“Hold!” Hel shouts, her voice reverberating around the mud walls. “Now, Raina!”
It takes a second for me to grasp the command, but we meet eyes as she reaches for Rhonin’s arm on one side and Nephele’s on the other. I watch the chain happen around the small room, and I grab Alexus’s hand.
He looks down, brow furrowed. And just as the Vipers charge toward us, I think of the Jade River, and pray I can carry ten people through time across the desert.
57
RAINA
Summerlands
The Jade River
* * *
“You could’ve told me,” Alexus says, sitting on a boulder surrounded by woody bushes I can’t name, stripping off his blood-soaked clothes beneath the moon and a handful of starlights.
We’re all scattered along the sandy banks of what I hope is the Jade River. It’s cold out, and getting wet is going to be awful, but we can build a fire or two. No matter what, we cannot remain drenched in the remains of dead men. I can still smell their deaths, a cluster of scents burning in my nostrils.
I swallow hard and work diligently to come out of my clothes too. “You would have said no,” I sign.
“Yes, because it was risky. And painful.” He picks away the last of the briars that have been wedged in his skin since landing in a grove of thorny scrub.
It’s wrong of me, but I bite my upper lip to keep from smiling as he grabs his pile of clothes and walks up, wearing nothing but the key around his neck. I peel off my tunic, hoping that’s a significant enough distraction.
He lowers his gaze to my breasts, but only for a moment. “Carrying ten people at once into your abyss could’ve gone very badly, Raina. You don’t know the limits of this ability yet. You don’t even know what it is. And I would rather not lose you. You don’t know what your body can handle when it comes to this.”
He turns and heads toward the riverbank to rinse out his clothes, the muscles of his long body flexing with every strut. Feeling guilty, I finish and join him, dunking my clothes in the cold, lapping waves.
I consider trying to heat an area like I did at Hampstead Loch, but this river isn’t still as a lake, and I wasn’t so magickally drained then.
“This is a much different scenario than our first time together by a stream of water,” he says, changing the subject as he scrubs his shirt against a rock. “I’m glad you’re not hating me still.”
I grab his hand, stopping his work, because I know him well enough to realize he changed the subject for me.
“I am sorry,” I sign. “I will try to be wiser.”
His frowning expression softens, just a little, and his eyes glint with something delicate and tender. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you, Raina. That is my greatest fear. I cannot explain it, just like I can’t explain much about my feelings when it comes to you. I only know that I would roll this world off its axis if I lost you.”
I touch his face. “I am not going anywhere,” I sign, but the idea seems to haunt him still.
We finish our clothes and lay them out on rocks to drip-dry, then we thread our fingers together and wade into the cold water. We can’t go far because of the current.
Alexus gasps and cups himself. “Well, this is fucking terrible.”
I shake with laughter, because it is terrible, but we don’t have any other choice.
Quickly, we squat down and scrub away the dried blood and awful bits of sinew, then we dip under to rinse our hair. This probably won’t get rid of all the gore, which turns my stomach. I say a prayer to the Ancient Ones that I don’t wake up tomorrow with someone’s flesh still on me.
When we get out, we work to dress in our wet clothes, which isn’t an easy task, but soon we’re stalking the shoreline, shivering, trying to find a place for a makeshift camp for the night. Callan and Zahira somehow had the mindfulness during the attack to slip their arm through a pack before reaching for their neighbor’s hand, so we have a few supplies. We gather those and keep looking, and I can’t help but worry that I could’ve been wrong about where I sent us, and we just can’t tell in the darkness.
“This is the Jade River, yes?” I sign, knowing Alexus has been here before.
“Most definitely.” He points to the west.
I glance that direction, and though it’s a faint distinction, I can just make out the jagged tips of mountains rising like monstrous teeth against the night sky. Mount Ulra is out there somewhere.
I cannot believe we’re here.
