Time’s Teeth, Reggie looked half dead.
And the wraith…
I moved with the others, but my eyes still went back to where it was nailed against that tree, barely moving, his long fingers twitching, almost completely black.
The memory was going to stay with me forever. The image of it remained imprinted in my mind, even when I ran with the others as far away from it as we could get.
“One of us?”Seth shouted. “They want us to leaveone of usbehind?!”
His voice echoed in the forest, and we all flinched.
The rest of us were sitting down, using leaves to clean up (March, Levana and I), and Reggie and Silas were trying to catch their breaths, too. They both seemed okay, even though Reggie was pretty shaken up. But he’d been about to die at the hands of a timewraith, and I was sure I’d have handled it much worse than him.
He came out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere,Reggie kept whispering.
“I want out,” Helen said, her head on her hands as she shook it, staring ahead. We’d sat in a circle so that we could see all angles, just in case.
We’d also run at least ten minutes away from where we left the wraith, but you could never be too sure, apparently. They could come at us out of nowhere.
“That’s it—I want out of here. They brought wraiths in this place with us.Wraiths!” Helen.
“It’s the Turning Trials,” Anika said. “I expected no less.Of coursethey’re going to use wraiths.”
“Well, I wantnopart in it,” Helen hissed.
“Well—you’re not going anywhere because we’renotleaving anybody behind,” Levana said, equally as pissed off. Out of the three of us, she had the least amount of blood on her suit, and her face was already clean. I wondered if mine was, too, but was happy I didn’t have a mirror at the same time. It was enough to see the blood splatters on my suit.
The others went at it for a few more minutes, only because they needed to let out some steam.
March nudged me on the side and gave me a brand new leaf that must have been as big as a hand towel—and very soft, too.
“Thanks. Is my face bloody still?” I figuredhecould be my mirror for now.
“No. Wipe your hands,” March said, his eyes dark. “And I would really appreciate it if you wouldneverdo that again. I had it handled.”
I raised a brow. He couldn’t be serious. “I would also really appreciate it if you remembered that I know how to fight just as well as you.”
“I don’t care if you know how to fight.Iwill do the fighting from now on.”
I gave it a moment, then two.
Time’s Teeth, hewasserious. Didn’t even crack a smile while he said this.
I turned to face him better. “You will do the fightingfor what?”
“Anything. Anything that comes our way.”
I waited a heartbeat. “I still can’t decide if you’re messing with me.” It really didn’t look like it, but then again, you could never be too sure.
“Stay away from blood from now on, Ora. I can fight for the both of us.”
Holy Hour… “So canI.”
“Again—I never said you couldn’t.”
I shook my head. “You’re…you’remad.” He said all this to me with a straight face and expected me to just…go with it?
No—not a straight face. He was grinning now. “I never said I wasn’t.”
