Chapter 45
My body moved faster than my mind. One second she was falling backward, and the next, I was sprinting toward the precipice, sliding over the edge faster than a desert serpent.
Maybe it was the most desperate move of my life, but greater than the desperation was the relief when I managed to grab Adele's icy arm while clinging to anything I could find along the way.
Stones and dirt slid as my body skidded, slipping over the edge. For a second, I thought I'd fall with her, but my hand caught a dead root hanging loose at the cliff's edge.
I looked down and saw nothing but a sheer drop to the Emir River and the rocks below.
“Let me go,” Adele shouted, thrashing. My arm felt like it was being ripped from my body.
“No. You're not going to fall,” I shouted over the wind. “If you fall, I fall too, so stop struggling.”
My head started to ache, and a voice murmured words in the back of my mind, but I couldn't afford to get distracted. It was the same sensation as when I'd been cornered in the alley the day of the pre-graduation party.
“And what makes you think I wouldn't kill us both?”
“If we die, none of this will mean anything, Adele. If we die, the monsters win. All the battles, all the tears—meaningless. If you die, he wins,” I shouted, groaning from the effort.
The root was slipping inch by inch and wouldn't hold much longer.
“None of this makes sense. He won a long time ago—there's nothing left. Just let me fall and climb back up.”
“No! If you don't climb up, we're both going to fall. I'm not letting go,” I hissed through the pain.
“Then die with me for your stubbornness.” Hearing her voice was like looking at the shell of an empty egg.
“Fight, Adele!” I grunted through clenched teeth, huffing from the strain of keeping us from falling. “Fight for your life, give it one more chance, just one more. I promise it'll be better this time.”
She started struggling again, and I held her tighter, the veins in my arm bulging from the effort.
“Zion?” I shouted through the bond. No one answered. “Serguei?”
I realized I'd have to handle this alone.
My heart raced faster and faster. Beside me was a large, thick root I could climb, but carrying Adele would make it impossible. The sensation in my mind was growing more urgent, murmuring something I couldn't understand.
“Don't give up, Adele. I promise I'll hand you the morphine vials myself if it's not worth trying, but please, give life at least one chance to surprise you. If you die now, you'll be just as much of a loser as me.”
My arm felt like it was being torn in two, and my hand was frozen around the root. Adele went quiet. I looked down, and she was staring at me. I'd finally gotten her attention.
“I'm not letting you go, because if we both die, they win.
They get exactly what they want. Don't condemn me to that end too.
Zion will be devastated, just like your sister.
She'll spend her whole life thinking you didn't love her.
Are you really going to leave your sister alone, in your mother's clutches?”
I knew I was pulling out all the stops, but I didn't care.
Not if it brought Adele back up from that precipice.
Not if it made her try, even if she hated me for the rest of her days.
Her eyes were lost, two aimless globes of ice.
She tried to look away, but I held her gaze.
I couldn't let her drown in her pain. I needed to bring her back to the surface.
“If you give up, your mother will do whatever she wants with your sister. Who knows where she'll send the girl? In two months, you'll be legally an adult and can take care of her. Are you going to give up now? Does your sister mean so little to you?”
She seemed to think, doubt showing in her furrowed brow. Then understanding took shape, and I watched fury begin to fill her icy eyes. The emptiness filled with rage, and rage was better than nothing. I never thought I'd see beauty in that, but there I was: grateful to be pinned by those icy eyes.
“Idiot. You're the most idiotic, stupid, brainless person I've ever met in my life. What the hell!”
Like a miracle, her other hand rose and Adele grabbed my arm. I breathed, breathed, and breathed until my brain climbed out of total panic.
“I just wanted peace. Peace to smoke my last cigarette, peace to end this, but you're like a damn tick biting my ass.”
She was shouting wildly.
“You've been biting my ass for four years, Adele. How did you think I'd give you peace? Now climb! I'm going to let go of your arm, and you're going to have to climb up me. I don't have the strength to carry us both.”
I was still torn about letting go of Adele. What if I released her and she threw herself backward?
“I don't know if I can climb. I can't feel anything.
I don't even know what strength I'm using to hold on to you,” she said, digging her nails into my arm.
There was so much determination in that gesture that I made up my mind and let go.
She grabbed my forearm like it was a rope and wrapped her legs around my thigh, clinging to me.
“Just hold on with everything you've got, focus on getting up there, just like in Zion's training.”
I grunted when she reached my shoulders, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her nails dug in so hard I saw stars. I grabbed the root with both hands this time—still weighed down, but steady now.
“You're going to give me four vials of morphine if this doesn't work, and you're going to make sure I die painlessly,” she replied, continuing to climb my body.
“Up to five, Adele. I'll give you up to five, just climb and then help me get out of here.”
The root creaked and cracked as she hoisted herself up.
Her nails carved half-moons of pain into my skin, but I held firm, helping her rise.
The dead base was slowly giving way and would soon snap, but I didn't want to alarm her.
With that dose of morphine in her system, I had no idea how much time was left before the overdose kicked in.
Finally, she stepped on my shoulder and managed to reach over the edge.
I waited for Adele to appear at the top, but there was no sign of her, and my base kept coming looser.
“Adele?” I called into the wind.
I waited for her to respond, but there was no sound at all, as if she wasn't there.
My heart raced. Had she abandoned me to die?
That wasn't possible—she wouldn't do that.
Would she? Then I heard someone gagging, then vomiting on the grass, and my eyes went wide.
It had begun. The overdose had started. And the root kept giving way.
“Zion?” I called once more through the bond, but there was no sign of him.
I looked around for anything to grab onto.
A little to the right, a thick root climbed up to the cliff's edge.
That could be my salvation, but it was too far to reach, and the root I was clinging to was at its limit.
I needed to act fast or I'd fall. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my mind, to rid myself of the headache, to stifle that roar rising from the depths of my memory.
I needed to calm down or I'd end up splattered at the bottom of the cliff, and I didn't want to die.
I tried to copy the breathing I'd seen in the dream, and it came easily—breathe in, feel the air flooding my lungs, breathe out, imagining the air carrying away all the bad thoughts.
Even though it was identical to the dream, it didn't have the same effect, but my heart slowed a bit and the whispers ceased completely.
With a clear mind, I swung my body to the right, kicking my legs out.
The root kept coming looser—time was running out.
Then I swung to the left. I looked like a clock pendulum.
When my body swung back to the right, I launched myself into the air with open hands.
The root snapped with a crack, my body arcing from the momentum.
I reached out as fast as I could, and when my hands touched the root, I grabbed it as if my life depended on it—because it did.
I swung in the air, clinging like a monkey to its vine, and when my body began to stabilize, I climbed upward. I hurried to the edge as if I were a corpse coming back to life. I wanted to live, and it was strange to realize this in the very place where I had once chosen to die.
As soon as I reached the top, I saw Adele lying on her back, staring at the sky.
Her eyes were open, as if gazing at the stars.
I dragged myself across the ground to her, already running a quick assessment.
Her chest wasn't moving, her heart wasn't beating, her eyes were fixed.
She'd gone into respiratory and cardiac arrest from the morphine.
I straddled her hips, my knees aching as they pressed against the stones.
“You're not going to die,” I shouted at the Yonserian as I began chest compressions. One, two, three... I pressed my lips to hers, blowing air into her lungs.
One, two, three...
“Don't you dare die now. You're not going to let him win.” My hands drove into her chest with all my strength, but her heart refused to respond. I needed to clear the morphine overload so her heart and lungs would start working again.
I opened Adele's gown, exposing her breasts.
I needed physical contact for my gift to work faster.
I continued the chest compressions but infused my power, concentrating it on her liver.
The idea was to make the liver cells work overtime to metabolize the morphine and expel it from her body.
To do this, I needed to increase its size and heal it as it deteriorated from the stress of working so hard.
One, two, three... I bent down to seal my mouth over hers and push oxygen into her lungs.
“Come on, Adele. You're a warrior, fight like one.” I felt death hovering over us both, and it brought back memories of the day I almost left but chose to stay with Zion. Tears began streaming down my face. “Please... stay with me, Adele.”