My friend was hurt.
And I was the reason.
With a broken snarl, I hauled myself upright and swayed drunkenly. My knees threatened to buckle, but Whisper pressed into me like usual, solid and unwavering.
I touched him where he wasn’t scorched, tears pricking my eyes. Even his nose was shiny with a burn. “I’m so sorry.” I tried to swallow, finding soot instead of saliva. “I’ll fix this, alright? I’ll get you help. I’ll summon the best vets and—”
A tearing sensation severed my heart from my body.
Folding over, my fingers clawed at my flayed chest as an invisible hand reached past my ribcage and fisted my very soul.
Rook.
For a split second, I saw her.
Churning and drowning, whipped around walls and through slipways, her bones broken. Skin icy white, lips pale blue. She wasn’t breathing—
My vision tunnelled.
She’s dying.
Certainty crashed through me, making me retch with annihilating pain. Pain I’d never felt before.
Whisper whimpered, circling me, pressing his burned body against my blood-sticky, frost-wrapped skin.
I convulsed as the world fractured.
Find her.
Go to her.
NOW!
Grief for my best friend tried to smother it.
I owed him.
I needed to help him.
But another flash of excruciating agony dropped me to one bleeding knee.
Clutching my chest, I panted through the worst misery of my life.
It was existential—like a piece of me was shrivelling, suffocating...RUN.
My head snapped upright, locking onto the cave’s entrance up ahead.
A low hum buzzed in the back of my skull, in my goddamn bones—like some hidden tuning fork striking deep, deep inside me. The frequency built, layering over itself, growing sharper, hungrier, until the cave visibly shivered, sending ice and soot raining from the ceiling.
I bolted.
Barefoot and dressed only in a singed pair of trousers, I skidded into the other cave and came to a stop beside the most dangerous pool in the Burning Phoenix caves. I’d always kept my distance as a kid. Always known this particular water hole was connected to the waterfall that poured into the Phoenix River far below.
The waterfall’s roar overshadowed everything, throbbing in my teeth as I glared at the spiralling water, seeing a tomb instead of a pool.
My heart twisted as Rook’s presence flickered.
I grunted at theabsenceof it as she faded.
