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I woke up with a start to the scent of burning wood despite the fact that we hadn’t started a fire.
The source soon made itself known as I blinked and the wall of flames came into clear view. Blocking the mouth of the cave—and our exit.
Turning, I tried to shake York awake. Something was definitely wrong. Smoke hung low and stung my eyes, and no matter what I did, my Wolfie didn’t want to move.
“Christ, York, wake up!” I screamed in his face. A tug down the bond assured me that he was alive although that did nothing to soothe the terror spiking through me like a lance. I couldn’t hear his heartbeat. Not through the crackle of flames and the frantic beats of my own heart. “We need to get out of here!”
A boulder shifted.
Not really a boulder, but Crius and his shoulders. Violet eyes flashed at me. “Vienna, the smoke...it’s making me lightheaded,” he groaned.
“Move, please.” I grabbed hold of York’s shoulders. “We need to move.”
Had Hades started the fire? Was that what his burst of white light had done? I tuned in to the slight area of soreness between my breasts where he’d hit me in the dream. Later. I’d worry about it later, if we managed to get out of here without dying of smoke inhalation first.
The soldiers. The soldiers that I hadn’t killed, the ones who may have been knocked unconscious and left for dead, had found us and come back to finish the deed.
“Vienna, take my hand,” Crius demanded. And for the first time since meeting him I didn’t have any room to argue. The tone commanded absolute compliance.
The pressure in my lungs and head was unbearable. My hands still clutched at York and I didn’t feel Crius grabbing me. He dragged me against his chest. I felt Mòr’s body there too.
“Dad...” I tried to get out, throat burning like someone had doused me in acid.
“I can get us through the fire at great cost. Or I can break through the back of the cave and see if there is another way. Back into the earth.”
Both of those would be at great cost, I understood, because of how he felt about being in enclosed spaces.
I tried to look at him as though he’d told me he wanted to eat a small child. My version of are you crazy?
“Are you sure if we go in you can get us out?” I asked. We were wasting too much time. I felt it in my body, in the way my limbs became lead and I had trouble focusing, thinking, breathing.
Crius didn’t respond, shifting uncomfortably. When I blinked my eyes open against the burning smoke, I watched him collapse, his massive form knocking against the rock and shaking it loose.
“Dad!”
Well, shit.
“Up to me again, I see,” I groaned. The words were half-formed and lacked solidity. Didn’t matter. I stared across the fiery expanse of the cave debating the wisdom of going in or going out. I would never be able to carry all three of them through the flames. Nor would I have my father’s brutish strength to pummel through the rocks before we all died of smoke inhalation.
I knew I’d have to pick one before it was too late.
My head swam.
Brief as the life of a firefly, I saw myself in the smoke. Saw myself as I might have been once upon a time, if I’d been allowed to grow up as a normal child: running through the Shadowlands, with golden trees reflecting a pure sky, little streams littered with the same colored shrapnel of downed leaves, a fat red apple in hand...
And I would go home with York and finally be able to walk down the street hand in hand without a worry. Enter whatever shop I wanted or maybe even an art gallery, somewhere no one would know me—or maybe they did—and we could finally be ourselves. Maybe then the broken pieces inside of me would finally come together and there would be no more pain or darkness.
We would be able to go home every day to the same place. No more running. Maybe I’d even get lucky and make a few friends, the kind where they could pop over to the house unannounced and we could sit around a table and eat and laugh. And at the end of the day I would have York at my side, content and happy. Fulfilled in a way I’d never felt before.
And York—
York.
He would finally be able to get his lab set back up. We had the money between us to go wherever we wanted, do what we wanted, but I knew he wouldn’t give up on his idea of inventing a cure for whatever caused him to turn furry under the full moon. Because he believed in giving anyone infected a choice to remain as they were or to go back. And I believed in him. I believed that one day he and I would sit under the stars and be able to live in a world that wasn’t so cruel or isolating. Never again would we have to look over our shoulders.
I could have lost myself in that future I saw. A bright future that I would fight for until my dying breath. But I had to claw my way out of this debacle first.
I knew what to do.
Scrambling for a moment to regain my bearings against the fire, I grabbed the person closest to me—Mòr, as it turned out—and brought her up to my chest as though she weighed nothing at all. The motion might have been easy had I not been slowly dying from the smoke.
I did the best I could to cover my mouth with my shirt and ran full tilt at the flaming inferno blocking the mouth of the cave.
The heat was oppressive, forcing every sane thought from my body. I held a fist against the flames as though it might actually do something. The rush and roar of the fire blotted out any sound, filling the inside of my ears.
No, no, no—
I didn’t stop to think about how insane I was. Or how I’d have to rinse and repeat two more times to get the people I loved out of that damn cave.
I burst out of the flames seconds later, rolling toward the ground.
Only for a wave of soldiers to come crashing out of the silent daylight around us. I blinked at them through blurry eyes, unsure if they were a mirage or something conjured out of my worst nightmare.
Shit, shit!
“Don’t you guys ever give up?” I managed to get out.
At least that’s what I would have said had the smoke not stolen my voice. With Mòr in my arms, I grappled for balance and missed, stumbling on loose rocks and sending the two of us sweeping down the dark surface of the mountainside with soldiers yelling behind us. The crash stole the remaining breath from my lungs and the back of my head connected with solid ground.
Get up, get up.
Oh god, my head pounded, and part of me wondered if I’d demanded too much of my body. Eventually my limbs responded. Barking like I’d asked the impossible of them.
Mòr had fallen several feet away thanks to my clumsiness. Still passed out, though. I rushed to her, rush being a bit of a stretch, fighting the onslaught of dizziness and knowing the soldiers above could take me down easily with a spell. Willing new strength into my body, into my legs.
I rose on unsteady feet amidst a current of power, starting off as a tiny kernel and growing. Growing before I understood the significance of where that kernel came from.
“Vienna...”
The tiny voice caught my attention and I glanced down at Mòr. Not passed out. Good. “Go!” I said, grabbing at her outstretched hand and hauling her to her feet. “Get out of here. Run!”
She shook her head and nearly collapsed. She’d changed her clothes back at her house, exchanging the rags she’d been forced to wear for a forest-green tunic and a supple pair of pants that looked like suede. Better for her to move, I thought in an instant. Better for her to fight.
“Do what you have to do. I’m here for you.” She ground her teeth together, neck craned to stare at the oncoming horde of Unseelie soldiers rushing toward us in full armor.
Nice to know I at least garnered that much respect. They were armed to the teeth for little old me.
“I can’t do this and worry about you,” I replied.
“I’m telling you that you don’t have to worry about me.”
If Mòr wouldn’t leave, then I’d have to do whatever I had to do with her in tow. I grabbed her, making sure she hooked her feet around my waist as I hoisted her onto my back. I felt ribs.
We were out of time.
I held a palm out in front of me, screaming at the top of my lungs in full-on banshee mode. Each second cost me but finally something inside of me snapped. Leave me alone! The soldiers buckled in formation at the force of the sound, several of them falling to the side and clutching their heads. Not enough of a break to get me a full path back to the cave but enough to put a hitch in their momentum.
I directed that tiny snippet of power inside of me—something from Hades, perhaps?—toward the rest of them and more men fell, screeching under the sonic pressure.
It was a break, I told myself again, gripping Mòr’s thighs and running back up the hill with enough force to bruise my insides. Step by agonizing step felt like wading through wet cement.
I hit the landing in front of the cave, the fire still raging without end, and Mòr’s gasp had me stopping in my tracks. Not a gasp of shock but one of terror as a spell poured over us. As if a wall of water had swept down to drown us where we stood. I had no mastery over that kind of elemental power and could do nothing but try to hold my ground.
Where the hell was the spellcaster hiding, and how soon could I kill him?
I had enough time to brace myself, grabbing Mòr’s legs, and watched as the spell caused the flames to freeze in a sheet of ice. We were dead. I knew we were dead, and there was no way for me to counteract whatever curse had been set on us. I gasped one last breath and hunkered down. Aware of every passing second that the spell washed over us, waiting for my body to betray me at last. Mòr beat at me until I let her go and I hooked my arms in front of my face like a shield, trying to stay calm and failing miserably if the panicked beat of my heart was any indication.
The rest of me burst into flames. My lungs were on fire, my muscles seizing. She reached the now frozen mouth of the cave and slammed her palm against the ice, symbols flaring to life to combat the enchantment. The ice remained.
I had to try.
Opening my mouth to voice the spell proved futile. I couldn’t speak the words out loud, the rest of my voice that hadn’t been affected by smoke torn by the force of the spell. In my head, I began to recite the spell that had failed to protect York at our warehouse loft.
By power of wind and air, I bind you. By power of rain and water, I bind you. By power of star and fire, I bind you. By power of rock and earth, I bind you. With my spirit and these words, I here do bind you.
Wherever the spellcaster stood, I directed the force of the magic at him.
By threat of death do you fight. By power of might do you fall. By power of light are you bound. The outcome is mine to control.
I had to stop. I had to lie down before everything was taken from me. Through bleary eyes I saw Mòr pounding on the ice and pushing the last of her strength into whatever sigils glowed, slowly guttering. Like a dying heartbeat.
I pushed harder, toward that nugget of power I felt at my core, alit. I was so tired that I didn’t care about the riptide of thoughts circling in my head, or the bits and pieces inside of me that felt lost. Felt like I tore at them and tossed them into the heat and the ice never to be seen again.
Then the force of the spell was ripped away. It vanished like it had never been and left me gasping for breath, the rest of my body seizing. Tendrils of mist rose from the ground. I drew hot air into my lungs when I could finally breathe again.
The air snapped and crackled around us, but there were no sounds of struggle from the soldiers.
The quiet was deafening.
I turned to see Mòr with her hands over her stomach, fallen to her knees but alive. And above us on the crest of the hill a head of white hair, unmoving. The spellcaster? Had he been standing above us?
The sun rose fully behind us and filled the air with pink blush and bruised purple and deep navy, chasing away the night at long last. I sagged down to my knees and didn’t know where to turn.
“Whatever you did,” Mòr said softly, “I think you saved our lives.”
The rest of the soldiers were nothing more than still bodies.
“I wish I knew,” I replied.
Then collapsed.