Chapter Thirty-Four #3
Overwhelming magic surged like wildfire through Kai’s insides, pain forcing him to his knees and ripping a scream from his lungs.
The whispers dropped to a dead hush, the world and the air and the glint of Kai’s pendant all stilling as Imogen’s fingers were swallowed by the light.
Rigid with agony, Kai watched through streaming eyes as her hand met the glowing back wall of the cavern.
For an unbearable moment, the flare of the light washed the entire world away.
Then, the cavern inhaled its own glow in one swift gasp.
And Imogen collapsed.
???
No.
Kai’s pendant swung against his chest, released in the same moment that the pain evaporated from his veins. The same moment that Imogen hit the ground.
No, no, no.
It was more feeling than coherent thought, Kai’s heart catapulting into his lungs and locking in place.
He could barely breathe, and his eyes strained in the sudden absence of the glow.
Beneath the dim sheen of the unlit white wall, he could just make out Imogen’s form, prone on the ground.
He jerked toward her, but his joints trembled as though he’d been running for hours, giving way beneath him when he tried to climb to his feet.
Kai dragged himself, panting, across the cavern floor in a half-crawl.
“Imogen!”
She was unmoving, entirely limp, her long skirts spread like a snow blanket in perfect symmetry to the halo of her curls beneath her head.
Sweat gleamed on her brow despite the seeping chill of the cavern, and beneath her closed lids her eyes flicked feverishly back and forth, seeing something he could not.
“Wake up,” he pleaded. “Imogen, wake up.”
But she lay there still, eyes flicking ever more rapidly.
Kai reached for her wrist, ready to haul her up and crawl back out of this cavern with her atop his back if he had to. But at the pressure of his fingertips, her pulse gave an almighty throb, echoed at once by the pendant around his throat—and Imogen gasped.
“Adhlas,” Kai breathed. “You’re alright. Are you alright?”
Imogen turned her head, and Kai could not help the jolt that tugged him back.
Her eyes had turned milky, but he could almost believe he’d imagined it when she blinked the eerie fog away and stared up at him, dark irises dull but focused.
Shakily, she rolled to her side and eased halfway up, head tilting back to stare up at the expanse of the solid white wall looming over them.
Then, without warning, she burst into shuddering, keening tears.
Kai scrambled to his feet, spurred into motion. His legs were steady beneath him, joints braced by relief and adrenaline and the quiet thrum of magic once more flowing beneath the pendant.
“I’ll carry you,” he said. “We’ll get you to a Healer.”
Imogen gasped for breath between sobs, but she nodded and let him ease her upright and into his arms. Kai tried not to dwell on the fact that they were returning empty-handed; tried not to wonder whether Avette would release Adeline and Mareda from her company; tried to focus on nothing but putting one foot in front of the other, taking care not to jostle Lady Imogen as he hurried from the cavern.
She was a slight woman, but the volume of her skirts made it difficult to keep his grasp on her.
It didn’t help that her body seemed to crackle and hum, restless in his arms. As if that burst of energy in the cavern had been pure electricity, the current still sizzling beneath her skin.
One foot in front of the other, he repeated, the voice in his head as weary and breathless as he felt.
They reached the Wielder’s tunnel after what seemed far too long, and Kai’s heart sank past his ribs when he found the bottleneck abandoned.
The Wielders were gone, the gards too. Had they sensed it, somehow?
Had the shockwaves of what happened in the cavern rippled far enough to chase them from the tunnels?
Kai said nothing aloud, but Imogen stirred and tugged weakly at his collar until he bent his head to hear her.
“They ran,” she whispered. “And so should we.”
It should not have been possible, wedged this deeply beneath the ice, but Kai’s blood ran colder at the quiet weight to her rasping words.
“What? Why?”
“The monster.” Imogen’s eyelids fluttered, but she swallowed and forced the words out. “Not a metaphor.”
The ice in his veins splintered and pricked.
Kai hoisted Lady Imogen higher in his arms and hurried on, panic creeping across his shoulders and eerie silence pressing on his ears.
A silence so complete that each break in it sent his pulse skittering.
The catch of his heel against uneven ground, Imogen’s occasional whimper.
He began to imagine he heard other things too; far-off footsteps, whispers, and worst of all, an awful, bone-shuddering grinding that grew closer and closer.
His entire body was rigid as he passed by the dark mouth of an adjoining tunnel, fear sealing his gills and hurrying his pace until he could nearly imagine those far-off footsteps were on his heels.
And then he was running.
Kai.
The voice in his head was as familiar as his own, yet so entirely unexpected it nearly tripped him mid-flight, Lady Imogen bouncing in his arms. Imogen whined, her lashes fluttering feverishly.
“It’s coming,” she mumbled thickly. “Run. Have to run.”
Kai, the others.
Kai paused, the voice whirling through his spinning head. The others—the gards and Wielders. The footsteps on their heels. He hoisted Imogen’s slipping weight in his arms, half-turning until she whimpered again.
“Traitor’s truth,” she whispered.
Kai’s laboured breath caught.
“What?”
But her eyes rolled back in her head, their ghostly sheen iridescent in his own blurring vision before they shut entirely.
Traitor’s truth.
Eda’s prophecy.
“Imogen,” he said, tapping lightly at her cheek, and then harder. “Imogen, wake up.”
She stirred, eyes fluttering—then all at once they flew open, wide and blank.
“Run,” she intoned.
A shiver stole down Kai’s spine, but he spared a glance to the icy shadows crawling toward them.
Run, Kai, screamed the voice in his head, its echo so resonant he could have truly believed they were not alone in the tunnels.
“RUN,” Imogen howled in a voice that was not her own.
And without deciding to, moved by horror and shock and the unfathomable power reverberating through Lady’ Imogen’s one-word wail, Kai turned and fled.
The monster’s call stole his balance several times more; the walls around them shuddered and screeched, ice showering down until Kai was all but blind.
The ground beneath him was shifting and thick with slush, and still he crawled, climbed, dragged Imogen’s dead weight until they emerged into watery sunlight.
“Commander!” someone shouted.
Shadows fell over them, multiple hands gripping and dragging them over the sloped entrance to the tunnels.
Kai’s exhausted body collapsed in the snow, but the adrenaline saw him quickly to his knees, then painfully to his feet.
Without understanding why, he spun to stare at the shuddering cavern.
The voice in his head had fallen quiet. Behind him, the Wielders and gards were snapping at one another, Imogen whimpering quietly in their midst—but the low growl that rose from the tunnel silenced them all.
They skittered back, Kai sprinted forward—
And with a scream of tearing ice, the unseen beast finally shut its jaws beneath them.
The mouth to the cavern collapsed.