Page 31 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

Concentrating on the second column, I threw all my power into my legs and jumped. The open air whooshed around me, and all my muscles clenched .

My ankle wobbled as I landed, but I quickly regained my balance. I leapt before I could lose momentum, and my foot just barely caught the edge.

Throwing my weight forward, I sent myself sprawling across the column. The impact sent a jolt of pain through my chest, and I twisted to look over my shoulder.

Kaden had begun his crossing.

Even with his injuries and the poison sapping his strength, he still made the jump more gracefully than I had.

Then the merpeople unleashed another torrent of arrows. I couldn’t rest any longer.

Ripping my gaze away from Kaden, I rose onto shaky legs and focused on the next column.

I was so tired from our battle with the Vikkarni that I wasn’t sure I had it in me to make it across the deadly chasm.

But I clenched my fists and threw myself forward, bounding off the column with as much force as I could muster.

I stumbled as my feet found purchase, nearly pitching over the edge headfirst. Somehow, I managed to regain my balance and avoid taking an arrow to the leg.

I stared out at the next four columns. These were spaced much farther apart. I’d have to jump them one at a time, and the last would take everything I had.

Rallying my strength, I pushed off from the stone, but just as I did, a searing pain cut across the side of my neck.

I yelped at the same moment I became airborne, and the extra movement stole my forward momentum.

I flailed mid-jump and felt the front of my boot slip off the edge. Pain ripped up my knee as it glanced off the side of the column, and my stomach wobbled as I fumbled for something to hold on to .

My hands slid over smooth stone, but I managed to halt my descent.

My muscles burned as I gripped the edge of the column for dear life, trying to pull myself up. Beads of sweat slid down my temples, but I was able to haul myself onto the column.

I reached up to cup the side of my neck, and my fingers came away sticky with blood. But there was no arrow sticking out of me, so I decided to consider it a win.

Dragging in a shaky breath, I stared across the next expanse. It was even farther than the last jump I’d made, and that one had nearly killed me. My knee throbbed, and my muscles were jelly, but I knew I didn’t have a choice.

Gritting my teeth, I bent my knees and threw myself toward the next column.

I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to make it when my body sank like a stone.

Panic like I’d never known surged through my veins, but then something hard and heavy tackled me from behind.

I grunted as Kaden’s momentum carried me forward, sending us careening into the stone. We landed ungracefully on the column, a tangle of limbs and leather. His strong body curled around mine, and I closed my eyes in relief.

For several seconds, I just lay there, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal. Then Kaden’s warmth vanished. His hand went to the crook of my elbow, tugging me to my feet.

I opened my mouth to tell him there wasn’t room for both of us, but before I could, he thrust out those magnificent wings and glided us across the final expanse.

We landed roughly on the ledge, and I stumbled out of his grip. My body was shaking so badly from the adrenaline, I knew I wouldn’t have made it on my own.

The merpeople’s shrieks started up again, but I felt nothing but grim satisfaction as I stepped into the small alcove that sheltered the stone pedestal.

A huge metal chest was perched on the pedestal, the sides blackened and pitted with age. All along the edges, strange runes glinted in the low light, and the pulse of magic was so intense that my bones seemed to hum right along with it.

Unlike the power that imbued every inch of the Watchman’s fortress, this magic didn’t make me recoil. No. This magic felt compatible with my own — as though it were a part of me.

“Are those . . .”

“Coranthe runes,” Kaden answered. He sounded slightly breathless.

I wet my lips. Although I’d never seen these runes, I knew that if I placed my hand on the chest, it would open for me just as Caladwyn’s drawer had.

Instinctually, I reached for the latch, but Kaden caught my wrist.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “We don’t know what sort of enchantments might be triggered if we try to open it.”

“This is a Coranthe chest,” I said. “Which means that book must be in there.”

The book was the whole reason we’d come to the in-between — why we’d risked our lives battling the Vikkarni and the merpeople.

I knew Kaden was still hesitant, but he didn’t say a word as he released me. Slowly, I placed my trembling fingers on either side of the lid .

All at once, the hum of magic ceased. I could sense it rubbing up against my own, greeting it like a friendly cat.

I shuddered at the strangeness of it and gingerly unhooked the latch. I folded it back and lifted the lid, and the scent of mildew wafted up to greet me.

Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like dried leaves, lay an unassuming black book barely as large as my hand.

“That’s it ?” Kaden rumbled, his tone slightly indignant as I reached for the tome.

As my fingers brushed the fraying spine, the magic in me seemed to sigh. But then I sensed something else approaching — something dark and powerful.

I froze at the scuff of boots on stone, jerking my head up as my free hand went for a dagger.

There, standing just inside the little alcove, was a man more terrifying than either the merpeople or the Vikkarni.

His skin looked as though it had been made a size too big —his flesh rotten and sagging along the planes of his skull. His eyes were two bloodied pits —or rather, his eye sockets were. His eyes were gone, I realized — gouged out with a dull knife or perhaps eaten by vultures.

I wondered if Kaden had known the Watchman was blind and if it had been part of his bargain with the gods.

The Watchman was clothed in moth-eaten furs, and his hair and beard were the color of old bones. That hair hung in long matted locks decorated with carved wooden beads. In his withered hand he held a driftwood staff with a slightly hooked end.

Kaden had said the Watchman was neither alive nor dead, though he looked as though death had come to claim him on several occasions.

“Who dares trespass here?” The Watchman’s voice was so low and unearthly that it took me a moment to decipher his words.

Kaden swallowed and edged closer, as though he were contemplating scooping me up and flying back across the cavern.

The Watchman’s half-rotted nose twitched as he scented the air, and those bloodied pits narrowed in reproach.

“Kaden, son of Elowynn, destroyer of realms, and a huntress with the powers of a . . .” He paused to consider before his mouth split into an unsettling grin, revealing rows of broken teeth. “Coranthe witch.”

The Watchman moved his head from side to side, and I had the odd feeling that he was looking at Kaden, though there was no way to know for sure. “You should not have come, Dark One.”

His words rumbled through me with an undeniable sense of foreboding — not a warning, I realized a second too late.

No. The Watchman was a creature who gave no warnings.

He raised that staff in his wasted arm and brought it down with a resounding thud that echoed through the cavern.

Immediately, I felt the power in the fortress shift in response. Terror clanged through me as I glanced over the ledge and beheld the churning wall of dark water rising from below.

The waves thrashed and raged at the Watchman’s command, rising until they formed a shimmering whirlpool of fetid water around us.

I glanced at Kaden, whose face mirrored my own unease. The Watchman’s body blurred behind the wall of waves, and he raised his driftwood staff. The solid mass of water split down the middle, whooshing between me and Kaden and creating a wall that separated us.

My unease morphed into panic as the whirlpool contracted, pressing in on me from all sides.