Jade
Logan’s instructions echo in my mind, specific and detailed. He must have taken this same path when he did the trials. Fought this exact creature.
But that doesn’t make sense. He has fire magic, not electricity. How could his exact strategy work for me?
The thought nags at me as I stare down the bone path. After all, just because Logan succeeded doesn’t mean I will. He’s trained his whole life. He’s powerful, controlled, and everything I’m not. He probably fought this thing with perfect form and calculated precision.
I’ll probably trip over a femur and impale myself on my own weapon.
Maybe I should try a different path. The Reaper might be slower. Arachne might have a weakness I could exploit. Something that doesn’t involve playing chicken with a murder bird that’s literally dripping blood from its talons.
But Logan’s guided me well this far. Through the wasteland, the spirits, the river, and the boat of desperate secrets. Every instruction has been perfect.
Too perfect, that suspicious voice in my head whispers.
But I tell it to shut up. Because after everything Logan and I have been through, I trust him more than I ever thought I could trust anyone in my life.
So, into the Harpy’s lair I go.
The instant I step fully onto the path, she shrieks and dives from her perch.
Roll left, then electricity blast right, Logan said.
My body moves before my brain catches up, and I’m throwing myself left, bones scattering beneath me. The Harpy’s talons slash through the space where my head just was, and I thrust my right hand out, letting the magic flow.
Silver electricity arcs from my fingers, forcing the creature to bank hard right to avoid it.
She shrieks, her wings beating massive gusts that send bones flying.
She always circles clockwise, Logan’s voice plays in my head like a broken record. Count three circles, then run straight at her.
It’s insane. Running at the murder bird? But I count anyway as she wheels overhead.
One circle. Two. Three.
I sprint forward. Every instinct screams that this is suicide, but I apparently trust the boy with the haunted eyes more than I trust my own survival instincts.
Talons whistle past my shoulder, close enough to tear fabric but not flesh.
When she misses, grab something pointy from the ground on your right and stab it through her neck. Not the heart—the neck.
My hand closes around a bone shard, sharp as any blade. And as the Harpy passes overhead, I thrust the makeshift weapon upward with all my strength.
The bone punches through her throat with a wet sound that will definitely appear in my nightmares.
Black blood spatters down, hot and acidic, burning where it hits my skin.
The creature crashes into the hedge wall, thrashing and gurgling in a way that would be pitiful if she wasn’t trying to kill me.
Blast electricity onto her talons, Logan instructed. No other part of her body will work. Only the talons.
The Harpy struggles to rise, one talon reaching for me even as blood pours from the hole I just made in her neck. She’s making this pathetic keening sound now, and for half a second, I almost feel bad. Then I remember she wanted to eat my face, and the sympathy evaporates.
Electricity explodes from my hands. The kind that turns the air white-hot and makes your hair stand on end.
It hits the Harpy’s talons, and her shriek cuts off mid-sound. Her body convulses once, twice, then goes still.
I stand there for a moment, shocked. Not just because I survived, but because Logan knew. He knew every move, every weakness, and every second of that fight. He prepared me perfectly. Like he’d run this exact scenario a million times and knew every possible outcome.
But I can’t worry about that right now, because I need to get out of this hellish place and back to the slightly less hellish academy waiting for me on the other side.
So, I push myself to my feet, legs shaky but functional. The path continues past where the Harpy fell, bones giving way to soft grass that shouldn’t exist in this dead place. It’s too green, too alive, like someone’s sick joke about what paradise might look like in hell.
And there, finally, is the garden.
Just as I’m about to step into it, I glance over my shoulder in time to see the corpse behind me twitch, and the Harpy lurches upright, black blood pouring from her throat.
One wing hangs useless, but her remaining eye burns with murderous fury as she staggers toward me, talons scraping bone like a zombie on a mission.
“Oh, come on!” I shout. “I already killed you! Stay dead!”
Then, another voice floods through my mind. Logan’s, urgent and commanding.
Run to the garden. The path has three turns. Take the first two and skip the third.
Happy to get as far away from the zombie-Harpy as possible, I sprint into the garden, my legs pumping so hard they burn. Behind me, the Harpy shrieks, the sound wet and horrible through her ruined throat.
First turn—I take it so sharp I nearly slam into the hedge wall. Second turn—my lungs burn.
How is she still moving? How is she still—
A talon swipes inches from my back. I feel the wind from it, smell the rot and blood on her claws.
When you reach the center, the rose is under the biggest bone pile. Logan’s voice again. Don’t hesitate, or you’re dead.
The garden center opens before me, a clearing with several mounds of bones scattered like grotesque monuments.
Which is the biggest? That one? No, the one to the right—
The Harpy crashes into me from behind.
We go down hard, rolling across sharp bones that dig into every soft part of my body. Her remaining talon rakes down my arm, and I scream. Hot blood—mine this time—soaks through my sleeve.
“Get off!” I kick out desperately, catching the creature in her wounded throat.
She reels back with a gurgling screech, just enough for me to scramble toward the largest pile on my hands and knees.
My left hand reaches out instinctively, but then Logan’s voice blasts through my mind.
Right hand. Sigil hand.
I thrust my right hand into the bones, scattering them with frantic sweeps. Where is it? Where—
My fingers close around something soft. Something that doesn’t belong in this place of death and sharp edges.
Petals.
The Harpy’s talon wraps around my ankle, and she starts yanking me backward. But I’ve got it—the rose, exactly as described. Three blooms on one stem: white, red, black.
I grip the red bloom with my sigil hand.
The world explodes into light.
One moment I’m being dragged across bones by a zombie Harpy. The next, I’m gasping on solid stone, the altar room’s torches blazing around me. The transition is so jarring I almost throw up, my body convinced it should still be fighting for its life.
Logan’s hands are on my shoulders, his gray eyes wild with panic. Real, genuine panic. From the always-controlled Logan Ashford. His hands are running over my arms, checking for injuries that aren’t there, and it would be sweet if he didn’t look absolutely wrecked.
“I’m okay,” I manage, and even though my injuries from the Underworld don’t transfer to my actual body, my arm throbs with phantom pain where the Harpy clawed me. “I got it.”
To prove it—both to myself and to him—I open my right palm. The red rose sits there for a heartbeat, impossibly vibrant against my skin. Then it begins to dissolve, petals becoming liquid light that seeps into my sigil.
“You did it.” Logan’s hands move to cup my face, thumbs tracing my cheekbones like he’s making sure I’m real. “You actually did it.”
“Did you doubt me?” I try for levity, but now that the adrenaline’s fading, I can’t stop shaking. Not from fear or pain, but from cold. Bone-crushing, soul-deep cold that makes it feel like I’ll never be warm again.
“Never.” He shrugs off his jacket and wraps it around me, pulling me against his chest. Cedar and smoke envelop me, along with blessed warmth. His arms hold me like I might disappear if he lets go, and honestly, I’m not entirely sure I won’t.
“How long was I gone?” My words are muffled against his shirt.
“Three seconds.”
“What?” I pull back to stare at him. “That’s impossible. I was there for hours.”
“Time moves differently in the Underworld.” His hands rub my arms through the jacket, and I can feel him channeling fire magic through his palms, generating warmth that seeps into my frozen bones. “Three seconds here. An eternity there.”
That’s some bullshit timeline math, but I’m too exhausted to really complain. Especially because as I study him, it hits me how much worse he looks compared to when I left. Exhausted in a way that goes beyond physical tiredness.
Like something vital was drained from him in those three seconds that felt like forever to me.