7. Leah #3
I’m falling, too fast to grab at the rope again, the dirt rushing up to meet me.
I drop the knife and wrap my arms around my head, trying to protect it as I collide with the ground.
My bow and arrows snap beneath me, the splintering wood jabbing into the flesh of my shoulder.
I don’t even wait for my body to register the pain, instantly throwing myself aside, rolling as fast as I can to get out of reach of the dermison’s huge, stamping feet.
But the pain finds me a moment later, throbbing through me, making me want to roll into a ball and sob until it passes. I try to push it aside, staggering to my feet and stumbling forward a few steps—head pulsing, shoulder burning—only to find myself staring directly at a pair of huge, lupine eyes.
The wolf snarls, silver dripping from its jaws.
For a second, my pain becomes secondary to the rush of terrified energy coursing through me.
I throw my hands out, sending a crackle of lightning toward the animal.
The magic arcs wide, driving the wolf back only a handful of steps, where it gets distracted, turning to snap at a fledgling charging it with a spear in her hands.
The moment its eyes are off me, I run.
The rocks I crouched by before aren’t far, though I try not to think about Bianca’s mauled corpse lying beside them.
Instead, I focus on that small opening I saw earlier.
As I sprint toward it, I risk glancing over my shoulder, seeing the wolf catching the spear in its teeth and hurling the ephilium holding it aside.
Then it sniffs the air and pivots toward me again.
No—it can’t be singling me out. Not out of all these bleeding, injured people.
Except maybe my blood is more appealing to it than theirs? A trail of red is running down my shoulder, and perhaps human blood is tastier than ephilium to that monster.
The wolf breaks into a lope, swallowing up ground at a terrifying speed. I throw myself across the last few feet, skidding in the dirt until I’m up against that small opening. I wrench off what remains of the quiver and bow, then shove myself between the rocks, even as my body screams in protest.
The space inside is small and dark, but I fit, yanking my foot inside just in time to hear the wolf’s growl rumble through the crack. A shadow passes across the opening, then the flash of a huge eye, quickly replaced by a muzzle shoved as far into the crack as possible.
I don’t even have enough space in here to move my foot and kick it away. Instead, I have to endure the waft of its hot breath over my legs as the animal strains to reach me.
Maybe it will get distracted; maybe some of the other fledglings will team up to take the animal down. I just have to wait things out until the trial is over.
Then an unmistakable scratching sound starts up at the base of the rocks.
The wolf is digging. Fast.
Shit. Shit. Shit. I have no way out of here, and it’s only a matter of time before that thing cracks open my hiding place like an oyster shell and swallows me whole.
I’ve just trapped myself in my own fucking tomb.
I have no weapons. Even my magic is unreliable—certainly not enough to be a serious threat to a beast five times my size. I can’t run and I can’t fight.
I need help, but it’s not coming from anyone out there.
Cold sweeps through my aching body as I realize what I have to do.
Maybe it wouldn’t have occurred to me if he hadn’t just whispered my name over my mental walls—a shot across the bow in our mental battle.
It tells me he’s still there, waiting to be let in, and right now I don’t have the luxury of saying no.
I’d rather be alive and possessed than the alternative.
The wolf’s claws scrape against the stone, and one of the rocks wobbles a little, loosened by the shifting earth.
I inhale a deep breath, ripping my barriers down so that my mind is open and exposed as I reach out across the realms.
“Syrus, I need you.”
Goddess, I feel despicable, summoning him like this—going back on the promise I made to both of us by leaving Infernum.
“Syrus,” I repeat, suddenly panicked that maybe he won’t hear me. That maybe he won’t come. Perhaps he’ll take one look at the mess I’ve gotten myself into and say good riddance—
“Leah,” his voice murmurs into my mind, brushing up against my awareness like the soft touch of fingertips. The gentleness doesn’t last long, however, that touch growing firm and urgent as he realizes I’ve opened myself up to him.
He pushes deeper into my mind, and I feel his presence stretch out under my skin—not completely taking over, but anchoring himself more as he orients himself.
He’s behind my eyes, and I sense him take note of the darkness around me, the sliver of light poking through the stones, and the scratching sound near my feet.
His presence sharpens in response, and then I feel him notice the rest: the pain throbbing through my body and the racing pulse of my terrified heart.
That’s when his curiosity becomes anger, hot and blazing, and I close my eyes, clinging to hope. If he’s angry, it means he still cares…right?
“Leah,” he says my name again, and I hate how my heart responds to it even now, tilting toward it like a bird following its migration path home—knowing where it belongs, where it wants to be. “What in darkness’s name have you gotten yourself into?”