The problem was that the silence gave me far too much time to think about my husband and what might happen now that we had cleared up so many misunderstandings. I felt like a fool for not having tried to talk things out with him earlier but knew that if he’d tried, I wouldn’t have believed him.
I had been so angry that I would have assumed he was trying to trick or manipulate me for some nefarious reason.
We had both needed to change and grow to be in the place we were now, and I was grateful that we had.
We stopped several times to eat, drink, and rest. As the sun began its descent from the apex of the sky, I asked Suri, “Do you know how much farther we have to go?”
She held up four fingers and then put three of them back down.
“Three-quarters of the way there?” I asked.
Yes.
I had a strange mixture of fear and anticipation. I didn’t know what the tests would be or if we would even be able to pass them. What if something happened to us in that cave? No one would be able to come in after us. There wouldn’t be any kind of rescue. Everything would be solely on our shoulders.
I also thought about what we would do if the weapon wasn’t there. What if this entire thing was nothing more than a fool’s errand?
We resumed heading up the mountain, and Rokh had been right. It was definitely colder up here. When I asked what kinds of trees were surrounding us, Io told me they were called pine. I liked the way they smelled—the air seemed fresh and clean and it energized me.
Luna disappeared and I stopped. I turned around and called her name. She had been sticking so closely to me that it made me think something had happened to her. I supposed it was possible she just wanted to go off and hunt, but I walked away from the group, still looking for her and calling her name.
Something didn’t feel right.
I put my hand over my stomach, which had started to flip nervously. I stepped over a large pool of water and noticed that the trees around me seemed to be tilting to the right. Odd.
Then I noticed some strange cracks on the ground near my feet.
Xander was up in the front of the group, near Suri. He cupped one of his hands to his mouth and yelled back, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find—”
The earth opened up beneath me and I fell straight down.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I immediately pulled my xiphos out and slammed it into the dirt next to me. I just kept falling, my sword feeling as if it were cutting through air. There was no way for me to gain purchase. My heart tried to escape out of my throat while icy terror took hold of my chest, making it so I couldn’t breathe.
Then my xiphos struck the top of a giant rock and I came to such a hard stop that I worried my arm might come out of its socket. I let out a grunt of pain as I hit the stone. Dirt continued to fall all around me, like rain during a terrible storm. I could barely see as it showered down on top of me.
Was this how I would die? Wasn’t this what the goddess had done to Ajax? Opened the earth beneath him and swallowed him whole?
The hysterical thought occurred to me that I hadn’t broken my vow but was going to be buried alive anyway.
I heard everyone yelling my name, but the falling dirt was louder. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, what they were doing. I put my hand over my eyes, shading them so that I could see better.
It was then I realized the dirt was closing in on me. The hole was filling up and I would be caught in the middle of it and crushed.
I would drown in dirt.
Someone had thrown down a rope, and I reached for it but missed. I tried very hard not to panic as the dirt compressed against my ankles. I felt the level rise, up to my calves. The soil was heavy against me, pulling down on my legs. My shoulder screamed out in pain, as I tried to hold on.
I forced myself to focus and ignore my spiking adrenaline when they swung the rope to me again. This time I was able to grab it. Someone had made a loop at the end and I put it underneath my left arm as I was still holding on to my sword with my right.
The loop closed around my neck and under my left armpit, and I sent a prayer to the goddess to help me survive this. It was excruciating being pulled up, the rope burning and biting my skin.
But it certainly beat the alternative.
I kept my grip on my xiphos and yanked it out of the wall. I wouldn’t leave it behind.
