I had to make it past the boundary. I had to give him the dagger if that was the last thing I did before my body failed. Each step felt like I was walking on glass. Sand grated against my eyeballs, blurring my vision, but I forced one foot in front of the other. The air was thick around me. I could barely breathe. I stumbled forward, falling on my hands and knees. Grains of rough sand ripped through the exposed flesh on my palms, burning as if I were holding my hand above a flame, but I inched forward, desperate and praying to whichever of the gods were listening.
Salt.
The thin white line yawned before me and I cried, a gasping choking noise as I shoved myself forward, the salt stinging each wound simultaneously. I rolled across the line, back into Lortan, just as the ground splintered and another shot of sizzling water spurted right behind me from deep below.
The heat was unbearable, the steam so excruciatingly painful that all I could do was curl into a fetal position, allowing my back to take the brunt of it. The leather of my pants seared into my skin; I screamed but there was nothing except empty field to hear me. I couldn’t remember what it felt like tonotbe in pain. It was all I could think about, all I could feel. There was only agony and the teasing lure of oblivion if I just allowed death to take me. But Calendula was there, her voice a lifeline.
“Lirah, you must get up!”
I wanted to tell her I couldn’t, but I was so exhausted.
My body no longer worked. The flesh had melted right off it, leaving charred muscle and skeletal remains behind. I could hardly see through the blood and sand in my eyes.
Still, Calendula urged me, “There’s a scry opening! Just up ahead. You have to survive.Please, survive.” Her voice in my ear was urgent, her plea a broken whisper.
The last of the heat evaporated into the air, and I forced my eyes open, my lids scraping like sandpaper against the sensitive, innermost gel.
I blinked through the grit, just able to make out the shadowy shape of an arch, blue light filtering through it.
Gods, it would be so easy to close my eyes again. I longed to slip into nothing. A place where pain did not exist. There would be no Trials, no Rite, no more death and loss. Just peace. I considered it. Considered all I would be trading in. I’d never hear Lana’s laugh again, or Moric teasing her over her infatuation with Septimus. I thought about my room in Valhan House, which would be stripped bare of all traces of my stay in it. My mother breaking down with the news. I thought of Lana’s hand in mine over a grimy table in a tavern not so long ago. Kilian’s hands on my waist, lips on mine. His voice at my ear. I could almost hear what he’d tell me.
Itwouldbe easy. But it’s a coward’s way out. You are many things, Lirah, but a coward is not one of them.
Trust Kilian to ruin my plans for a peaceful, early retirement without even being here.
I sucked in a breath. I was dying, could feel each precious gasp for breath rattle my lungs. But there was a single thread which I was hanging on to. It shimmered bright and golden, refracting into brilliant shards that reflected the faces of everyone I loved.
I was not ready to give up. I wanted to live. To hug my friends, even if it was just once more. My muscles trembled as I crawled toward the scry, skin tearing on my forearms as I dragged my body forward. I grunted, expelling all the air in my burning lungs.
Calendula gripped my belt-loop. I heard her tiny wings fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s as she tried tugging me along. I reached one blood-slicked hand out, fingers scraping the side of the scry. In one final push, I heaved forward. And then I was falling. Falling… falling… falling through the scry’s murky depths.
Starlight and inky darkness pooled around me, and then blessed, cool air enveloped me.
I stared up at the night. The stars were fuzzy, their light distorting into a million dazzling streams across the sky. My thoughts cleared in one startling moment of clarity as I wondered why, if Kilian had re-opened the scry, he hadn’t just come through it to fetch me himself. Dread sank talons inside me as an indistinct face came into view.
His voice was rough and unfamiliar as he said, “Who the fuck are you?”
My lips parted to answer but darkness clouded my vision. And then my wish came true, and finally there was nothing.
CHAPTER 22
I knew I was awake because everything hurt. My skin chafed like it had been rubbed raw with a grater and my throat burned drier than a desert. My eyelids were heavy, but they opened to reveal a thatch-roof ceiling. Soft light leaked through the straw. I tried lifting my arm, but something rustled when the limb moved.
I tilted my head, glancing down to find dark leaves wrapped around every inch of skin I could see. The bed I lay on was straw and hay. Uncomfortable, but beggars could not be choosers.
A male tended to a pot over a flame near the entrance of the hut. “You’re awake,” he said, with his back toward me.
“Where am I?” I croaked.
He turned to look at me. His pointed ears told me he was elven. His face was averagely handsome, with a rugged beard and dark eyes which assessed my bandaged arm. “Don’t move those. Your skin has just started to heal. I don’t want it pulling off again.”
He slipped a pair of mitts over his hands before lifting the pot off the flame. He moved to the left where my field of vision didn’t quite stretch and then came back into view, striding toward me with a porcelain bowl in hand. He took a seat on a rickety looking chair beside my bed – if I could even call the thing I slept in a bed – and spooned some of whatever was inside the bowl. He held the spoon to my lips, and I eyed it cautiously.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s safe for mortal consumption. If I wanted to kill you, I’d have left you bleeding outside. Now drink.”
I parted my lips, and warm broth filled my mouth. I sucked on the spoon as the elven drew it from my lips. I was so thirsty. So hungry. So sore. So curious.
I didn’t know which need to address first. I settled for taking the next few spoonfuls of broth, gulping greedily, before asking again, “Where am I?”