“Your heartbeat’s too loud,” I growled, mouth barely moving.
It wasn’t just hers, though.
“Tell yours to shush too, then,” she whispered, a traitor of a smile flickering at the corner of her mouth.
“I can’t do this. They areallaround us.” Aura jumped out of cover.
“Aura!” Eleanor whisper-shouted, catching Lorian’s hand. Her knuckles went white.
“What is she doing?” I snarled, already shifting my weight to go. I had to ignore how Rune’s body felt against mine as I did.
Aura didn’t look back at us. She moved in the mountains’ shadow like a ghost, a skill I hadn’t known any imp of being capable of. Fear bled off her in tremors she couldn’t fully hide. The shake in her fingers, the constant catch in her breath. But her path was clear. She headed straight into the middle of the vampires, toward the pedestal holding the relic.
The relic’s light brightened.
The hum in my bones rose from the proximity of that damned thing.
“Not good,” Hawk breathed.
“No kidding,” Raze muttered, yanking out a blade low at his thigh. I hadn’t even known he had one.
A cultist sniffed the air again, head snapping toward our pillar. Two more pivoted with precision at the sounds we were making.
Aura reached the center.
“Aura, get back!” I bit out.
She shot us a look over her shoulder with wide blue eyes, pupils blown, throat bobbing, and shook her head once. “They’re going to catch us if we hide. Cover me,” she whispered, voice barely audible, but the enchantment echoed her words around the clearing.
Then, she stretched for the obsidian. Her fingers grazed it, and the relic detonated in a red and black glow.
Sound punched the air with a crack like a skull splitting against stone. Snow fell from the mountain peaks as runes flared from the snow.
Everythingstopped.
Ten, twenty, thirty heads turned in the same second with predator-like stillness. The chant ceased, and the silence was a blade.
“Move!”I shouted, but Aura was already ripping the relic free and running back toward us. It burned her fingers, her flesh seared, and the smell hit me a half-second before her scream.
She flung it toward us as we all jumped out of cover.
Rune pushed off the pillar and spun with her foot to the stone, pushing off it and snatching the relic out of the air. The sound it made against her fingers sizzled, and I knew it hurt.
“Fuck,”I muttered, eyes widening.
The relic lit her fingertips like molten wire, and the veins in her neck and face lit up black and red from her touching it. The artifact sang a wrong, hungry sound, and the ground tilted sideways.
“What is it doing?” Zuko reached instinctively for Rune. “Give it to me. It’s hurting yo?—”
“Don’t touch me,”Rune snapped, and her golden eyes went dark in a way I did not like.
“That’s new,” Zuko said, stumbling back like she’d hit him.
“She doesn’t mean it! It’s the relic, remember?” Slater barked, head on a swivel. “We’ve gotta bolt,now.”
“Run!” Aura’s voice cracked as she yelled.
She planted herself between us and the nearest cultists; her left hand lifted, trembling from the burn in her fingers. Her bones were showing.
