“My ankle…,” she admits. “I must have sprained it when we fell. But never mind me, let me look at your—”
Jyn reaches gingerly for my injured hand. When we both look down to inspect the damage, we stop. My jaw drops open. My missing finger hasgrown back. The skin is pink and tender, my knuckle throbbing where the man’s teeth chewed clean through. I turn my hand over and back, reeling. Now that I think about it, the vision in my ruined eye has faded back in as well. If the emaciated underground cave dweller wasn’t enough to send me over the edge, this is bound to do it.
“I don’t understand,” I murmur. “How can this be? It’s as if by—”
“Magic,” she finishes for me, thoughtful and perplexed.
“Is it a lingering effect of the blood you fed me before?”
Her brows furrow into a deep frown. “No, this… this is something else.”
“Like what?” I tilt my head to the side, studying her. She holds something conflicted in her dark gaze. Contemplative.Secretive.“Do you know something?”
“We must find a way out of this place before hunger reaches us,” she deflects.
I glance down at the dead man beside us. It would certainly be a cruel fate to end up like him. He said he’d been trapped down here for four moons; I shudder at the bones beneath us, wondering how many other poor souls were led here only to be devoured. Were it not for Jyn, I might well have been next.
If she notices the way our thread of fate has begun to take on more and more color, she says nothing of it. I don’t draw attention to it despite my lightheaded reverie, fearing that she may once again cut the process short. The thread is nowhere near fully restored, but it’s transforming with every passing second. It twistsand it weaves, binding itself together where once it looked seconds away from breaking apart, the center of it becoming a richer, deeper crimson hue. The ends connected to our fingers may still be gray and unraveling, but with enough time…
“Do you have the strength to transform and fly us out of here?” I ask.
“We don’t know how deep underground we are. If we’re not close to the surface and I try to break through, there’s a good chance the cave will collapse and bury us alive.”
I sigh heavily. “Not ideal.”
We help each other to our feet. Jyn slings her arm over my shoulder while I circle mine around her waist. She leans against me heavily, shifting uncomfortably on her injured foot. Silently, we both search for a way out of this hell.
A wisp appears before us, floating ominously a few feet away. A whole line of them appear, one by one, leading down what looks to be a long, narrow tunnel. There’s another narrow tunnel next to it, our path forward forking into two. The wisps want us to go right.
“This way,” I say, helping Jyn turn so that we stumble left.
They won’t make a fool of me twice.
21
The winding tunnels are labyrinthine.Were it not for the wisps and their simpleminded nature, Jyn and I would have ended up going in circles. Every time we come to another fork, the wisps eagerly try to tempt us down a certain path.
We never follow them.
The walls are tight and the tunnel roof is low. I have to duck down more than once to avoid hitting my head on dangling stalactites. The air is thick and stale. More than once, intrusive thoughts of the walls caving in and crushing us to death skitters like a nest of spiders through my mind. This would be such a terrible place to die. Our very own tomb. The only reason I don’t give in to full-fledged hysteria is because of the soft press of Jyn’s body against my own, keeping me anchored to reality.
She limps along beside me, quietly gritting her teeth as we venture farther underground, judging by the downward slope beneath our feet and the growing chill in the air. It’s alarming, to be sure, when we’re so desperate to make it back to the surface, but what other choice do we have? I doubt Jyn and I will be able to climb out of the sand pit we fell through. I figure that whatever made these tunnels must have also made an exit for itself.
Jyn has not uttered a single complaint, but I can feel the agony she’s masking. My own ankle throbs empathetically with every step we take. It makes me wonder if she can sense my bruised throat and splitting headache.
We wander for hours, the endless maze appearing to warp and shift. The first pangs of hunger cause my stomach to clench. When was it that I last ate? How I would love a meal of rice and steamed vegetables. I think of the roasted pork A-Ba used to make for us to welcome each new year. Everyone knew that his spice blend was the best, but he’d never divulge his recipe.
I swallow dryly, shoving the thought aside. None of that, now.
Eventually, those tricky wisps bring us to a sudden drop. They resorted to following us like insistent children tugging at their mother’s hands for some attention. The soft breeze I detect whispering against my cheeks gives rise to a spark of hope. Fresh air. It can only mean we’re getting close to the exit.
“Let me go ahead first,” I say, using the light of the wisps to get a sense of the drop. I see ground. Not a leg-breaking plummet, but still a significant fall all the same.
I take a deep breath before sliding carefully over the edge, hanging on tight before letting go entirely. Itisa long fall, but I manage to roll and disperse my harsh downward momentum to ease the landing. I groan as I pull myself to my feet. Everything is heavy—my body, my soul, my mind.
I turn, looking up. “This way, my lady.”
“Are you sure?”
