Chapter 10 Rae
CHAPTER TEN
RAE
This isn’t funny.
The platform looms in front of us, a flat-topped mountain in the heaving sea, and huge creatures writhe in the recesses carved in its sides.
Below and around us, the sea monsters amass, readying to devour us.
And Jai is out for the count.
It’s annoying how I’ve come to depend on him, and how worry is eating at my heart like rot. How weak I am when it comes to him.
“Wake up.” I shake him and his head falls forward, his chin hitting his broad chest, wet black hair flopping on his pale brow as he sinks again. “Come on, Jai. Wake up!”
Feet treading water, I slide my arm under his head to keep it above water, and reach to push that dripping hair out of his eyes.
I never realized how badly I need to see his eyes. I find myself cradling his face to me, thinking.
If his kiss broke part of the spell trapping me, couldn’t another kiss break him out of this cursed sleep?
Looking for excuses to kiss him. I know. But also it feels right, like the thread of an old tale weaving its magic through me.
His lips are still blue, and they are cold when I touch my mouth to his.
I was wrong. This is funny, that I should feel cold for the first time in so long and it’s his lips that jolt me into feeling it.
But it works. His mouth opens a fraction and a choked sound leaves him.
I only have time to pull back when a convulsion goes through him, shaking him. A cough rattles his chest.
Then he’s hacking and spewing water. So much water. He swallowed half the arena going down.
I never thought I’d be so glad to see someone puking his guts out.
The waves keep crashing on us and I have to tear my attention off him to assess our situation. Our lives are still in immediate danger, and the problem of scaling the platform remains. All thought of saving the others is discarded in the face of our own problems.
“Can you summon a drak to take us up there?” I ask him.
But he’s still coughing, choking on the water in his lungs. His dark eyes are glazed, and pale shards glimmer in them. Does almost dying keep Phaethon at bay?
I put that thought on hold. Not sure what it may mean. Right now, we have to get out of the sea.
I start swimming toward the platform, pulling Jai along by one muscular arm. It’s slow going, and despair licks at the edges of my thoughts, when a familiar voice bursts into my mind.
“Need help?”
I jerk. Remi?
“In the flesh. Oh, someone is glad to hear from me.”
I glance up, trying to locate him. I am glad, but can you help?
“No faith, I swear. Tell me how.”
I have no idea. Just… help?
Amusement flickers through. “I see. Just help. That’s kind of vague, if you must know.”
Remi, stop chatting and do something. We’re about to die!
“Aye aye, captain.”
I still can’t see the darakin, and I wonder how much stock I can put in his reassurances. After all, he’s right. I’m not sure how he can help.
Meanwhile, Jai has stopped coughing and is floating barely conscious beside me, my arm around him the only thing keeping his head above the water.
“Jai. Can you hear me?”
He blinks. His face is white.
“Good. You’re still in there.” And I can’t deny the relief that floods me. “Are those shadows of yours any good? Can you summon them to get us up there?”
I hate to push him when he still looks half-dead, but we need to get out of the water.
Now.
After a moment, he shakes his head like a wet dog, black hair flying, droplets hitting me in the face. He wipes a hand over his eyes, coughs some more, and nods.
At first, nothing happens. We’re bobbing on the waves and monsters slither underneath us, making me flinch every time I see them.
Then tendrils of shadow rise from Jai like dark vapors, reaching for the side of the platform. They attach themselves to the smooth surface and trail down to him, forming ropes.
Thanks be to the Sleeping Gods. We have a tether.
I pull at his arm. “Come on. We have to climb.”
He swims along, his movements sluggish, his gaze unfocused. I groan as I drag him after me and push him against the platform. Still, searching for handholds, he starts to climb and I follow suit.
His shadows reach for me, and a bittersweet feeling curls inside me at the thought that even so dazed, he thought to secure me.
Why am I still having feelings for him?
He’s clumsy, which is so unlike him. Nevertheless, he’s a better climber than I, and not only because my legs are still weak, still unused to functioning as two separate units or because heights frighten me. The higher we climb, the more I try not to look down and lose my nerve.
When he misses a foothold, the shadows save us both, yanking us up until we find new handholds and footholds.
The climb seems never-ending. Another handhold. Another foothold. Sweat drips into my eyes, stinging. My muscles burn. My shoulder, the one I almost dislocated in the first trial, screams with pain.
I reach higher, find a new foothold, push up—
The shadow tendrils break and we plunge down.
I cry out, hands hitting the filigree surface. My fingers dig into a hollow—then slip, and I’m falling—
A hand closes around my wrist, and I hiss when fiery pain radiates up from the delicate bones.
Jai. He caught me. He’s frowning down at me where I’m swinging from his hand, and it’s the most alert I’ve seen him since I dragged him out of the depths of the arena.
“How… How did I get here?” His eyes narrow on me, then widen. “You got me out of the water?”
“Yes!” I swear as I dangle like a worm on a hook. “Now pull me up.”
“You dived after me. Saved me.”
“I sure did. Pull me up, Jai! We need to get up there, on the platform, get a drak and find the others, then cross to the palace!”
He’s still staring down at me as if he can’t figure out something. As if I’m a riddle.
“Jai! Snap out of it. We have to get up there!”
He turns his head, looks up.
Then the hold he has on the surface of the platform crumbles completely, and I only have time to think dammit, here we go again, before we plunge down.
I hate the sensation of falling.
… falling off a cliff, my blood lifting in crimson droplets around my face as I plunge down to my death in the frothy sea…
I brace for the impact against the waves. The water can be pretty hard when you fall from up high, as memory tells me. Crushing bones. Taking your life.
But the impact never comes.
We’re hanging from thin ropes of shadow, a loose net, off the honeycomb side of the platform.
Holy shit.
“Shadows not working properly today?” I gasp out, winded.
“Almost drowning can fuck you up a bit,” he agrees, teeth bared in a wolfish grin. “But it’s death magic. Inescapable. It’s coming back to me.”
Death magic…
We are in the shadow of the platform, hanging against its side, and his magic may be coming back, but he doesn’t seem able to pull us up.
“Call a drak?” I suggest, my stomach roiling with each gentle bump we give, swaying over the void. “To fly us up there?”
“Without Phaethon, I fucking can’t.”
“Seriously? Your powers are that separate? You have the shadows, and he calls the dragons?”
“Calls dragons, howls like a ghoul and dances inside my fucking head, but who cares?”
I care, I think, and shit, why am I still so invested in him?
A flash of something inside the depths of the platform’s hollows catches my eye a moment before the heat hits, a drak’s open maw greeting us.
“Fire!” I scream and shove with my feet against the shiny rock, propelling us sideways and out of the way of the flames.
Sleeping Gods! Those are draks nesting inside the platform?
“What do we do?” I all but screech as more flames roll out, lightly singeing my leg. “Do something!”
A grim expression flashes over his face. He slides an arm around my waist. “Hold onto me,” he says, “and no matter what, don’t let go.”
One moment we’re hanging off the side of the platform, and the next we’re sliding through darkness and find ourselves… inside a dark, warm hollow. A cave?
“What happened?” I twist in his hold. “Where are we?”
He releases me and I stumble on unsteady feet. “Inside the platform.”
It suddenly clicks. “Umbrashifting. You shadow-walked us inside.”
He nods.
“And now we are inside the drak nests.” I lift my hands. “Why would you think this was a good idea?”
“Because I don’t have the strength to haul us up onto the platform, and I can’t call on the draks to help.”
“So we’ll crawl through their tunnels instead? You can control draks a little, even without Phaethon’s help, right?” I press myself back against the tunnel wall. “Jai?”
“I can’t… fucking think.” His dark eyes burn in his pale face. He’s grinding his teeth. “Stop… howling… No, fuck.”
“What is it?”
But when he looks up again, his mouth is twisted in a cruel smirk and gold shines in his eyes. The shadow armor flickers, then vanishes.
“Phaethon,” I breathe. “You’re back.”
“I am the dragon summoner. I had to surface, or we’d both die in here. Miss me, Little Human?”
“Not really.”
Laughter huffs out of him. “You’re really not scared of me?”
“Scared of you? Nah,” I bluff. “Not even one bit.”
“I control a shadow wielder, the King’s Sword, and dragons, and I have the power to open gates between the worlds, but you’re telling me you’re not scared?”
“Haven’t seen you opening any gates yet. And where were you all this time? Hiding inside Jai like a child behind his mother’s skirts?”
His brows gather like a storm. “You don’t know any limits, do you, stupid girl? You have no idea how this works between Jai and I.”
“Calling me names now? Very mature and endearing.”
His eyes widen. Then he huffs with more laughter. “Is this humor? I’m still learning to recognize it.”
“No, it’s sarcasm. Why don’t you do some research in between sucking up to the king and crushing Jai, using his mouth to say things he’d never say?”
His lips don’t even twitch. Sarcasm is definitely lost on him. “Jai doesn’t realize that he needs me as much as I need him.”
“Really? What for?”
“To keep him alive.”
“That’s a lie. He doesn’t need you.” I flinch when the screech of a drak fills the tunnels, vibrating through the walls and the floor. “Now get us out of here.”
Another shift in his expression. Mild surprise? Mild annoyance?
“Command me,” he says, and seems to startle himself even more. “By the Gods…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He turns away from me, hiding his face from me. “Let’s get a drak and fly.”