Adara helped pull him up as his knees buckled. The knife in his leg made it almost impossible to stand.
“Where?” she asked desperately, another uncanny call rattling the earth. Fear squeezed her lungs at the sight of Dominic’s blood pooling beneath them. Too much, it was all too much.
“This way.” He nodded his head to their right.
Unwilling to waste time with questions, she unfalteringly followed his directions, dragging him through the desert.
It felt like they were trekking across the entire expanse of the wasteland for hours, but Adara knew it couldn’t have been that long. Her muscles strained to support herself and Dominic as they continued. Her lungs ached as she breathed in particles of sand in the powerful winds that caused them to stumble sideways.
Dominic staggered against her, and she gripped him harder to keep him upright. “Don’t you dare die on me, Dom,” Adara muttered as they trudged through the dunes, away from the sounds of the monsters that hunted them.
She gripped his tunic tightly, unwilling to let him see how violently her hands trembled at the thought of him dying in her arms. He stumbled, head lolling to the side, resting on her shoulder. His eyes drifted shut. Adara’s heart hammered faster, hands shaking uncontrollably beneath him as she tightened her grip and pulled him closer. She breathed in his scent of pine, and it would have calmed her had it not been masked by blood.
He couldn’t die on her. She wouldn’t let it happen. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she failed. How empty she would be without him filling the vast void within her after she’d lost pieces of herself to years of heartbreak and torment. How broken she would be without . . .
No, it was his key, hisdamned key,that she needed and the life and magic tied to it. Not him and his cunning, pretty lies.
“I didn’t save your ass for nothing,” she seethed.
His lips quirked into the faintest smile. His fingers weekly grasped onto her shirt, the barest hint that he was there, fighting back.
That’s it,she thought.Stay with me.“Are we almost there?” she asked, worry making her voice shake.
He nodded weakly, raising a hand to point in the distance, where the silhouette of a cottage stood. “There,” he whispered, voice hoarse and barely audible over the sound of another eerie howl that had chills creeping along her skin.
“You’re sure we’ll be safe there?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s warded against the monsters. Nothing but lost souls can enter.”
She shot him a questioning look.
“I found it before those things took me,” he explained. “I left my pack there.”
She sighed with relief. His pack was there. Medical supplies and water were there. He groaned in pain as she began tugging him onward with renewed fervor. “Almost there,” she encouraged.
Moments later, they reached a house that stood on a crumbling foundation. The wooden walls were cracked, and the ceiling was caving in. Adara carefully led him across the porch, avoiding the rotted wooden fissures, and across the open threshold where the door hung on broken hinges.
They stumbled inside the broken confines of the house, and Dominic collapsed onto a cracked leather sofa, moaning in agony. Adara found old candles, the wax almost gone, and lit them with the fire at her fingertips, illuminating the old, worn cottage. “Your pack?” she asked urgently. “Where is your pack?”
Dominic raised a hand, pointing to a cabinet that hung crookedly on the wall. She tried to ignore the dark stain across the floor as she went to the kitchen. The cupboard was already open, and Adara saw no rucksack within. She was about to fire a string of profanities at him.
“You first,” he said.
Adara’s brows furrowed.
“The vial in that cabinet. The one with the yellow label on it. Drink it. Y-your shoulder . . . ”
Adara stared at the torn skin on her shoulder, blood soaking her white tunic and brown vest.
“The things that attacked you are venomous. That’s the antidote.”
Her eyes flared wide in horror. She hadn’t noticed any symptoms of poison since the bite.
“It’s slow,” Dominic explained, as if reading her thoughts. “Takes days to kill.” He pointed to the vial again. “Drink,” he ordered.
She downed the elixir and returned to his side.
“Okay, now where is your pack?” she asked frantically. Her hands trembled at the sight of blood pooled beneath him. How long would it be until he bled out?
