The cliff edge yawns behind us both.
This is the game now. Not speed or skill, but simply who goes over first. Who lies face down on the sand below while the other claims the prize. A dangerous gamble—if one of us dies on impact, the other has to play again next week.
But it’s the only game left to play.
I hook my foot behind Elijah’s ankle and shove. He staggers but doesn’t fall, his hand shooting out to grab my wrist. I cling to him. We’re locked together now, swaying on the precipice like dancers.
“Let go,” he gasps.
His grip tightens. Mine tightens in response. We’re both balanced on the knife’s edge, one move from—
His foot slips.
Time fractures.
His weight pulls us both over the edge. I feel the moment when solid ground disappears, when gravity claims us both. The crowd’s roar rushes up to meet us as we tumble through space.
We twist in the air like fighting cats. His elbow crashes into my ribs. My knee finds his stomach. But momentum has its own logic, and physics doesn’t care about our messy struggle.
I hit the sand first.
Elijah lands on top of me with the force of a falling boulder. My spine compresses. My lungs collapse. Every bit of air gets driven from my body in one violent exhalation.
Stars explode across my eyelids. I can’t breathe. Can’t move.Fuck.I’m dead.
The sand beneath me feels like broken glass. Each grain cuts into my back through the wet costume. Elijah’s weight presses down on my chest, and I can’t draw a breath. Can’t move.
Then, abruptly, he’s off me.
He grabs my ankle and starts dragging me toward the water.
I try to resist, but my body won’t cooperate. My ribs scream. The impact rattled something loose inside me, and every movement sends fresh waves of agony through my torso.
“Stop,” I try to wheeze, but no sound comes out.
He’s stronger than me right now. I used everything I had on that climb, and then the fall knocked the fight right out of me. My body’s dragged along uselessly as he hauls me toward the lagoon’s edge.
The water laps against my legs. My shoulders. My neck.
“I’m sorry,” Elijah pants, large brown eyes meeting mine for a moment. I believe him, I do. “I’ll make it painless.”
He turns me over, my attempts to shove him off useless. His hands find my head. Push down.
The chemical-laced water floods my nose, my mouth. Burns like acid. I thrash as best I can, but he’s sitting on my back, has got me pinned face down in the shallows. My fingers claw at the sand beneath me, finding little purchase.
Through the distorted water, I hear his voice. Muffled. Desperate.
“Just make it easy for yourself.”
He’s not trying to kill me. He’s trying to knock me unconscious so he can get to the Deathball without a fight. Smart.Practical. While I’m out cold, he climbs back up, waits for the shell to open, grabs the ball and ends this.
But understanding his plan doesn’t help me escape it.
My chest burns like the fiery pits of hell. Worse now. Concentrated. My chest spasms, trying to force me to breathe, but there’s only water. Only poison.
Marco’s face flashes through my mind. Not the cold bastard who rejected me, but the Marco from the forest stream. The one who held me under the water while shouting at me to fight back.
“Push me off!”
