My legs tremble. My shoulders burn. The tips of my fingers scrape against rough rock as I haul myself up, a race against the rising sun.
Minutes. I have only minutes before dawn breaks and the Shadow changes. The tendons in my shoulder scream as I find a handhold above. My feet find a new ledge to cling to, and I dare to glance down.
The ground wavers below, the whole world tilting. I flatten myself against the rock, my eyes squeezed shut. When everything settles, I glance up to find the sun’s first rays painting the cliff overhead.
I start upward again, my hands finding fissures, my boots wedging into every nook and cranny I can find. My body screams for relief, but I can’t grant it, can only climb higher while my breath runs short and my limbs tremble.
Go. Faster. Up up up.
Sunlight trickles down the cliff face. Somewhere below, the Shadow lets out a roar, and my breath comes in choppy heaves as I power upward. Dawn’s rays touch my fingertips, then flow downward, warming my still-wet skin.
“The gyre,” the Shadow shouts. “Use your gyre.”
I grit my teeth. The gyre will only take me back to the castle,not to the hourglass. But if I don’t at least pretend to consider it, the Shadow will probably throw himself into the abyss, just to keep me safe.
I can’t let him. Ican’t. If he dies…
I wince, unable to complete the thought, then do the only thing I can do. I pull my gyre from my pocket just as sunlight spears into my eyes.
“All right!” I shout, with a glance over my shoulder. “I’m going!”
On the far side of the ravine, the Shadow collapses in the dirt, his shoulders heaving with relief. Sunlight flows over my boots, lighting the tufts of grass that sprout from the crevices below. It reaches the base of the cliff and crawls across the beam, making its way toward him. Closer, closer…
The Shadow raises his head just as dawn claims him. Just as I jam the gyre back into my pocket.
Because I’m not going anywhere but up.
A pained roar pours from him as he dissolves into thin air. The sound doesn’t break off, butshifts, coming from above me, now. It echoes over the treetops, a hymn of hunger and pain and punishment.
I search the cliff face above, my throat aching. I probably have only seconds before he comes charging over the top. Before he follows my scent to this exact spot.
Oh, goddess.
Panic claws at my chest, but I have to finish this. Find some way to buy myself another few minutes. To reach the hourglass and break the curse.
A breeze arises, and the dress at my belt drags against my thigh, almost as if it’s calling attention to itself. My mind complies, catching there and holding.
My dress. My blood-soaked dress. The one still saturated in my scent.
Oh, goddess. Of course.
I pull it free before my plan has fully formed. But this dress smells of me, and the Shadow hunts by scent. Meanwhile, I havehisscent all over me, smeared across my skin, slicking the inside of my thighs.
If he’s going to chase anything, it will be this dress. Assuming I can hide myself.
A quick survey of the cliff yields a shallow cleft to my left, and I inch toward it. If I press myself into the hollow, conceal myself from the Shadow as he comes barreling over the cliff, then let go of my dress at that precise moment…
It will work. It has to.
I shuffle sideways, the laces of my shirt catching against the stone. The Shadow’s roar comes closer, and goddess help me, he’s fast, already cresting the cliff as I reach the cleft and press myself beneath a shallow ledge.
Dirt and pebbles rain down from above. I cling to the rock, motionless, my pulse slamming painfully in my veins.
The roaring cuts off abruptly, replaced by a sniff. Claws scrape over stone. Something massive moves overhead, making its way downward. Closer, closer…
A shadow falls over me. His.
I fling the dress. It billows outward like a sail and plummets.
