I looked up to watch the water begin to spin. It gathered in a vortex, opening up a portal that slowly stretched upwards.
This wasn’t my doing. My control was over the dead, not over water unless I connected to old magic. Someone else was doing this. And for a moment, beyond Arwyn fighting his way through a group of Hunters, I saw a woman with eyes glowing bright silver.
Verena.
Before I could make sense of her actions, a distant scream sounded above me, growing closer. I looked up in time to watchthe water part like some biblical story, allowing for Romy and Kai to free-fall on top of us.
In my final act of intention, I commanded the dead to shift their bent and broken bodies in place to soften their fall. I held my breath, the seconds passing slowly.
“It’s over!” Tomin shouted as shadows crept across the shadows and began to devour everything around us.
Romy and Kai continued to fall as the darkness swept over everything, devouring the scene of victors in a mass of pure shadow. I didn’t see if they made it. I couldn’t hear their bodies thump against my controlled cushioning of dead flesh.
I could only hope they made it as Bahmet dragged us from the first trial, and spat us back out into the next.
19
ARWYN
My first thought was Hector.Where is he?
Wind and rain sliced at my skin, stinging it raw. My hands sunk into damp sands; the more force I pushed against it, the more it tried to swallow my arms down to the elbows.
Blinking away the sludge smeared across the side of my face, courtesy of having my face pressed into the ground, I got my first glimpse of where Bahmet had cast us to.
A beach.
One moment I’d been stood in a fucked-up Roman amphitheatre, and then the darkness came, chewed me up, and spat me out here.
Bodies lay scattered across the almost-black sands, some groaning whereas others were completely still. There were so many. White-crested waves lapped out from a churning ocean of deep cobalt, like reaching hands dragging a couple of unconscious or dead—I wasn’t sure—out into its hold.
“Arwyn.” Someone struggled to get my name out. “Quick.Help.”
I spun around, caring for nothing in that moment other than the man nearest to me. Hector was sat hunched, looking as badas my body felt. Bahmet had taken no care when he dropped us off in his twisted holding grounds. From the ache in every single part of my body as I crawled like a dog towards Hector, I was sure he’d dropped us on the stiff earth from a great height.
There wasn’t a single bone in my body that didn’t hurt like a bitch.
Over the roaring crash of waves hitting the bank, and the whistling winds carrying salt water, I could hear another familiar voice. My father. He was shouting commands to his Hunters who’d suffered as I did.
But I paid him little mind as I dragged my aching body towards Hector. “Are you hurt?”
It was like Hector couldn’t hear me, but instead of answering the one thing I cared about, he lifted a finger and pointed a few feet away from him.
“Them.”
Romy fought her way out of the ocean’s clawing embrace. She was soaked to the bone, tripping and falling as the undercurrent tried to claim her. Her back was to me, her focus pinned on the lifeless body she was dragging out of the depths. The man she was with… Kai, that was his name. Someone I’d never seen before, and yet I understood on a deeper level that he was important.
I didn’t wait for another request from Hector. I forced away all my pain, using years of practice to pretend it didn’t exist. My feet squelched in soggy sand until my shins kicked away at the ocean as I waded in.
I thought I understood pain… until the cold wrapped around me. I bit down on my cheeks, stifling the cry of anguish. The water felt like knives, thousands of them, cutting at my skin. My clothes became weights on my body the deeper I gained.
“I’ve got you,” I said, surprising Romy with my presence. Her braids clung to her face like coiled snakes, the tarnished rings ofgold which decorated them glinting in the small amount of light the dark cloud above let in.
At the sight of me, Romy drew her lip over her teeth and snarled. I saw the fear in her eyes, bright and powerful, a feeling I was all too familiar with. It was the look of someone who was scared of losing something dear to them. And from my vantage point, that must’ve been Kai.
Forceful waves cracked into my stomach, forcing my body to bow. “I am here to help. I promise.”
It took a couple of seconds for Romy to realise I was serious. Her expression softened a touch, and I accepted that as my chance to reach in, and help carry the weight of Kai’s body.
