would be there now, and I would use it.
I would make this entire fucking arena float on air until I found him, until I took him out of there, until I made sure he was safe.
Because he wasn’t dead.
Rune was not dead, not just because I refused to live in any kind of world where he didn’t exist, but he was a smart man. He’d have had a plan, a way to protect himself from that lava. A way to stay alive even after the ground swallowed him whole.
He will survive.
And that was the only thing that mattered .
Footsteps behind me. Voices called my name, told me to stop, but I didn’t. I found a door that led to another stairway leading down, and I took three stairs at a time without stop. I’d find my way. I was sure I would.
I’d always find my way to Rune.
Inside me, all that energy, both the warm and the cold, had settled for once.
It wasn’t painful, it wasn’t hurting me—it was sitting back and watching, like it was a conscious being of its own, the magic, or whatever the fuck it was that I had inside me.
It knew, could see through my eyes, and it was waiting.
I pushed open a set of doors, and the light was much brighter—windows covered one wall and the sun still shone outside, as if it hadn’t seen what had happened. As if it hadn’t witnessed Rune fall.
Never mind, though. Because when I found him, he was going to get up again.
Stop her!
I pushed open another set of polished doors, and there were windows here, too, and soldiers, three of them coming toward me with swords on their hips.
For a second, I wondered if they’d tell me if I asked them how to get down to the bottom of this fucking arena—but then they spread out in front of me because they heard whoever was chasing after me screaming. Running. Trying to catch me.
I tried to escape. I really did. And the energy inside me responded when I shot forward and an arm wrapped around my waist, another around my arm.
Soldiers pulled me back, and this time my hands did heat up with the energy that rushed through me.
If I could see them, I knew they’d be lit from within.
Except I never got the chance to even imagine throwing these men off me before something hit me hard on the back of my head.
Darkness swallowed me whole just as fast as the Hollow had done to Rune and the giant.
The pain that pulsated on the back of my head woke me up—like a calling, a whisper begging me to open my eyes.
I did.
Darkness around me, and a little golden light coming from somewhere on the left. I was lying down on something hard, and it smelled like hay in here, and my limbs felt so, so weak.
The voice continued to whisper in my ear, and the more I blinked, the more I remembered who I was and what had happened and where I’d been the last time I was awake, why the back of my head was so goddamn painful.
Rune.
I sat up with a scream stuck in my throat.
The image of him on that giant’s shoulder, disappearing under the boiling lava when the ground collapsed, replayed in front of my mind’s eye.
I saw nothing, heard nothing but my own desperation trying to crawl right out of me with that scream, and my hands were in my hair, and I was pulling so hard my scalp was on fire.
Tears streamed from my eyes and I was sitting on something cold, dragging myself back until I hit something else with my back.
Nowhere to go, no way to stop thinking about how Rune had disappeared on the giant’s shoulder.
No way to unsee how all that lava had spread over them, pulling them under.
No, said a part of me, the bigger part, the one that refused to believe that Rune was dead no matter what the hell my eyes had told me.
Just no. It wasn’t possible.
While the other part of me continued to replay the image in detail.
How I’d thought he won. How he’d been so close.
How I’d been completely useless, trapped in that fucking box, unable to do the one thing that I shouldn’t have been able to do at all, but couldn’t the one time when it mattered. When it was important. To save Rune.
And now…
No, no, no, no, the voices in my head insisted and I got as small as I possibly could, and strings of my hair broke in my fists, but I would not accept it. Whatever the hell that was, how Rune had ended up in the Hollow, it wasn’t real. It didn’t happen.
Except…I’d seen it with my own eyes, and no matter what I wanted to believe, no matter how much I wanted to deny reality, I was here and Rune wasn’t.
Rune wasn’t.
My mouth opened wide as something cut right through me like a blade on fire.
I couldn’t tell if it was that energy that buzzed inside me or if it was just pain, and I didn’t really care.
Lava had swallowed Rune underground, and I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself now.
I was pushing back, trying to get inside the cold wall behind me, trying to become one with it so I didn’t have to exist alone, but it didn’t work.
Nothing was working.
Breathe.
As if Rune was right there, whispering in my ear. As if he somehow heard the thoughts in my head and he was using the shadows to talk to me—there were plenty of them in this room I was in .
Breathe, he said, but when I did, and I waited to hear his voice again, it didn’t come.
I waited heartbeats and hours and a whole existence with that breath held, but his voice didn’t come again.
I opened my eyes, looked at my surroundings, denied the images flashing in my head once more.
If I could focus on where I was, how to get out of here, how to go find Rune underneath the ruins of the Hollow, I wouldn’t have to carry this pain at all.
My heart would no longer be broken, and my soul wouldn’t need to be so absolutely crushed.
Find Rune— that’s what I needed to do. Find him, wherever he was, and then I could deal with everything else.