“Please, Cris.” The temple smothered my words. Please don’t. Please wait. Please come back.
He turned his head to look at us, managed a grim smile, and closed his eyes. Silver and gold flashed in red light as the knife pierced.
He died.
30
SACRIFICE
I SCREAMED.
Fingers dug into my arms, through my sleeves, and Stef yelled my name over and over. I strained against her, reaching for Cris on the table. His eyes were dull and glassy; his knuckles were white around the knife hilt.
No matter how I struggled, Stef was stronger. I rushed toward Cris, but Stef yanked me back and shoved me to the floor, pinning me. “Stop it!” she yelled.
But I wasn’t flailing anymore. I was too busy watching a white light bleed into the table.
The light expanded, flooding around the table legs that stretched over the pit. It was so bright I had to squint as the glow encompassed Cris’s body.
Tears leaked down my face, from despair and shock and light. All the air swept inward, wind rattling bones and snatching at our clothes; I caught my scarf as it tried to flee my neck. Deborl’s skeleton skidded on the floor toward the pit, as though all the air were being sucked down. It strained against the shackles.
The glow flared so bright I had to close my eyes. I wanted to close my ears as the wind howled around table legs.
Beneath me, the floor moved, slick against my clothes.
No, I was moving on the floor, both Stef and me. Shrieking wind pulled us, even as Stef scrambled to help me off my back. Wind-deaf and light-blind, we had to feel our way as the pull grew stronger, like gravity was shifting.
My heart hammered with a surge of adrenaline.
“We have to find something to hold on to!” I couldn’t tell if she heard me over the rush and keen, but I reached—her arm reached with mine—and felt along the floor, trying to dig my toes in.
“No!” Janan’s voice filled the room, thunder and waterfall-crashing.
I fought the wind’s pulling, the way air thinned, and I lost track of Stef. Twice, I felt her bump against me, but I focused on not sliding as red light pulsed beyond my eyelids, and white light burned and moved. Even with my eyes closed, I saw silhouettes of my hands splayed on the floor, desperate for traction.
And then Cris’s voice: “Ana. Stef. Go.”
I couldn’t help but sob. He’d done it. Done something. “Cris!” My voice was lost under Janan’s rage and the wind still sucking toward the pit. Bones clacked, and silver chains rattled and clanked.
Janan roared words I didn’t know, had never heard. His voice was pressure on my skin, hot as a sylph turned solid.
“Ana, now!” Cris again, like sparks catching and burning. “Please.”
It was his desperation that made me open my eyes. A gray archway waited ahead of me, just a few paces away, and mostly in the floor so I wouldn’t even have to stand. He’d done it. Freedom. His plan had worked.
Jaw clenched, gasping at thin air, I clawed toward the misty portal and hooked my fingers on the bottom lip. I just had to pull myself up and tumble out. Quickly, too, because the outline wavered, shot with streaks of black and white. Changing its destination.
If I didn’t hurry, Janan would seize control.
“Go, Ana!” Cris again, choked and smothered. Lights and air pulsed all around the chamber as the two battled within the temple walls.
Stef. I couldn’t find her.
Digging my fingers into the stone—what would happen if the archway vanished altogether?—I adjusted myself to get a better look around the room. I shouted her name, but she wouldn’t hear me over the stampede of Janan’s rage.
The table. If I squinted right, I could make out arms looped around the near table leg, and Stef straining to keep herself from being sucked the rest of the way in.
She had bumped against me before. Nudging me away from the pit?
Her attempt at heroism had almost gotten her killed, too.
I had a scarf, but even if I had been strong enough to hold on to the archway with one hand and pull her up with the other, it wasn’t long enough.
There was no asking Cris for help. The shrieking and wind grew worse, and Cris cried out in pain. I had no idea what Janan could do when they were mostly without substance, but the wailing sounded like stars dying.
I pulled myself far enough to the arch and braced my elbow inside it, then lifted my leg as high as I could. My heel caught the edge. Terrified every motion would make me slip, I tied one end of the scarf around my ankle, making sure the knot was secure.
Leg down again, the scarf whipped in the wind, close to Stef but not close enough. I couldn’t see her face in the searing light, but her arms didn’t move from around the table leg.
Chest muscles aching with the strain of holding on, I switched to my hands again, so now instead of my upper body at the archway, only my head peeked in.