Chapter 20 Shit #3
A laugh bubbled up, sharp and bitter. “Congratulations,” she muttered to the empty air. “You made it one whole day without a disaster.”
She forced herself upright, knees buckling. The landscape was changed. The ground around her was fused into rippled glass, the cracks sealed by the heat of her magic. The wind, which had been a constant for hours, now swirled gently, as if wary of her presence.
Alina stood, legs trembling, and surveyed the basin. Her outburst had saved her from being swallowed, but the price was evident: her strength was sapped, her mind fuzzy, her limbs heavy as if filled with wet sand. She wiped the blood from her nose—another gift of the Gift—and pressed onward.
The climb out of the basin was a nightmare. The fused glass was slick, and every step sent new shards skittering away. Alina moved slowly, wary of what might happen if she fell again. At the top, she paused, wiped sweat from her brow, and looked back.
There was a scar in the earth where she had lain—a bright, curling line of glass that shone in the sunlight. A warning, or maybe just a reminder. Either way, it was proof she had been here.
She didn’t linger. The wind was returning, and the cold was sharper now. She fixed her eyes on the far horizon and started moving, mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other like an automaton.
She had no idea where she was. No idea where she was going. And she was glad for it.
In the afternoon the land turned cruel again, and Alina found herself among ridges so barren they made the earlier slopes look like a summer orchard.
The wind had whipped itself into a raging storm once more, but this time it felt almost purposeful, as though it resented her presence and meant to drive her back down the way she’d come.
Each gust scoured the exposed stone, pelting her with needle-fine grit that stung the skin and filled her mouth.
The way forward was nothing but a jigsaw of boulders and shale, the ground littered with the leavings of ancient avalanches.
Alina picked her path slowly, testing each stone before committing her weight, but even the surest step sent little landslides clattering down the incline behind her.
The air was thin, and with every breath her chest ached more sharply, the space between her ribs a little tighter.
She’d lost count of how many hours she’d been walking.
Her stomach knotted with emptiness, and her lips were split and crusted with salt.
The handkerchief Finn had given her was pressed tight against her palm, a makeshift bandage for the cuts she’d earned in her last fall.
Her fingers had gone white, then red and blue, then back to white again.
When she tried to flex them, only the first two would obey.
Still, she walked.
Every ten steps or so, the world titled unexpectedly.
The fatigue was like a fever—at first it had been only a background hum, but now it became a full-body shiver that threatened to drop her where she stood.
Her vision blurred at the edges, the landscape distorting into a smear of colorless rock and cold.
She blinked hard, but the spots swimming in front of her eyes refused to go away.
She tried to focus on the summit, to set small goals—make it to the next outcrop, the next half-collapsed cairn, the next patch of moss.
But the ridgeline never seemed to get closer, and the stones underfoot were treacherous, moving with a slyness that felt deliberate.
Once, she placed her foot on a flat slab only to have the whole thing tip, sending her sliding sideways until she caught herself on a spike of granite.
The impact split the skin on her forearm, but the pain was so familiar by now that she barely noticed.
The sun, ever so bright, offered nothing but the illusion of warmth.
The wind was relentless, the cold seeping into her bones and making her teeth chatter even behind clenched lips.
At the same time, she was sweating, but every drop of moisture turned instantly to chill.
She wondered, vaguely, if this was how people died out here—not with a scream or a fight, but with a slow surrender, each step a little softer until they simply never took another.
Her body rebelled. She stopped, just for a second, to catch her breath.
When she tried to move again, her left leg seized with cramp, the muscle locking so tight she nearly tumbled backwards down the slope.
She gritted her teeth, massaged the frozen flesh with her stiff fingers, and willed herself to keep going.
The world was narrowing to a tunnel: the next stone, the next footfall, the next gasp of air. She didn’t notice the change in grade until it was too late.
The boulder under her right foot was bigger than the others, a block of gray veined with white.
Alina put her weight on it, expecting it to hold, only for it to shift under her like a loose tooth.
The entire surface shivered, and for a terrifying moment she was weightless, skidding forward on her knees and elbows as the boulder lurched and rolled away from the slope.
Instinct took over. She flailed, grabbing at anything, her hands scrabbling against the ice-rimed rock. Her nails bent back, skin tearing, but she found a hold—a crack barely wide enough for her fingers. She clung to it and managed to stop the slide, lying on her belly, breathing heavily.
The wind, that bloody bastard, slammed into her back, threatening to peel her off the mountain entirely.
Alina hung there, every muscle screaming, the cut on her arm leaking warmth down to her wrist. She wanted to cry out, but the air was too thin for shouting. Instead, she focused on her breath, drawing it in slow, steady pulls until the panic eased just enough for her to think.
She searched for a foothold, found one, and forced the last little bit of strength from her body to lever herself upward.
Her boots slipped, but her arms held, and with a final, desperate kick she managed to heave her chest onto the ledge above.
For a second she just lay there, splayed like a broken doll, the wind flattening her hair against the rock.
Then she crawled forward, inch by inch, until her body was fully clear of the drop.
She made it another five feet before her limbs betrayed her again. This time, her knees simply folded, and she crumpled sideways, sliding until her shoulder struck a large, sun-bleached boulder. The impact rattled her skull and knocked the breath from her lungs.
She stayed that way for a while, hunched against the stone, the wind howling over her back. She pressed her face to the cold surface, letting the pain of the scrape and the chill of the rock remind her that she was still alive—barely, but still here.
The tears started as a trickle, barely enough to notice, but the longer she sat there, the more they came. Hot and salty, the tears cutting little burning tracks through the grime on her frozen cheeks. She didn’t try to stop them. There was no one to see, no one to judge.
She cried for the exhaustion, for the hunger, for the fact that every single person in her life seemed determined to hate her or use her or turn her into something she never wanted to be.
She cried for Marta, for Finn, for Kael—even for Maven, who at least had been honest about his hatred for her from the beginning.
Mostly, she cried for herself. She cried for the girl who had once believed that being special was enough, that love and loyalty could win out against everything else. For the girl who was now nothing more than a shadow, beaten flat by wind and cold and the weight of too many mistakes.
She pressed her forehead harder against the boulder, the coolness numbing the ache. The wind whipped her braid around her neck, and she let it. She was so tired, so utterly emptied out, that she couldn’t even remember why she’d started up this cursed mountain in the first place.
So she stayed. She breathed, slow and shallow, letting the air scrape her raw on the inside as well as the out.
When the tears finally stopped, she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked out at the ridgeline. It was no closer than before. The horizon was a smear, the declining sun hidden behind a bank of angry-looking cloud. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to think. But she had to.
With a groan, Alina dug her fingers into the stone for leverage, pushed herself upright, and straightened her bag on her shoulder. Her legs shook with the effort, but she found her footing.
She started walking again. This time, each step was not a statement of hope, but a refusal to give in. One foot, then the next, then the next, no matter how pointless it seemed.
The mountain didn’t care, but she did. At least, for now.
She walked until the world narrowed to the sound of her own breath and the crunch of her boots on the unforgiving stone. She had finally reached her goal: her mind was blissfully blank.
It was evening before Alina saw the first hint of the forest. From a distance, it looked more like the remnants of a fire—thin black stalks and splinters, all reaching skyward in twisted, unnatural poses.
But as she descended the last crumbling slope, she realized the woods were alive, if only barely.
The trees were gnarled oaks, their branches stunted and leafless, clutching at the dark gray sky with the desperation of the nearly drowned.
The transition was sudden. One minute she was ankle-deep in scree and battered by the wind; the next she was threading her way through a narrow tunnel of branches that whipped and snapped at her face.
The temperature dropped another ten degrees in the shade, and the air was thick with the smell of rot and old snow, the light low.
Each step made her boots sink into a carpet of half-frozen leaves and brittle twigs.