Page 18 of I Summon the Sea (The Thorn and the Shadow #1)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I drift somewhere deep, a place I don’t recognize, and yet it feels strangely familiar. A warm, soft darkness, a velvet bed. A sense of peace and calm, of letting go.

Someone is kneeling beside me, a young man, the tumble of hair in his eyes achingly dear.

Mars , I think. Mars?

I’ve had this thought before, though, and I was mistaken. How many times do I have to commit this error, go through this painful wrenching feeling while hoping he’s still alive when he’s not?

No, Mars is gone. He’s gone . Why do I keep seeing him when he was taken from me so long ago? Too long for any human to still be in this world.

Because you’re scared , a voice tells me. Because you don’t know if this is going to work, if everything you’ve planned will fail, and he was your one bright light, for the short time it lasted.

I blink, and a face swims into the light, hanging over me. That godsdamned black hair hangs in his eyes, but once more, I find myself looking at the humans’ nemesis, the King’s Sword.

Jai.

“You’re hurt, it’s…” He prods at the burning ache in my leg, and I swear the blood drains from his face. “Fuck, it’s venom. A coralline snake got you.”

I know.

I’m dying.

My eyes prickle. I want Mars, not this unfamiliar shadow weaver to be by my side when I die. No idea why I’m feeling so exposed and raw right now. I came prepared to die, so why, now that the time has come, am I scared to face death?

“You’ll be okay,” he says, and I turn an incredulous glare on him, tears be damned. “I’m not joking. Once we get to the palace, the healers will help.” At the derisive curl of my lip, he adds, “They will have to. Once you win a trial and make it to the Palace Island, everyone there is obliged to help you. It’s the law of the games.”

Is he telling me the truth? It doesn’t matter. I can’t walk. Hot and cold streaks through my body, making me shake. Scaling a tower? Impossible. These useless legs have just become completely unusable.

I turn my face away so he won’t see the water spilling from my eyes. It trails down my cheeks and drips off my chin to the ground.

“Come,” he says.

I beg your pardon? I think, indignant. Let me die in peace.

“We’re wasting time.” He lifts me to my feet, wraps a muscular arm around me and basically carries me along as he marches the last few steps to the tower, even as I hiss in pain. “Let’s do this.”

I slap at his chest—lightly this time—to get his attention. I point at the tower and shake my head. No way. I can’t.

“I know,” he says. He sounds calm, as if my inability to walk or climb isn’t a terrible hurdle. Well, it is for me. All he has to do is let me fall back to the ground and get onto that tower. Take the last step in this trial and emerge from it alive. A winner. A survivor, at least until the next game.

So what is he talking about?

“Climb on my back,” he says.

I stare at him in utter disbelief.

No. I shake my head when he keeps that steady, dark gaze on me, and I realize he isn’t joking at all. No, I ? —

“There’s no fucking way I’m leaving you here to die,” he snarls, and I remember his conversation with his ghostly friend.

“No killing, Phaethon.”

Had that been about me? Did someone, did Phaethon tell him to leave me to die? And wait… if nobody was there, does that mean he was talking himself out of offing me?

He is crazy, after all. What if Phaethon is another side of his own mind?

Doubt returns, hounding me, but he leaves me no chance to dig into it. He crouches down and pulls on my arm.

“Climb!” he commands. “Now!”

I’m no winged dragon of the air, but his hoarse voice is as compelling as a spell. I find myself wrapping my arms around his neck, slinging my legs around his narrow hips, and hanging off him like a hooded monkey from the russet forests.

Humiliating.

Yet as his scent hits me, his solid, steel-hard muscles flexing against my chest and under my arms and legs, I feel strangely… safe.

“Hold on tight,” he says, “and don’t let go, no matter what.”

My face is level with the back of his head, his black hair brushing over my brow, soft and smelling of fire and smoke. His tall body tenses as he starts to climb, finding hand- and footholds where I see nothing but a smooth surface when I look up.

Well, not entirely smooth. Fascinated, I stare as the surface of the tower seems to ripple with plates, like armor.

Like scales.

Dizzy, I close my eyes. I’m seeing things again. The wind buffets me, the world sways. The only real anchor in reality is the solidity of the man to whose powerful back I’m clinging.

“Hang on,” he says tersely as he climbs higher and higher. “We’re almost there.”

Almost at the top. Almost at the end.

The wind is whistling up here, over the colorful tops of the coral fans. Jai’s body tenses more, fighting the wind as well as the pull of the earth while he keeps ascending. The muscles in his back tighten, the tendons in his neck standing out as he reaches higher…

… and loses his footing.

I only realize it when we drop. I cry out, the only sound a sharp breath leaving my lips, already snatched by the wind.

Our fall stops abruptly, jolting every bone in my body. My teeth clack together.

I dare glance up.

Jai is hanging from one hand near the top of the tower, with me clutching him like a limpet.

My heart is pounding fit to burst out of my chest. I don’t like heights. That’s the understatement of the year. I’m terrified of heights. Birds aren’t scared because they can fly, but I’ve never had wings.

And air, unlike water, is too thin to hold my weight so I don’t plummet to the ground.

I start slipping, my arms sliding where I have them wound around his neck, but he grabs at them with his one free hand, keeping me on his back. His grip convulses, tightens.

He’s panting, I can hear it over the pounding of my own heart, over the screeching of the death birds diving down to skewer us on their sharp beaks.

Shadows curl around me.

Damn, I’d forgotten about his powers. The shadows whisper as they condense, a thick black cloud twining around us. Pulling us up.

Why in the hells not do it from the start? Why start climbing and only call the shadows when we’re about to crash down and die? Does he enjoy scaring the shit out of me? It’s as if he has trouble using them. As if they use up too much of his energy.

The shadows slowly haul us up the face of the tower, higher and higher, until we are shoved onto the top.

There, we go sprawling.

After a moment of breathless shock, I pull my arms free and roll off him to kneel on the flat roof. I stare around me in wonder.

It’s a strange place, a cream-colored pavement with an opening like a chasm running through the surface. Is that a door?

Below us and all around extends the arena and then the sea, with the gleam of the Sea Palace and the spread of the dark shores beyond. The giant World Pillar looms not far from us, emerging from the water and piercing the sky.

A stench fills the air.

And the other humans at the top are already climbing into the opening.

I turn to Jai to see what he thinks, and my action bothers me. Since when do I ask for his advice, whether he’s a mighty magical warrior sorcerer or not?

He’s standing but doesn’t look steady. Blood is spilling from his nose. He wipes a hand under it, smearing it over his cheek, over the black blooms on his cheekbones.

Cost , I think. Using shadows has a cost. All magic does.

He isn’t looking all that good, the pallor of his skin ghostly, the dark crescents under his eyes edging on the black swirls.

I point at the chasm and the last of the humans who made it up here. They are struggling inside. One by one, they disappear into the fissure.

Jai frowns. “What new hell…?” More blood dribbles over his mouth, turning his handsome face into a mask, half-black, half-crimson. His wild black hair falls in his eyes, but he still seems to realize what I’m staring at. “Don’t worry about the blood loss. It clears my mind.”

What in the hells does he mean?

I start toward the fissure, since I can’t hang around forever for him to make up his mind, but he overtakes me, sitting down on the edge of the crevasse, swinging his legs inside.

Then he seems to heave a sigh, broad shoulders rising and falling.

“I’m going in first,” he says. “I’ll catch you.”

I don’t need anyone to catch me. I seethe inside at the presumption, although this is twice today he saved my skin.

Jai climbs inside the opening, vanishing completely, and in my turn, I sit on the lip of the chasm and peer down.

I see his pale face turned up toward me. He lifts his hands.

Do I trust him to catch me?

But my body seems to think so, because I just slip into the crevasse and let myself drop. His hands break my fall, catching me around the waist, then coming up against my armpits. I’m suspended in the air.

Against his body.

He lowers me to the ground.

What is this place? The bindings around my bleeding feet are all but gone, and as I step on the warm, soft floor, I swallow hard.

This isn’t a tower. I glance around at the other humans’ white faces, their wide eyes. This isn’t anything a human or fae has built.

“It’s an earth dragon,” he says. “A she-dragon. A wyrm.”

We are inside a dragon? A godsdamned dragon?

“What are you saying?” a man mutters from behind Jai. “ Inside a dragon? That’s impossible.”

“We’re inside her mouth,” Jai says as if that’s the most logical thing in the world, as if it happens every day.

Inside her mouth.

Holy shit.

The people around us start to mutter curses. A young man lets out a cry and struggles to climb back up, but the walls of the wyrm’s mouth are slippery. I think I catch a glimpse of the dark-skinned woman I helped save from the tritons in the sea, but I can’t be sure.

I have more urgent matters on my mind.

How did this happen? The king controls the air and earth elements, and this dragon is of the earth, so the king has some control over it, although he is no dragon speaker.

Unless it’s the telchin who is controlling it.

It doesn’t matter. Who cares whose idea it was? We are mere feet away from the dragon’s gullet and mere moments away from becoming dinner.

How do we get out?

“We aren’t dead yet,” Jai says way too calmly. “That probably means this is part of the game. Sit still.”

“Sit still?” a woman cries. “And wait for the dragon to swallow us down?”

“I’ve seen paintings of this,” Jai whispers. “In the king’s rooms. Paintings of older games. The dragon delivering the winners to the terrace at the front of the palace.”

Before I have time to unravel this little tidbit, though, the entire tower—the entire dragon—shakes. We’re thrown against each other, stumbling and swaying.

One of the men screams, the sound long and thin with terror.

What’s happening?

“The wyrm is moving,” Jai says, and of course that makes sense in a terrifying way. “Careful not to fall down her throat.”

Right. Careful not to fall into the beast’s belly and become the dinner I was talking about.

How , I think, grabbing for something to hold onto and finding nothing. Careful, how?

“Hold onto one another!” Jai calls out. “Together we’re too big a bite to swallow.”

“How would you know?” a woman yells. “Snakes can swallow huge prey.”

“She’s not a real snake. She’s a fucking wyrm.” Jai sounds way too patient and calm. “She can’t swallow us all at once. Just don’t let go.”

So we follow his instructions, grabbing one another, huddling together.

There isn’t enough air in here. My head is swimming. Just the idea that we are inside a dread wyrm is enough to take my breath away and crush my chest. And then there’s this stench of rotting meat that wafts up, turning my stomach.

Another lurch sends us into one another. The earth dragon is moving, and the floor slides from under us, the sides of the mouth becoming our new floor and ceiling. We tumble and crash, elbows cracking against backs, heads cracking against sides.

The dragon hisses, shaking her head, and us with it.

Could she be unhappy for having her mouth crammed full of squirming, yelling humans, getting between her teeth and spoiling her nap time? Who wouldn’t?

“We’re too many,” a man says, “we’re too many, she can’t close her mouth. We’ll fall out!”

Nonsense. Dragons, like snakes, can surely crush their prey. Why wouldn’t she be able to close?—?

“Oh, by the Sleeping Gods!” a woman cries. “We don’t fit, he’s right. One of us has to get out!”

For all the gods’ sake. Are they seriously going to do this now?

“Not me,” another woman hisses, shoving at the man beside her. “ You get out.”

The man shoves right back. “No, you get out, you ugly bitch!”

Yes, they are doing this now.

Unbelievable.

The dragon shakes that massive head again, rattling us around, throwing us against her sword-sized teeth as if we’re pumpkin seeds inside a gourd—and now we’re sliding toward the widening opening of her mouth.

The light reflects on the water down below. If she opens her mouth more, we’ll slide right out and fall into the arena, into the water.

I grab for something to hold onto as my feet slip on the inside of the wyrm’s mouth.

Jai plants a hand on the wyrm’s flesh and lets himself slip a few feet down, toward the opening.

What is he doing?

The realization hits me when he lets himself slip again. He’s about to jump out, I realize. To allow the dragon to close her mouth.

To let us live.

No. I let myself slip down, too, so I can grab at him. I snag his forearm and shake my head. Don’t.

His dark brows go up.

No , I mouth the word. Read my lips, read my thoughts. No.

“I won’t let you die,” he snarls.

His fury takes me aback, my hold on him loosening, but then something crashes through the dragon’s gullet, and barrels down.

It takes the awful woman with it, kicking her out so fast she doesn’t even make a sound, dragging her out of the opening and into the sea.

The wyrm’s mouth slams closed.

And then we’re moving again.

What had that been? A rock?

“Command the wyrm, dragon speaker,” another woman says. “Stop it! It may be taking us to the bottom of the sea! We’ll drown!”

“She won’t,” Jai mutters. “I told you, I’ve seen a painting?—”

“Fuck the painting, we’re in the water, I can hear it!”

It’s true. Splashing sounds are now around us, but it’s impossible to tell if the wyrm is in the water or on solid ground.

“Dragon speaker,” a man snaps, “do something!”

As if he owes them.

And then I remember that indeed he does, that he was the one who doubled the number of the sacrificial victims this year, that he’s the one who rounds them up every time, the one policing the human towns and villages, the one fighting for the fae king.

I’m so torn in my feelings toward him. It’s breaking my mind.

But even if I wanted to move away from him right now, we’re crammed inside the wyrm’s mouth with no space to breathe. The stench of death and rot is threatening to suffocate us.

Meanwhile, Jai has recaptured my arm at some point and hauled me against him. He has braced his booted feet against the roof of the wyrm’s mouth. “Don’t let go of one another! Stop moving, hold onto whatever you can!”

A man wails. “We’ll die, we’ll die?—”

He’s cut off when we hit something. The impact throws us all against one another again, and Jai’s hold on me is gone. I fall against the others, and they shove at me.

Someone is sobbing.

I’m glad to discover it’s not me.

I’m so damn dizzy. My stomach roils again. I thought I was used to the cold, but now I feel ice in my veins, in my bones. I’m shivering too hard to think.

The cavernous mouth opens again, light spearing through to stab at my eyes.

And the wyrm spits us out onto the palace terrace.