Stubborn woman.
I kept moving. Almost to the far side. The bridge was holding. We were going to make it.
Then I heard it. Metal screaming. Something giving way.
The bridge lurched.
I turned. Carys was in the middle. The section behind her was collapsing. Falling away in chunks of rusted metal.
She was stranded.
At the same moment, the Mondian guards burst from the cave entrance. Nine of them, led by the same one who’d held the blaster to her throat. They fanned out, weapons raised.
The lead guard’s comm crackled to life. Tarsus’s voice, tinny and amplified, echoed across the ravine.
“Carys! Step back off the bridge. Come to me.”
She froze, trapped between us.
“The bridge is collapsing,” Tarsus’s voice continued. “You have no escape. Come back to me, and I will let the Vinduthi leave Valyria alive. You failed my test, but you are still valuable. This doesn’t have to end with your death.”
The Mondian guards held their fire, waiting.
She stood there. The bridge failing. Tarsus’s will behind her. Me ahead of her.
The ultimate choice.
She looked at me. Brown eyes meeting mine across the distance.
I held out my hand. “I’ve got you. Jump.”
She looked back at the Mondian. At the cave. Then back at me.
“I’m with him!” she shouted, not to me, but to them. “I’m not your property!”
She ran. Toward me. Toward freedom. The bridge screaming under her.
“Fire!” the lead guard roared, lifting his weapon.
Metal gave way behind her. Sections falling into the ravine as blaster fire strafed where she’d been.
She was ten meters away. Five.
The bridge collapsed completely under her feet.
She jumped, Flinx wrapped in her arms.
I reached out and grabbed her wrist. Pulled her across the gap. We fell together onto solid ground.
Behind us, the entire bridge fell. Crashing into the ravine below.
The Mondian guards stood on the far side. Rage contorting their features. Their blasters useless at this distance.
“This isn’t over!” the lead guard screamed, his voice hoarse. “He will find you! He will make you both pay!”
I pulled Carys to her feet. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”
CARYS
