Chapter Thirty Four #2
“Fine, but . . . does this ledge continue?” Mila asked, breathless. “Or does it shrink? Much more and we won’t be able to walk it.”
White tipped her fingers as she clung to the wall. Mila glanced to her feet to confirm her fears, and regretted it. Her head swam from the dichotomy of the lessening ledge versus the widening nothing below.
The only consistency between the half-crumbled rocks was the steady incline. It continued up, up, up. She had a feeling that their path would be a giant spiral around the rock structure. Behind it lay a wallpaper of sea and endless sky, stretching to a horizon difficult to capture in words.
Between clenched teeth, he muttered, “I hope the ledge lasts, because we don’t have enough room to turn around and scramble up.”
“We can’t,” she whispered. “There’s not a single break. The wall is smooth.” The cliff face had no alteration. The tiny ledge they trod was the only change in a pristine facade.
“The path appears to continue,” he concluded with more confidence than his expression showed, “but I can only see so far.”
“Then we continue.”
Einar nodded.
Mila kept pace with him. To stop again would incite panic. While gliding along the narrowing ledge, she couldn’t consider their precarious positioning, the muffled sound of Einar’s hammering heart, nor the taste of mortality on her tongue.
Continue, Himmel urged. It will not be easy, but it will be steady.
“Are you sure you can’t take us?” Mila quipped with a hint of wry amusement, leaning her head back until her skull touched the wall.
It countered the ever-falling-forward feeling, but not by much.
Leaning into anything but raw terror gave her a little release of levity and the terrible burden of anxiety.
If I could, Himmel said warmly, I promise that I would have already. You are stronger than you think, Mila. You can do this.
Thready breath filled her ears, whistling like the sea breeze.
Himmel must have deflected the unsteady wind, carting it into the sea instead of destabilizing them, because it stopped.
Hot rocks radiated into her spine as Einar paused to regard the horizon.
The way his chest moved in rhythmic, slow pulses probably meant he sought a moment to stabilize.
A clatter of falling stones, and a short cry, caught Mila by surprise.
The ground tumbled from beneath her, and she pitched down.
Arms splayed, a scream in her throat, she grappled for something to hold.
Einar reached out, slamming a hand against Mila’s shoulder a moment before she nearly cascaded with a flow of rocks below her.
Feet gliding to the side, she found a stable spot as the crumbling shale banged down the wall.
It crashed for an interminable seven seconds before splashing to seawater.
Einar gripped her arm as she scuttled closer to him, away from the empty spot. Her bare toes curled around the edge, and her bones quaked.
“Shite,” she whispered.
Himmel hissed, Don’t stop! Keep going!
Einar lifted an eyebrow and cast the silent question to Mila. Rallying herself, Mila nodded. Movement would be less terrifying than standing here, pondering how much it would have hurt to follow those stones. Determination filled her as she wrenched her shoulders back again and nodded.
“Thank you. Ready.”
They continued with painstaking care. The ledge didn’t widen, and weak spots gave way, dissolving to the sea, but Einar had learned.
One foot probed, tested, confirmed. When certain, he advanced.
He studied every inch as they eked along the torturous climb.
One hand roved ahead, the other remained by Mila, and he never moved fast.
They found a dangerous flow. Their equilibrium was a song, with only one word driving Mila’s melody.
Pedr.
Pedr.
Pedr.
Her core ached from balancing, and her foot arch twinged from probing ahead before following Einar. Every now and then, a muscle inside her foot spasmed. A cut sliced the top of her toe from a particularly sharp section. She never, never focused beyond the ledge.
Almost there, Himmel breathed.
The wall gave way to a greater sky, indicating the top of the giant mountain. Mila glanced ahead out of the corner of her eye, awash with trepidation and hope.
Was it a lie?
Could they survive this hellish landscape?
No lie. They approached the top. Her knees knocked together in relief. They had done it!
When the rock against Einar’s shoulders gave way, his center of gravity immediately shifted and left leg flung out. Rocks scattered. Mila gasped. The ledge cracked beneath his foot and for a terrifying moment, Einar cascaded away.
Mila cried out as Einar scrabbled for purchase.
His fingers slid along a rough rock. She lurched to the side, groping for him.
The heated, whetted edge sliced open his other palm, and the coppery smell of blood burst into the air.
As Mila scrambled for his sleeve, Einar closed his fingers around a jutting rock and arrested his fall.
His stomach scraped stone as he clung to the wall, blood surging onto the rock around his fingers.
“No!” she cried.
Legs dangling, Einar grunted. A flare of momentum swept his legs up to the ledge. He gripped the edge with a single big toe, readjusted his grip. Mila stared, wide-eyed, as he used that position to spring higher.
Impossible.
Absolutely . . . but not. Brawn infused his arms as he planted his palms on a rock, drawing . . . raw strength from somewhere deep inside to save himself. Scrapes opened across his stomach as he vaulted higher, landing hard on his side moments before gravity claimed his soul.
Mila’s near-still heart gave a wild thump in her chest.
Shite!
That was too close.
Trembling fear shook her foot bones. Before Mila could wrap her mind around the realization that the rocks broke beneath her, Einar spun around. He thrust out a hand and gripped Mila’s arm as the ledge crumbled beneath her.
Before fate swept her to the sea, he grabbed her.
“I’ve got you!”
She shrieked, dangling over the edge, with Einar as her only connection, and grasped his arm with a terrified cry. He hauled her higher. Easy as a spring breeze, she was dragged over the stones, into raw air, and collapsed. Had he always been that strong?
Mila collapsed at his side. Her teeth knocked together, breath heaving, as she gasped, “I c-can’t b-believe we m-made it.”
“Me, too.”
“Th-thank you. You saved my life.”
Einar shrugged. “We saved each other.” Draven’s assessment of Einar was right.
He was unusually humble . . . and extraordinarily strong.
Or was he that strong? Had something granted him a burst of power in the moment he hung by a bloody palm and a big toe?
For a moment, she almost thought that arcane had surged from the rocks . . .
But, no.
She didn’t feel close enough to him to ask, anyway, and moments of such terror created their own hallucinations.
Mila turned her attention outward, relieved to make it this far.
There was no going back, either. A quilt of wind-cut sea spread around them as Einar lay on his side, panting, eyes on the sky. For a full minute, they didn’t speak.
Mila gathered herself together.
They did it.
She didn’t dare consider how they’d leave this place, because a bizarre sight caught her attention. She stared over Einar’s shoulder. A door hung in the air, suspended above a step.
“Einar?”
“Hmmm?”
With a nudge and a nod, she motioned over his shoulder. He turned his head, swearing under his breath.
“We found the entrance,” she said.
He murmured something that sounded like Agnes, but she couldn’t be sure. Rolling to his feet in a smooth, dancer-like motion, he held out a hand to her.
“C’mon. We’ve arrived.”