They come from every direction, relentless and bloodthirsty.
Then, suddenly, silence rushes in. Roaring silence.
Faintly, I hear myself gasping for air. Marcus, huffing by my cheek. The pain washes out of me with every breath. With each one, I feel stronger.
“Are they gone?” My voice is a croak. Marcus’s arms are like slabs of concrete around me. He loosens them and we step back—and my balance wavers.
Neither one of us has a scratch, but my stomach’s churning. My legs feel unsteady. Shaky and undependable.
The clearing is empty. No one else is here anymore.
“Marcus—” I clear my throat, trying to find my voice. “Gideon would never say that. He’d never say those things.”
Marcus puts his hands on his hips and drops his eyes. I can still see the pain in him. The doubt is coiled in his body. The hurt is.
“He wouldn’t, Marcus. He’d never even think them.”
He looks up. “You don’t know what’s in his head.”
“But I know I’m right.”
“You’re saying that to protect him. He could be thinking everything we just heard. It could be what he’s always thinking. He could be—”
I step close and look right into his eyes. “No. Don’t let this place ruin your friendship. Don’t let it poison your heart. Gideon loves you, Marcus. Maybe he’s never said it outright, but—” But what, Daryn? “But he’s never said he loves me either, and—” And what, Daryn? “And I know that he likes me, at least.”
A smile lights in Marcus’s eyes. “At least.” He shakes his head. “Daryn…” He looks around the clearing slowly. “I don’t want to doubt him.”
“Then choose not to.”
“You think you choose what you believe?”
“Yes,” I say without thinking. Without knowing whether I mean it. I just need him and Gideon to stay good. I need it desperately. We all do, in order to find Bas.
He wraps his hand around the staff of the scythe and pulls it out of the ground, setting it on his shoulder. “We should go back.”
We’re quiet on the walk. I can’t help worrying about where this will lead. We’re being haunted. We’ve managed to stay together so far and unaffected by the stress, for the most part. But I can’t see that lasting. The Rift will change us if we stay here long enough. It could destroy us, I think.
Which makes me think of Bas, who’s been here eight months.
How has he survived the Rift?
CHAPTER 24
GIDEON
As soon as Riot and I go under, my heart stops and cold clamps down on my muscles.
Chaos swirls around us. Ice slams at us like bricks. There’s no way to see through bubbles and black churning water.
When Riot yanks away from me, my arms don’t respond, won’t do what they’re supposed to, and I can’t hang on to him.
He surges away. Surges down, sinking. His legs thrash, trying to gallop underwater. Gallop up, to the surface. To me.
But he drops like an anchor.
The flames on his legs go out first. Then his body. His mane and tail, last.
My horse goes dark like a sinking ship losing its lights.
He disappears.
I know I can’t yell out loud so I hold it in, which makes it sound terrible. Like a sob.
I kick and dive, but my legs have no strength and my arms are even worse. White spots burst before my eyes. My lungs start to convulse. I need air.
I stop swimming and look up. I can’t see the surface anymore.
I keep swimming down. I won’t lose my horse this way.
But my lungs feel like they’re filling with acid, and I can’t hold back anymore.
I use the last of my breath to yell for Riot.
Then I brace for ice water to shoot into the back of my mouth.
Cold air rushes in instead. My oxygen-starved lungs gulp it in, restoring, as my mind races to understand.
I’m breathing.
Underwater.
Or … I’m swimming through air?
Not the time to figure it out. Riot needs me. I keep searching for him, carving my way through freezing black water that I can somehow breathe. Eyeballs chilling. Fingers numbing. Cold knifing into the back of my throat.
Bubbles rise up from below. Swarms of bubbles that grow denser, and steal my visibility.
Then they turn green.
First pale, then bright, then dark.
All shades of green.
As I’m grappling with this, their texture grows brittle against the skin on my arms and my face. A sound rises in my ears, a rustling like shaking leaves, and I feel the slap of bending branches on my legs and back.
I’m swimming through leaves.
And I’m going too fast.
My brain provides theories—gravity, falling through air, through trees.
None of them make sense, and I’m not ready when the branches vanish. I don’t even brace myself as I fall through the canopy, punching into open air.
I see the maze of branches above me, the flash of a thick tree trunk, and the next instant I slam against the ground flat on my back.
My breath pushes out of my chest in one heave, like a balloon popping. I wait for the reverse, the intake, but I’m back to burning, starved lungs that can’t draw any air.
Jode’s face appears over me, frowning in concern. His wet hair drips water on my forehead. “Are you all right? Gideon, can you move?”
I thump my chest.
“Breath get knocked out of you?” The worry leaves his face. “Better work it out, then, because I won’t be giving you mouth-to-mouth. It would be too odd, what with Anna.”
I flip him the bird.
He smiles. “There you go. Right as rain again.” He straightens, but I lie there another minute. Shivering. Soaked. Freezing cold. And my chin is throbbing, too.
“Horses?” I ask, finally able to look around. We’re back in the woods. Back in the clearing where we camped. Where I stood less than an hour ago.
“Just there. Blazing angry, yours. He’s about to set this entire forest on fire.”
“Let him.”
*
Jode’s right. Riot’s not himself.
Big curls of flame roll up his legs and chest. His amber eyes are huge and distant. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I can’t sense what he’s feeling.
I rest my hand on his wide forehead and keep it there until his eyes start to soften. Until I feel him grow stronger, his strength relaying back to me.
“You’re a good horse, Riot.”
He blows a blustering breath.
You’re a good human, Gideon. But you could’ve warned me sooner about the ice. I don’t like frozen lakes.
I pat his neck. Then I hang my arms over the saddle, letting him hold my weight, which makes us both feel better.
Jode’s busy doing things I can’t see. I hear him walking around behind me. Zipping up bags and talking quietly to Lucent and Ruin.
“Have you finished licking your wounds?” Jode asks, bringing Lucent and Ruin over by their leads.
“Haven’t even started yet.”
“Well, can you wrap it up? We need to find Marcus and Daryn, and Shadow and—”
“Did you actually think you could pull Riot off that lake with a rope? That you could. All five-foot-ten, a buck sixty of you?”
“It seemed more promising than standing beside him on shattering ice.”