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Blood began to drip from his nose. “Aura, please. You can escape. You can live.”

“No,” I stressed. I looked over and saw Volund start to shift slightly. Fuck. “Get up. Now!” I hauled Elias up onto his feet, the pain from my ribs piercing me. He barely made it up, but he managed to do so, swaying generously. I slung his arm around my shoulder and began walking as fast as I could manage with a monstrously muscled human hanging onto me.

Well, he wasn’t human, I guess.

We hobbled off into the woods, but I had no idea where I was going. “Where do we go?” I asked Elias. I looked at him, his face extremely pale as he was barely conscious. “Elias?” I begged.

He gasped in a breath. “Northeast,” he wheezed. A lump formed in my throat from worry. Was he going to live through this? How much wolfsbane was saturated on those knives? How much was required to kill a lycan?

I did as he said and began heading northeast, practically dragginghim with me as he was in and out of consciousness. After about ten minutes of stumbling and dragging, I heard voices from behind us. Volund’s voice was one of them.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Elias, where do I go? What am I looking for??”

He exhaled, but couldn’t form any words. I quickened our pace, exhaustion and pain overwhelming me.

“This way!” I heard a shout.

I cursed under my breath and kept heading northeast. I took step after step, doing my best to ignore the piercing pain in my side as the weight of Elias crushed into me. The voices were getting closer, and my heart raced. I hauled Elias through a clearing and reached the other side, only to be met with the edge of a steep cliff. I cursed again.

Is this really where Elias wanted us to go? I didn’t dare put him on the ground for fear that I wouldn’t be able to pick him back up. I hobbled over and peered over the edge. At the bottom of the cliff was a river, but there was no way to tell if it was deep enough to jump.

I heard rustling behind us and knew they were close. It was now or never. We had to jump. “Ready?” I asked aloud, even though I knew that Elias was fully unconscious at this point.

Gods, I hope we survive this, I prayed.

“Forgive me,” I whispered to Elias as I used all of my strength to haul him over the cliff’s edge. Then just as the Sprathians came bounding through the clearing, I jumped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Iheard a loud splash seconds before I hit the water, the impact almost making it feel like I was slammed into solid stone before plunging beneath. If my ribs weren’t broken before, they definitely were now. My already aching body screamed as I scrambled for the surface.

My head broke through and I gasped for air. The fact that I hadn’t landed on rocks and that my feet didn’t hit the bottom meant the river was deep enough to survive diving off the cliff. I figured somehow Elias knew exactly where we would end up when he told me to head northeast. I was glad he was conscious for just long enough to point me in that direction.

Oh gods. Elias. Where was he? I looked around in a frenzy, calling out his name. The river was moving swiftly enough to carry us downstream fairly quickly, but not so harsh as to pull us under like when I had slipped in Rebellia River all those weeks ago. Rebellia’scurrent pulled me under again and again for over a mile, nearly killing me until Elias saved me just in time. Now it was my turn to save him – the lying asshole.

After agonizing moments of frantically searching for Elias, expecting him to be within an arm’s reach, I finally saw him floating down the river maybe twenty feet away. I couldn’t tell if he was face-down or face-up, and my emotions spiked once more.

I swam to him as fast as I could and was relieved to find him face-up, but I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. We were bobbing up and down with the flow of the river so much that I couldn’t focus on his chest to see if it was moving. I grabbed him, entangling my arm with his so that we wouldn’t separate.

The river pulled us along, and I looked up to try to pinpoint where exactly we had jumped from, but I couldn’t tell how far we had drifted already. I didn’t see any Sprathians peering over the ledge anywhere. Were we in the clear? I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. For all I knew, they were following us along the river by foot, ready to intercept us at any moment.

I tried to settle my panic. I looked around to see if there was something I could grab with my free arm to help me pull us to shore, but there wasn’t even a shore to swim to. The river was in some sort of gorge, cliffs nearly as high as the tallest trees. I noticed a floating log riding along the river near us, and I swam to it, hauling Elias with me. At least the log would help me keep him afloat until we could get to land.

We reached the log and I was able to place one of Elias’s arms over it. Once I felt he was secure enough, I grabbed on as well with my free arm, not daring to let go of him with the other. When I finally got a chance to get a good look at him, I noticed how pale he was – like the life was being drained from him. His usual heat that radiated from him was also dwindling, and I feared the worst. But then I noticedhis lips twitch and his eyes flutter for a brief moment, and my heart skipped a few beats.

He was alive. But maybe just barely.

I pulled my attention downstream, realizing the cliffs that surrounded us were getting shorter and shorter. Eventually the river would level out with the land and I could pull Elias to shore. But as I focused ahead of us, I saw that maybe a hundred feet away, the river forked into two directions. I could see that the left side had a slower, smoother current, but I knew that path would keep us on the same side as the Sprathians. The current on the right looked rougher, but at least it would lead us away from them.

“Dammit,” I cursed under my breath. The choice was regrettably easy – possibly be caught and tortured to death by Volund, or possibly die by drowning. I chose the latter, and began kicking my feet to help guide us and the log to the right. As we reached the fork, the river pulled us exactly where I wanted, and I felt the current pick up quickly. Within moments, I was finding it harder to hold onto the log and Elias at the same time. But I would be damned if we separated. My broken ribs ached as I tightened my hold.

Trying my best to keep my eyes open as water splashed in my face, I again searched for a way out. The cliffs were still high, but there were more rocks protruding from them now. Maybe I could get us over to one and try to grab hold. But kicking as fast and hard as I could was not enough to get us to the edge. I silently cursed to myself, angry that I was at a river’s mercy for the second time on this stupid journey. But at least we weren’t being pulled under, the log helping us stay afloat.

As the current picked up more and more, I started to hear a faint roaring. My body tensed, even more than it already was, as I realized quickly that I was hearing a waterfall. We were approaching a gods-damned waterfall.Fuck. I whirled around, frantically searching forsomething,anything, that could stop us from reaching our impending doom.

There. A large boulder sat ahead of us, it’s jagged top jutting out to a few feet above the river’s surface. If I could just get the log to catch on it, we’d stop before reaching the waterfall. Then I could figure out a plan to get us out of here.