KEIRA LANDED HARD ON the Darkside slope. Beneath her, her ankle crunched viciously and collapsed, sending her sprawling. Walker had managed to land on his side and Keira fell on top of him, crying out as the pain in her ankle bloomed and spread, setting her whole leg throbbing.
Keira rolled off Walker and he struggled to sit up. She curled into a ball on the rock, feeling it slide beneath her. It was hard as iron but it shifted like something not yet settled.
“What hurts?” he asked, crouching in front of her.
“Ankle,” Keira gasped, gritting her teeth against the pain.
Moving carefully on the unstable slope, Walker gently pulled up the hem of her jeans. Keira hissed as the denim brushed against her skin, sending her already screaming nerve-endings into an agonized shriek.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “This is probably not going to feel so good.”
Keira squeezed her eyes shut as his fingers slid over her ankle.
“It’s swelling,” he said. “You definitely sprained it. It might be broken. I can’t tell.”
“Shit,” she whispered.
She couldn’t run on a broken ankle. Keira looked up. The streaks of light that soared across the Darkside sky blurred as tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.
They were so close. They’d been so close. And now here she was, like an injured rabbit lying in the wolf’s path.
Anger screeched through her, cutting through the pain and disappointment. She hadn’t come this far to give up now.
Keira pushed herself into a sitting position, facing Walker. “It’ll be fine. I’ll . . . I’ll just cross over and heal it.”
Walker raised his eyebrows. “Keira, we’d be underwater. Literally.” He stared at the Darkside terrain. “We can’t cross back over here. To get to a place where the terrains of earth and Darkside line up, we’d have to hike a couple of miles to the east.” A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “It’s probably almost as far to the caves, but we could try to get back to a good crossing point. We might have time. I think.”
Keira shook her head. “Never mind, we’re not wasting time with that. I can walk it off.”
Walker stared at her. “You can’t walk off a sprain, Keira. Much less a break.”
“It isn’t broken,” she roared. Her voice echoed strangely in the mountains, some of the syllables bouncing back to her while others disappeared into the rock. Keeping her weight on her good foot, she hauled herself up to stand.
The incessant Darkside wind fluttered her shirt like a flag. Walker watched her, frozen. Silent. He’d always accused her of being stubborn, and right then, she was counting on him being right.
“I’m going down to the caves and nothing is going to stop me,” she announced, taking a step down the incline. When her weight reached her foot, her ankle exploded in pain. She tried to move the pressure back to her good foot but the rock shifted beneath her and suddenly nothing was holding her up.
Keira landed hard on her hip and began to slide down the scree. She heard Walker’s shout above her but it was too late. The rock moved around her, slipping into new shapes as her weight pushed against it. Loose bits of gravel pinged past her, and Keira closed her eyes against them as she tumbled to the bottom of the hill.
The thud of her body hitting one of the boulders that littered the mountain’s base rang through the range like some sort of strange thunder. It stopped her fall and her breathing, simultaneously. Keira’s lungs burned for the want of air, but she was unable to draw it in. The wind had been knocked out of her. She gave a ragged, painful gasp and suddenly she was breathing again.
“Keira! Are you okay?” Walker was at the bottom of the hill and running toward her.
She lay there, thinking about it. Her ribs and hip were sore, but not unbearably so. Her ankle still throbbed with a steady drumbeat of pain, but it didn’t seem any worse. Carefully, she sat up.
“I’m okay,” she answered, her voice shaking.
“Holy—” Walker stopped, letting out a long breath. “Don’t do that again, okay?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Keira said, “but it worked, didn’t it? I made it to the bottom of the hill.” Her face itched and she reached up to scratch it. When her hand came away from her temple, it was coated in Darkside dust. It was like being covered in the prickly bits of hair that drifted down during a haircut.
“Here,” Walker said. He lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped the mess from Keira’s face. She swallowed hard at the sight of his bare skin. There was nothing stopping her from touching him—nothing but the time that ticked away. They’d been Darkside long enough that the guards would have noticed the new rip. She knew the longer they were out in the open, the more likely they were to get caught.