Chapter 60

Rhordyn charges through the jungle so fast the world is a nauseating smear, forcing me to tuck my face against his flickering tattoos and squeeze my eyes shut, raindrops splatting my fervid skin like icy bolts. A pattered relief to the fire in my veins.

I slip between layers of consciousness.

Dropping away …

… Coming to.

The jungle’s colors have gone from blues and browns and steely shades to a much darker smudge of it all.

Is the sun beginning to set? Are we getting closer?

Nervous bubbles explode in my chest at the thought of seeing my best friend for the first time in over a month; guilt, shame, confusion, and fear a volley of fisted blows to my ribs.

I don’t want him seeing me like this …

I just want to hide. Curl up and sleep. Rhordyn should take me back to the cavern where we can ride out the week together, cloistered away from the world.

Enjoy the time we have.

It always felt stolen, anyway. Like a dream. A precious trinket that was doomed to rust in my chest.

Now I understand why.

The constant bumping wreaks havoc on my bladder, making me groan into Rhordyn’s chest. “Stop, please …”

His feet slam to a halt so fast I almost spontaneously vomit, looking up into his sooty eyes. “I need a bush break.”

That might turn into a spew break.

Not even breathing hard, he sets me on the ground, snatching me around the waist when my legs give way.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Just … displacement.” Though I do wonder why the ground is tipping. Bulging, like it doesn’t know which shape it wants to be.

My teeth chatter despite the fact that my blood is lava, my fake skin feeling tighter than ever.

Fingers tangling with my necklace, I yank gently. “Can I take off my—”

“Definitely not.”

Bit rude. He didn’t even take time to consider it.

I sigh, wondering if he would be opposed to me shedding a different layer, like my pants or my to—

“Your clothes stay on.”

Didn’t realize I even said that out loud.

“Can’t I just leave them off after I go? I swear I’ll put them back on before we reach Kai’s tongue …”

I hope for a laugh. At the very least, a smile.

A happy trinket for me to cling to.

But all I get is silence—taut, tangible silence that only succeeds in making me feel like he’s slipping away, too.

I tip my head to the side, looking up at him through the sodden lengths of my hair, missing the feel of his lips on mine. Of his breath pouring into my lungs.

Filling me up.

“I don’t want to die crushed beneath the weight of your silent anger …”

His eyes darken further. “You’re not dying,” he snarls, the thick, feral words pummeling me.

Weighing me down.

I know all about denial; have drunk from its poisonous well too many times to count. But I don’t want to argue. Not now.

Not again.

“Okay.” I offer him a soft smile that seems to make his eyes harden, like he can see the lie I’m buttering all over my face. But it feels better than sadness. Regret.

Fear.

“I’m going to relieve myself,” I murmur, easing his arm from where it’s still bound around my waist. “Don’t watch.”

“Don’t go far,” he rumbles, and I wave, meandering across the unsteady terrain. I itch the back of my hand, certain there’s something grubbing beneath the skin.

The trees continue to darken, stretching like inky limbs.

Reaching for me.

Finding a nice, cozy shrub, I squat and do my business, re-button my pants, then begin to wander back.

A distant twang makes my ears twitch.

I look up in time to see Rhordyn—a charging blur barreling for me. I don’t get a chance to brace before I’m tackled to the ground so hard and fast all the breath is punched from my lungs.

There’s a thudding sound as something impales the tree not two feet away, and I look up, heart in my throat.

An arrow with a gray fletching wobbles to a still in the trunk. Perfectly level with where my heart would have been a split second ago.

“Did somebody just shoot at me?”

Rhordyn snarls, rears back, and crushes me against his chest. I’m lifted, cradled as he bolts through the forest, cutting a zigzag path, dodging an invisible threat while my heart beats me up.

Everything becomes a blur of rain and darkening foliage and booming, ground-crackling sounds that shaft into my tender skull and threaten to split me. The constant change of direction makes my guts tip, flip, and squirm.

I swallow the retching urge inching up my throat, cheeks tingling, hearing more of those thudding sounds.

Too close.

Too many.

I try to tip my head back to glance behind us, but Rhordyn’s violent, air-splitting growl makes me reconsider.

We near a clearing, and I glimpse gray tents through the trees, armored soldiers spilling from their flaps, yelling at each other.

Swarming.

The spears and swords they wield are a dull silver—the iron weapons I saw being forged in Cainon’s personal armory.

“Fuck,” Rhordyn hisses, charging on. There’s the whistling of more arrows splitting the air. The pound of them thudding into trees. His entire chest jerks, and his soft, grunting sound screams at me.

He’s hit …

I look up into his inky eyes, at the darkness smudged into the skin surrounding them, wild panic notching its noose around my throat.

“Rhor—”

Another thud snatches my breath … Another … His face twitching with each horrific, puncturing blow, though his feet continue to pound the earth. The next thud sounds like it lands farther down his body, and he stumbles a step.

My heart and guts plummet as he snarls, regains his teeth-gritted composure, and carries on.

My throat tightens.

A head pokes out over the edge of my internal chasm, inky eyes blinking. That creature scurries out, tail flicking in its wake. Wings folded back, it uses my spine as a ladder, chased by that slithering slur of darkness that weaves up the insides of my skin and slices for release—the tapered tips honed into razor blades that hack.

Hack.

Hack.

My head fills with so much pressure I’m certain my skull’s going to split as we break through the jungle’s fringe, coming to a grassy plateau that stretches beneath the weeping sky, then falls away, melding with the distant sound of crashing waves.

A cliff.

Rhordyn doesn’t stop running, though his steps are slower now, every breath strained.

Another meaty thud—louder this time. I feel that sound in my chest as he pitches forward, almost losing me in his stumble, something sharp poking through his shoulder and snatching my ability to breathe.

A large, pronged arrowhead.

That creature wraps its claws around my ribs, tips upside down, stretches its twiggy wings, and starts to flap—tilling up crystal debris and vines, shredding those buttery blooms. It stretches its neck, opens its maw, and screams as a wildness surges through my veins, one barbed word bouncing around inside my chest like a thorny ball.

Protect.

Protect.

Protect.

“Put me down.”

He regains his footing, heaving breath, forcing us forward with another churn of unsteady steps—like he didn’t even hear me. He snarls through elongated canines, his face a rabid twist of wrath and pain.

“Rhordyn, I said put me down!”

No response.

No loosening of his arms.

That darkness continues to bludgeon my brain as I look over his shoulder to where the steep wall of the jungle meets the grassy plateau, gray-armored guards spilling through gaps between the trees.

Gray Guards.

Another whistling sound has my heart in my throat—a long, thick arrow cleaving the air at the speed of a lightning strike. I feel the moment it thumps into Rhordyn’s back, like someone just shoved their hand down my throat and mulched my heart in their clenched fist.

He lurches, time stretching.

The ground comes at us too fast.

Too slow.

Flung forward, I collide with the hard-packed earth, my lungs slamming into a state of paralysis. Mouth gaping, I try to move.

Breathe.

I look down my body to where Rhordyn’s crouched, snarling. The tattoos on his forearm pulse with a light that makes my eyes ache, and he heaves it back, makes a fist, then punches the ground—boring a crater into the soil that makes the world jolt.

The hairs on the backs of my arms lift, the air singeing with a shock of … something.

Something I’ve felt before.

On the pier.

There’s a deafening boom, a blinding flash of light, and a punch of lightning rips down from the sky; a forked spear of silver threaded with a fracture of black. Everything rocks beneath us, and I’m battered by a cataclysmic crack that battles the ringing in my ears.

My gaze homes on the jagged cleft of glass now zigzagged through the ground, up through two soldiers paused midstep.

Their bows lifted, notched arrows pointed in our direction. Both glass statues bar a finger here, a nose and cheek there, the bits of remaining flesh weeping lines of blood that drip.

Drip.

Drip.

He … killed them.

He turned them to glass.

The creature in my chest continues to squawk and flap and scream as I look at Rhordyn, and my breath catches.

Heart stills.

He’s hunched over my legs, head down, blood bubbling from his lips. His arms bend, dropping him lower, and I see he’s saddled with arrows both short and tall, thin and thick. Glossy lines of red leak from each gory puncture wound, dribbling.

My creature shreds at my ribs with its bramble claws, slashing so hard I think it might break through, darkness threatening to slit my skull.

More guards spill from the jungle, others retreating to the fringe, screaming orders, forming a line that moves in unison as they raise armed longbows, pointing them skyward. “Volley!” someone bellows over the thrashing storm.

Rhordyn groans, crawling forward. Covering me.

Entirely.

He lifts his head, locking eyes with mine as a cloud of arrows darken the rumbling sky. The aching muscle in my chest pinches, itchy pops flaring across my shoulder.

Up the side of my neck.

“No!”

My pained cry whittles between us, and he holds my stare as the arrows rain upon him.

I see each piercing sting in the twitch of his face muscles. Feel each brutal impale in the short, jagged puffs of breath upon my cheeks. Hear each sickening thud plowing through flesh and muscle and bone as he’s ripped apart in punctured increments.

For me.

My guts twist, heartstrings snap, tears slip free as his blood falls like rain. His eyes glaze, and he pulls a bubbling gasp, head falling between his bulging shoulders.

His right arm buckles slightly.

Something thuds so deep into my upper arm I feel it pierce through the other side, striking me with a blaze of pain. I cry out, curling the limb against my chest.

Rhordyn’s head snaps up, and he looks at me in a way that chills me to the bone as his nostrils flare once … twice … gaze flicking to the arrow protruding from my arm. His beautiful, powerful, broken body jerks, and his chest swells to the tune of cracking, crunching, popping bones.

“What’s …”

What’s happening?

He loosens our sheaths from where they’re strapped against his chest. Both swords thump to the ground before he reaches behind his back, snaps a few arrows, and tosses them aside like pesky twigs. Planting his forehead against mine, he closes his eyes.

The breath he pours over me is charged.

“He won’t hurt you …” he pleads, his voice gravel. Unfathomably robust and …

Unfamiliar.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I lift my good hand to his cheek, flinching when his jaw pops out of place beneath my touch.

My breath snags, hand dropping to my hammering chest as he opens his eyes, but they’re not his eyes at all. They’re ghastly globes enriched with a shade of darkness that looks like it was hewn from somewhere not of this world. This close up, I see distant galaxies caught in the gloomy confines, certain I’m tumbling through the fathomless ether, trapped beneath the crushing might of my own insignificance.

This close up, I realize how small I am. How fragile.

A single speck of light.

Yet he’s looking at me like I’m the sun he orbits.

Rhordyn’s lips part with a distorted howl, the skin on his face shredding, making room for his expanding maw packed full of sharp, gnashing teeth, his canines growing longer than my forearm.

Time slams to a still, the rain like strips of string suspended around us as I watch. Horrified.

Hypnotized.

His face changes shape. Becomes big and boxy, sprouting a pelt of black fur that softens his thickening neck with a dense, regal mane and clothes his bulging shoulders and swelling back. There’s the sharp sound of his pants ripping, shreds of black material fluttering on the swirling wind.

Fear lacerates me with talon-tipped strikes, immobilizing my body.

My mind.

His body expands to mighty proportions until it’s no longer a man huddled over me like a shield, but a beast—dwarfing me in his catastrophic presence. A massive, blackVruk,just like the one I saw outside of Parith.

The one that ate the men I burned.

Rhordyn’s—

He’s—

Wild, unruly emotions mulch my flesh, masticating my bones as my mind trips over itself. Tries to regain footing.

Trips again.

The monster you know is safer than the monster you don’t …

My breath puffs free, and I try to flatten myself against the grass as the beast drops closer, sniffing at me through a wide, dog-like nose that’s black and wet. He digs his stumpy muzzle into the crook of my neck, and my entire body shudders, icy fear paralyzing my lungs.

My spine.

He draws several short whuffs, then lifts his head as a deep growl vibrates from his big, furry chest to mine. He shakes his body, the remaining arrows flying around him like water shook from a dog, before his head whips around, attention boring on the Gray Guards stumbling over each other.

Pointing.

The beast turns, dashes a fluffy tail across my face, and roars.

The Gray Guards are no longer shooting. They’re running.

Screaming.

The beast pounces, talons punching from his paws. He charges toward the trees in long, ground-shaking strides, disappearing.

My darkness slithers back into the chasm, and I realize my creature is no longer screaming; bound in its wings, tail coiled around one of my ribs. It hangs, face tucked into its puffed plumage as I scramble to my feet.

Sobbing through winced half breaths, I stumble over a series of backward steps, moving toward the smashing sounds of the ocean at my back, not wanting to take my stare off the tree line. With my injured arm tucked close to my chest, I glance at the hole Rhordyn punched in the ground. At the vein of glass that forks toward the two soldiers eternally running.

He told me there were things I still didn’t know, but this …

I wasn’t expecting this.

The fever continues to squish through my veins in hot pumps, my heart and head and body battling entirely different wars as I shuffle toward the thump of crashing waves. Piercing screams and agonized cries come to me on a whip of wind before they’re snipped brutally fast, and that chilling, thunderous roar battles the howl of the storm. Rattles my heart.

He’s out there … killing them.

Ripping them apart.

I remember the way he ate the men my power dismantled, crunching through them like a ravenous beast, and another shudder shakes my bones.

My heel edges over the sharp fall of the cliff, and my heart leaps into my throat. I lurch forward— away from the edge—knees crumbling. Wincing from the bolt of pain that splits my arm as I plant both hands firmly on the ground, blood dribbling.

I try to pull out the arrow, screaming when the tug burns through the wound like a fiery poker.

Dropping my bloody, trembling hand, I glance over my shoulder to a churning torrent of waves thrashing against the sheer blue-stone cliff, the water dull and gray bar the white, frothy swirls.

There are no more shrill screams ripping through the stormy haze. No more sadistic, ground-shuddering roars.

It’s just me, the rain, the crackling sky, and the heavy pound in my ears.

The hairs on the backs of my arms lift, and in my peripheral, a black smudge pushes free of the jungle. A hoarse sob bursts up my throat at the sight of the beast prowling toward me in slow, stalking strides, low on his haunches, maw splashed in so much blood it’s dribbling from the slick fur at his chin. His leathery, frost-kissed scent comes to me, melded with the coppery tang of his slain victims.

“Don’t come any closer,” I say, shoving to a stand, and his lips pull back as he releases a grating rumble that ripples through me.

The talons retract from his blood-slicked paws, and he drops so close to the ground his belly brushes the grass, his unnerving eyes paving across me like icy blades.

He comes within an arm’s length, one crawled motion at a time, every shift of his body making his meaty muscles ripple and swell.

So much power. So much might.

So much death.

“Please,” I whisper, raising my good hand between us, not even sure he can understand me. “Please stop …”

The beast whines, dropping his chin upon the ground, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. Less frightening.

Impossible when his sable eyes are hammering me into a quivering pulp.

There’s a shrill crack, and my eyes widen, heart tripping.

Fissures claw toward me from that glassy crater, carving off a giant half-moon chunk of the cliff that captures me perfectly.

Terribly.

I have a split second to take in the flash of raw, primal agony in the beast’s eyes before the ground beneath me plummets to the tune of his aching lament, his paws whipping out to snatch at thin air. Wind tears at my body.

I plunge hard and fast, my mind dunking into its own inky void as the ocean bellows beneath me, swallowing me in its monstrous maw.