CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
We downed our meals quickly, listening vigilantly for signs of Lachlan or Elias as we ate. But the corridors remained quiet. Either everyone was still recovering from Courage, or they were too scared to leave the semblance of safety their rooms provided.
I didn’t blame them.
“Four against two can’t be the worst of odds,” Brannon surmised, tossing his fork onto his empty plate, and plucked a stray berry from Theia’s.
She smacked his hand away, shoving all of the remaining fruit into her mouth before he could snatch any more. “That’s if they haven’t allied with anyone else,” she countered while she chewed, the fruit muffling her sentence.
Kodhan paced the short distance between the bed and the exit. “The possibilities are slim, especially after what they did during Courage. Chances are that others are out to get them just as much as Lachlan and Elias are out to get us.”
“Too bad they aren’t acting sooner. Would save us a lot of trouble,” I sighed.
“I don’t mind a bit of trouble.” He winked. My lips curled into a small smile despite myself.
Brannon snorted. “That’s golden, coming from you.” He seemed inclined to add something else, but a low, distant rumble made him stop short.
“You just had to mention trouble,” Theia whined, pinching the bridge of her nose.
The rumbling built in intensity until it came from underneath our feet. Then the ground itself began to shake, sending us all scrambling for balance.
Dust rained down on us from the ceiling, forming little gray tufts that irritated my nostrils and throat with each inhale. So much of it fell that even Brannon’s wind couldn’t clear the air, forcing us to resort to covering our noses and mouths with the collars of our vests.
Then came little pieces of stone as they dislodged from above, pelting us like solid raindrops.
My eyes widened when jagged cracks split the walls like streaks of lightning. The tower was falling apart. And it would kill us if we didn’t out in time.
“Run!” I yelled.
Kodhan threw open the door, and I almost wished he hadn’t. More dust to blew into the room like a thick morning fog, making it infinitesimally harder to breathe.
I motioned for them to follow me before bolting down the corridor. Stars, it was impossible to see through all the dust.
It was a reckless gamble, but I prayed that the walls had been left untouched, the maze unchanged. And prayed even harder that the exit Theia and I had used would lead to the same place or at the very least be there at all. If I was wrong, then we would be crushed underneath ten floors of stone.
Narrowly avoiding a hunk of debris that careened down from the ceiling, I didn’t let myself linger on the fact that they trusted me enough to lead them blindly through the corridors, even though I hadn’t told them where, exactly, we were headed.
But I knew Theia would catch on quickly enough.
And I wondered if, for the first time, she would break one of her promises.
If through the magic she possessed, she would tell Kodhan and Brannon of where we would end up, if we were lucky enough.
Not that it mattered anymore. Not when death chased at our heels.
We sprinted past the grandfather clock which chimed loudly above the noise of the crumbling tower. The spindly hands spun in endless pirouettes, rotating so fast I nearly went dizzy just looking at them. Its numbers were jumbled out of order, some of them upside down and others backwards.
Still, it clanged on, the horrible racket eerily in tandem with the steady beat of adrenaline pounding hard inside of my chest. It was like a beast rattled within my ribcage, threatening to burst out of me at any moment.
“Almost there!” I shouted, and it cost me. I choked on the dust curling inside my mouth, coating my tongue and teeth. There was no way to tell if other competitors made it out of their rooms. It was all too loud, too hazy, making it impossible to focus on anything other than my own two feet.
We turned corner after corner until I could finally make out the outline of our possible salvation.
Another rumble shook the ground, almost deafening and so powerful that I stumbled.
“Go, go!” Brannon shouted behind me with an urgency that had me terrified to look back.
Wind licked at my calves and thighs, pushing my legs faster.
Please open. Please, I begged as I threw every ounce of my body weight into the hard wood. My bones screamed at the impact.
There was no time to catch myself after it flung open, gloriously unlocked—or broken with the force of which I crashed into it with—I didn’t care. It opened, swinging so forcefully that it banged into the wall behind it, leaving me flying towards the ground face first.
My knees smashed onto spotless marble, barking in pain. Worse was the groan of my wrists, courtesy of my hands shooting out to stop my nose from kissing said marble. Not grass. Gone was the shadowy, ivy laden alcove. We’d been dumped somewhere else entirely.
Ignoring all of it, I whipped my head around, gasping as Theia came flying through the threshold, propelled by the sheer force of the wind that blew my hair back from my face. Unlike me, she had enough self-preservation to tuck her body into a tight roll to ease her fall.
Kodhan followed suit. He narrowly avoided tripping over us both, twisting out of the way at the last moment. Brannon all but leapt out of the disintegrating corridor, coming seconds away from getting crushed by a gargantuan slab of stone that slammed down from the ceiling.
Our surroundings shuddered one final time before heaving a mighty sigh.
There was no going back.
The tower was destroyed.