“It’s okay,” Sam says as I sit up. “You’re okay.”
My breathing mellows, falling into a steady rhythm.
Sam checks my back for wounds, her hands frantically searching, pulling up my tunic but there’s no wound.
No evidence of Galen’s betrayal.
Ruse yips next to us as she paces back and forth.
“We need to go,” I say, my voice hoarse. Ruse meets my eye again before she tips her nose to the sky and howls.
“Give yourself a minute,” Sam says, hugging me tightly. “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”
“No,” I say, my voice gruff like I’ve just woken from sleep. “It’s a curse.”
“Slow down!”Sam shouts, but it’s no use. I’m running through the trees as if I wasn’t just dead on the forest floor. Wasn’t just watching my sister grieve me. As if I didn’t just speak to Elora from the other side.
I shake off the memory, not willing to lose my focus on getting to her as fast as possible.
Maybe there’s still time.
Maybe I can save her.
“I can’t,” I shout over my shoulder. “We need to find Elora, now!” My legs nearly give out, but I continue on. The wolves have darted ahead, their connection to Elora leading our way.
“What’s the hurry?” Sam is breathless behind me. “She and Jarek are together, it isn’t as though?—”
I stop so abruptly, Sam barrels directly into my back. I turn toward her, and the expression on my face must scare her because she backs away, tears still stained on her cheeks.
“What is going on?”
“She took my bargain from Grawgeth,” I admit, my chest heaving from the pace we’ve been keeping.
Sam sighs, bracing her hands on the tops of her thighs. “What?”
I cradle my head in my hands. “And she didn’t just take the same debt. She didn’t trade the last years of her life.” I look at her again, my stomach dipping with unease. “She traded her life for mine, she must have.” I nod to just beyond the hill, where we just came. “I saw her when I died, she was there and—” I bite my tongue, the pressure mounting in my chest near painful. “Shetraded herlifefor mine. And I died back there, Samaria. You know Idiedand then I was brought back.”
A tear slips from my eye, the reality of my words bringing me to my knees. The soil is damp beneath them. A pain pushes through my chest but it’s faint, like it’s long been healed.
“No,” Sam whispers, crouching to the ground next to me.
A breeze fills the spaces between us, stinging against my cheeks and ears.
My head tips up, looking at the sky. “I died and then, before I could argue my way out of it, I was alive again. Don’t you see what that means?” My voice cracks on the last word as I stand, Samaria pulling me to my feet.
“She’s gone…” she whispers, flicking her wrists up. “I don’t feel her spirit.” Her eyes light up as she glances behind her, as if she’s checking to see if someone is there. “Perhaps she isn’t gone?”
I turn, marching up and over the hill where the wolves wait. “We need to hurry.”
We rush down the hill, the increasing rain making it that much more difficult to traverse. I spot Alaric first, then Ruse, then the pups.
“Jarek!” Sam shouts and sprints in his direction. But I don’t follow. My feet remain planted in the soil. Her body lies crumpled in Jarek’s lap.
She’s gone.
The proof not only right before me, but inside of me.
When Sam reaches Jarek's side, she looks to Elora and covers her eyes. It takes everything in me to go to them. But step by step, I do.
