Chapter 25 #5
I turned to see Gary sitting with his back against the wall clutching a large squarish, brassy-colored, rough-edged rock in his hands. I blinked, swiping the water from my eyes, my muscles still trembling.
“Holy shit, you found it!” The stupid rock that Bellamy wanted for his collection. I gave Gary a quick bear hug, feeling ten pounds lighter at the thought of getting Opie’s bracelet back. As I let him go, I realized he was shaking. “Are you okay? Injured?”
“Not hurt. Yeah . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t feel like I found it so much as it sort of found me?”
There was no time to decode what he meant by that – how did a rock find you? No idea, and right then it didn’t matter.
“Gary, we can unpack that later. Put it in your bag. We’ve got to find our way out before we deal with anything else.” I turned away, already mentally moving on to our exit strategy.
I faced the sloshing water again, my anxiety showing up for a little visit as I thought about what we’d have to do to get out. It took every bit of me to breathe through it, drawing on my friends’ presence to push the panic attack away.
Marina stood at the edge of the rock, sweeping back the Snatchlings as they approached yet again, most still at least partially trapped in ice.
She looked over at me. “Can’t keep this up forever.
” There was a nervous edge to her voice, and I knew we were running out of time.
She’d already manipulated the water a lot and the strain on her face was obvious.
I looked around, searching for some kind of trick or alternative way out, but there was nothing. The rock ledge we stood on wasn’t connected to anything, and the only way to get back to where we came from involved getting back into the water, which was a bad idea.
The literal worst in my opinion.
“You won’t get away! We will use your bones to build a new platform!” yelled the king.
The situation was dire enough that his high-pitched voice wasn’t funny anymore.
My friends were looking to me for an answer. Lucky for us all, I had an idea forming.
“We could throw down a freezing rune together,” I said, “Create an ice bridge across the water to the exit.”
The space was not so large that it couldn’t be done, but . . . together felt right.
“On your mark.” Zeed put a hand carefully on my shoulder.
“Get your people out of our way, or they will be trapped under the ice.”
The Snatchling king snarled. “Do not –”
An even higher-pitched Snatchling voice cut him off. “Everyone to the far side!”
The Snatchling king stopped swimming, just treading water as he turned toward her. “Myla. You are not –”
“That one with the golden hair helped me when I couldn’t swim.” Her eyes swept to me as her father swam to her side, his gaze locking with mine.
“It this true? You saved my daughter?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak so I just nodded.
He cocked his head and studied me for a long moment. “We’ll let you go . . . on two conditions. You never come back here, and never speak of this day – of us, or of our treasure.”
“Done.”
My friends all agreed quickly.
The Snatchlings stayed on the far side of the wall, scuttling up it and out of the water, helping one another, glaring across at us. But none moved in our direction.
“Now!” I lifted my hand and cast the freezing rune to the top of the water.
The others added in their runes and the room chilled, the temperature dropping until everyone’s teeth were chattering and a three-foot-wide, two-foot-deep path stretched across.
That much ice wouldn’t have been possible for any one of us to create single-handedly.
I never would have survived this on my own.
“Hurry.” I motioned for the others to go ahead of me. Gary led the way, his backpack held tight. Fable, Caterina, Ellie, and Marina went next, then Ross. Zeed waited for me, so we crossed together.
“Good job,” he said as we stepped back into the tunnel.
I dropped my chin to my chest with a weary sigh. “That nearly turned into a full-on death match.”
Marina nodded. “Happy it didn’t come to that.”
“Assuming everything went to plan on Liam’s end, the coast should be clear in the foyer. We’ll be in our dorms within minutes.”
While it sucked that we hadn’t found anything attached to the Grym Dunaras, there was no going back.
We’d made a promise to the Snatchlings, and we’d keep it.
The wins when you were fighting these kinds of battles were few and far between.
Two out of three magical items wasn’t a bad score, not bad at all . . .
“Um, Harlow? Can we talk about the rock?” Gary touched my arm. We were out of the school and tramping across toward Liam’s place. The others were just ahead of us.
“Yeah, sure.”
We stopped in the shadows of a cabin. “Remember I told you something was talking to me a couple days ago . . . a voice . . . that sounded young? And hungry?” His throat worked as he stared down at the object in his hand.
“Yeah, I remember.” I looked at the rock, seeing it in a different light. Oh shit. Ross let out a low whistle even as Zeed sounded like he’d been sucker punched.
“Well, I think this was what was talking to me. And it’s telling me now . . . it has something to do with the Grym Dunaras.”