Stop. You can whine and snark about him to yourself later.Right now, there was something a little more urgent at hand.
So I nodded, and told him, “Do it.” Hopefully fast, before I had too much more time to think about the drop below us.
Alastor didn’t waste a second. “Turn around.”
I did as he asked, and he gripped me by the waist.
“Grab the branch,” he told me.
“Hold on tight,” I told the boy. “Close your eyes and don’t let go of me.” His little arms and legs constricted around my neck and ribs, but I could worry about breathing later.
I reached across the gap and grabbed the other branch, Alastor steadying me the whole time. It was a little larger than the one where we currently stood, but not so large that I couldn’t get my arms around it.
“I’m going to lift you now.”
That was all the warning he gave me before he hoisted me up by the waist, and I scrambled, trying to swing my leg over the branch without crushing the child who hung from my chest.
Don’t look down
Don’t look down
Don’t look down
Even with Alastor’s help, this still required far more core strength than I possessed, but I couldalmostget my ankle up over the branch, and if I twisted a little more—
Shiverhit me like a bolt of lightning, like an electric charge zapping beneath my skin. And I knew what followed, knew there was no time to react.
Another quake. And this one hit while I was still in midair.
41
The Unyielding
Iwasfalling.
Flailing.
My legs dangled in open air. My arms still gripped the branch above, but with the boy clinging to me—squeezing so tight that breathing was impossible—I wasn’t sure how long I could hold up our combined weight.
And Alastor—
He’d had to release me, or risk dragging both of us down. When the shaking began, my weight had pulled him forward, over the gap between the branches, and it was only his quick thinking that had kept him from pulling all three of us to our deaths. But where—?
The tree stopped quaking, but the branch to which I clung still bounced with added weight as Alastor hauled himself up with enviable ease.
Hope fluttered in my chest. Maybe I wasn’t going to die here after all. Maybe—
The branch shuddered again, trembling with an aftershock of power, and though it was nothing compared to the last blast, the little boy suddenly snapped into a full panic.
He screamed, his little legs releasing me as he flailed. Now the full weight of him—made heavier by the bucking and writhing of his body—hung by his arms around my neck, and I knew if I didn’t grab him, hold on, he was going to fall. But if I took even one arm off the branch above, I wouldn’t have the strength to hold myself, let alone—
Hands grasped my waist from behind—Octavian’s hands. At the same moment Alastor grabbed me from above. Between the two of them, I was hauled up onto the upper branch, the boy kicking and screaming the entire time.
But there was something solid beneath me again. Something stable—for now.
“Get inside,” Alastor told me.
I dragged the writhing boy down the branch and practically fell against the door built into the side of the trunk. It opened easily, spilling the both of us into the dimly lit space beyond.
