I pulled against Fowler’s hand.
“Luna!” he growled, turning his body to snatch me by the shoulders. “We have to go! They’re lost. Most of them are covered in toxin, and it’s nearly midlight!”
For once in my life, midlight signaled the end of safety. Not the dawn of it. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I shook my head, but then everything started shaking. The very ground we crawled over vibrated. The underworld cavern trembled and shuddered, great clumps of earth falling from the ceiling.
“Dwellers,” he growled over the buzz of their return, as though I didn’t know. As though the rot of them wasn’t choking. “They’re coming.”
This time I didn’t resist as he pulled me after him.
A woman screamed, her cry of despair bouncing inside my head as we crawled over the nest and ran. My chest constricted, aching at the cries of the others we left behind, certain they would haunt me forever.
We ducked into the tunnel that I took to get to the nest. The earth still trembled as we ran down the tunnel, wet chunks of dirt showering all around us. I felt the telltale draft and knew we had come to the crossroads. Fowler started to pull right, but I stopped him, tugging him hard to the left. “This way!”
This time I led the way, clasping hard to his hand, relying on my memory.
“Not much farther,” I tossed over my shoulder, backtracking the way I had come. “We’re almost there.” I could smell the brackish water running softly down the chute that spat me out no so very long ago.
The rumbling intensified. More mud fell, showering us in thick clumps. Except it wasn’t just mud this time. Dwellers. Entire bodies emerged like infants pushing their way into the world. Their world. We were the interlopers in it. Never did I feel that more keenly.
“There are too many of them,” I murmured past numb lips, a calm settling over me as I tilted my face to the deluge of sludge and dwellers.
“No! This way.” Fowler jerked me into another tunnel, his strong fingers clenched hard around mine. He didn’t even care if we were going in the wrong direction. The goal was escape. Desperation drove him and his fear. The emotions filled my nose like burning feathers on the air.
His grip bit into me, each finger a burning imprint. He wasn’t going to surrender. It wouldn’t be like before. He wasn’t going to dive in headfirst. There would be no embracing of death.
But we couldn’t escape them. They met us in every direction, the stench of them thick, their moist breaths ragged as they began filling the space around us. Fowler uttered a stinging curse as more dwellers dropped from above, landing with fat plops all around us. Clawed fingers scored the ground as they shoved to their feet.
He swung around, yanking me with him. I felt dizzy for a moment as he pulled me one way, then another, moving us forward in a wild zigzag pattern.
I grabbed his shoulder, but he kept going, dodging their ice-cold bodies. “Fowler! Stop!” I dug harder into his arm. “Stop!”
He finally froze, pulling me into a pocket in the wall of a tunnel, shielding me with his body, his breath falling hard against the side of my face. I faced him, savoring the sensation of his eyes on me. His breath continued to fall in savage pants. It was hopeless.
“Fowler,” I pleaded, fighting to tune out the sounds of dwellers closing in—the rasp of their sensors, the shuffle of heavy feet. We didn’t have long before they would be on us, ripping flesh and sinew from our bones. I could almost imagine the weight of them on me, crushing, killing. “I don’t want to spend my last moments running.”
“Luna,” he choked out, his hand flexing around mine. “Why did you have to come . . .”
“Shh.” I cupped his face with both hands. “You’re not the only one who gets to play knight in shining armor, you know.” My thumbs brushed the planes of his cheeks, letting go of my anger. In this moment, what was the point? “I want in on some of the fun, too.” This was easier than being angry, easier than accusing him of betrayal.
He dropped his head until our foreheads rested together. “You’re supposed to live.”
I swallowed back the impulse to tell him the truth. Me living was never going to happen. It was only a matter of time. He’d told me as much when Sivo first insisted that I leave the tower with him. This world, full of darkness and monsters and tyranny, wasn’t for the living. Fowler had tried to tell me that so many times.
Since the moment I discovered that innocent girls were dying in Cullan’s quest to destroy me, my fate was sealed. My only regret was that I wasn’t able to stop him. That he would continue killing girls because of me.