Ican’t lift my head, can hardly see with the black nothingness encroaching on my vision. My legs have completely given out, and now my toes scrape across the rough floor as two prisoners drag me through the tunnels. Every fucking movement is excruciating, like getting my back sliced open again and again. I can feel myself sinking closer to unconsciousness with every labored breath. If I pass out, that’s it, I’m dead. I try to shift, to heal myself, but it’s useless. Between the wolfsbane that’s most likely still working its way through my system and the pain stealing every ounce of my attention, it’s impossible.
“Let me down. Let me down,” I say, panting.
“Just a little farther,” a female says. Mave.
“Let me down,” I say, more forcefully this time. Someone sighs, and our forward motion stops, then some scuffling as I’m moved to the side and lowered to the ground. They’ve set me down in a seated position, but the moment they remove their hands fromunder my arms, I continue to sink until my cheek rests against the cool stone floor. “Leave me. Get Katya,” I say. “Get her out of here.”
“Aemon—”
“Go,” I shout, pain shooting through my back from the effort. I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth and wait for it to pass.
When I open my eyes, they’re gone.
Did I pass out? If I did, it was brief, because the sounds of stampeding feet and shouting haven’t dimmed in the slightest.
Smooth skin,I think to myself, picturing my whole unmarked back in my mind, but the image is fuzzy, my thoughts sluggish. Whether it’s due to the pain or if I’ve simply lost too much blood, I can’t say.
Muscle and tissue fused back together. Smooth, unmarred skin. My back whole.I focus on the words, pushing the pain to the back of my mind. I can’t die. Not like this. But nothing is happening and as the moments pass, my resolve begins to falter. I just need to close my eyes, for only a moment. Just a moment of rest, and I’ll try again.
“Aemon. Where are you?”
My eyes snap open as the familiar voice fills my head. Katya. Dammit.
“Aemon, please. Answer me.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.Stupid, fucking bullshit life. The minute I find something worth living for, it tries to take it away. No. I refuse. I fucking refuse to die here.
Skin and tissue pulling back together. Skin and tissue pulling back together. Skin and tissue—
My back begins to tingle.
49
The pounding in my head is becoming unbearable, and I finally have to release my hold on the guards or risk blacking out. It eases the pain somewhat, but it still feels as though somebody took a sledgehammer to my skull. I do my best to push past the pain and focus. I can do this. “Move,” Leina shouts at the spectators fleeing ahead of us. They leap out of the way as the four of us barrel down the stairs. When I start down the next set of steps, Leina catches me by the arm.
“This way.” She points back toward the exit. The other two girls are already gone, having disappeared into the crowd. We’re stuck in-between floors. The bodies spilling down one set of stairs and up the other bump and jostle us as they flee the arena.
“I can’t leave Aemon,” I say.
Leina takes me by the shoulders and forces me to look at her. “He’s gone, Katya. There’s no way he could survive that. You go after him now, you’re just going to get yourself killed.”
“No,” I say, shoving her arms off me.
“Katya.”
I hand over the gun. “I won’t leave him. You go. Take the others. Free who you can. Don’t wait up for me.” I don’t wait for her response. “Move,” I shout to the mass of fae storming up the stairs and, once again, they obey, moving to one side. Leina continues calling after me, but I ignore it. Now is not the time to get into an argument. Her voice fades as I fly down the staircases and out into the arena’s underground tunnels. The air is different here, stale and moist and sickly sweet with decay. There’s a weight to it, like in the caves, the phantom pressure of an entire arena bearing down on me. I take a step forward. The gravelly floor crunches beneath my feet, cutting the silence, and I freeze, expecting some beastly creature to jump from the shadows at any moment.
But there’s nothing.
Stop being a coward, Katya, and find Aemon.
I take a breath and start down the tunnel. Torches are placed at intervals along the wall, illuminating small swaths of space into tiny oases from the oppressive darkness. I rush from one to the other like a child afraid of the bogeyman hiding in the shadows. Hitting a crossing, I pause, checking one way, then the other. Everything looks exactly the same. It would be way too easy to get lost in these tunnels. Who knows, maybe that was the architect’s intent. I bend over and brush my hand along the dirty floor, searching. There I find a chunk of white rock and use it to hastily draw an arrow on the wall, pointing back the way I came.
Now what? I peer down the two tunnels, looking for something to jump out at me and tell me which way to go.
Unfortunately, that something turns out to be a fae guard, dressed in black regalia, who enters the tunnel on my right.
Our eyes lock.
