Page 33 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 33

Kit

When Aubrey stopped moving, I hesitated.

Sure, I was the one responsible for most of our current forward momentum, but if he needed to pause, he was also the one with the broken ankle. I sure wasn’t going to tell him to suck it up and get moving.

By the time I’d turned to look at him, though, his eyes were sliding shut.

For a second, I was convinced it was another seizure, and of course, this one would be worse than the others. Maybe it would even kill him, and then I’d have truly failed everyone, including myself.

He didn’t seize, though, just slumped right down toward the ground, pale and clammy and...fuck, was he?—

No. Not dead. His pulse was too fast, and now his forehead was almost ice cold to the touch, so...was the fever gone? Or was he sweating, and the evaporation was doing its job to cool him down?

But he wasn’t dead.

But damn it all, we were less than half a mile from the end of the trail.

Gritting my teeth, I determined to make it the rest of the way myself.

But not without Aubrey.

He was just as heavy as I’d feared, and the only way I would be able to make much headway was with him slung over my shoulder in a traditional fireman’s carry, but I doubted Aubrey would be too impressed if I failed to reach our destination because I’d been too determined to baby him and insisted on carrying him like a princess.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to stop and untie the rope that connected us. I did have to drop my backpack, unclasping the whole frame and leaving it behind, since he wouldn’t fit over my shoulder with it there, but then I just lifted him up, set him across my shoulder, and started walking.

The last part of the trail was a terrible place to be carrying him—there was too damn much loose gravel underfoot and actual inclines that needed some work to climb them.

I laughed to myself, almost hysterical with it. Aubrey would be so amused by the notion that he’d managed to bypass the hardest part of the climb by passing out. Or he’d be horrified and his pride would take a hit, but really, how much was he expected to deal with? I thought bonding the mountain and breaking his ankle while scaling that same mountain in order to save the world was more than enough, and if he wanted someone to fan him with palm fronds and peel his grapes from here on out, that wasn’t the most unreasonable demand.

But he was alive.

That was what mattered.

So now I had to get him to safety.

To Frost.

Sure, Frost wasn’t a doctor, but he was the smartest man in the world. He could figure this out. He could fix it. And if he couldn’t, well, he’d know what to do that would fix it.

Right?

I must admit , Nikka said, I kind of want to say I told you so, but this also feels like the wrong time for that .

And that tore it. I did, in fact, laugh. It was hysterical, bordering on unhinged, but really, that was my baby girl. She was more like Frost than me, but sometimes it showed that I’d been the first human to find her and sort of raise her.

I’d have totally given you the old I told you so , I promised her. It’s well deserved. I was an arrogant ass, as usual, and I was wrong. About everything .

Not everything , she disagreed. And you weren’t an arrogant ass. You just always think you’re less than you are, and Aubrey is clever. He realized you were wrong and decided to keep you. I blame Delta. She taught you that you were less when you were too small to defend your mind from her .

Eloquently put, and probably not too far off the mark. Not that I’d admit that, even to Nikka.

But it didn’t matter, because she could hear my thoughts, and she knew.

Fortunately, Nikka loved me like Delta never had, so she kept quiet about it.

How long do you think you can carry him? She asked me, her voice small and concerned. Your pulse is elevated. That’s bad, right?

I didn’t have an answer that either of us would like, so again, I kept quiet.

The tinkling laugh in my ear was . . . it wasn’t Nikka.

And it wasn’t in my head anyway, it was actually in my ear.

It was a person, laughing aloud.

My head shot up, and I looked ahead to the sudden realization that Nikka had activated my speed without me realizing it, and...well, somehow, the last half-mile had passed even faster than I’d been able to track.

Or maybe I was dissociating from the fucking trauma of carrying my unconscious, possibly dying, um...Aubrey...across half a mile of damned mountain.

I came around the last bend in the mountainside, almost falling against the rocky edge, to find Frost standing with Titania Duskbringer at the entrance to the mountain.

They both spun to face us, Frost going ashen and Titania squeaking like a mouse, and I almost fell into my brother.

“Bonding the mountain,” I huffed out, with barely enough breath to force the words from my lungs. “Passed out. Broken ankle.”

Frost, seeming to understand at least some of the issue, lifted Aubrey off my shoulder and into his own arms, giving me the chance to pull out a utility knife and cut the rope that held us together.

“What do you mean, bonding the mountain?” Titania demanded. “I just...We came out here because Verelle said that she just finally heard Aubrey for the first time. He’s bonded her.”

Bonded her.

He heard a woman, he’d said. A woman who called him kitten.

Fuck me entirely. Was there even room in a person’s head for a mountain and the fucking heart sapphire? What if it had been too much, and between the two of them, they’d scrambled Aubrey’s brains for good?

What if he died?

What if?—

“Hey,” Titania said, reaching up to grab my shoulder, much as Aubrey had earlier in the day when he’d been trying to calm me. “It’s okay. You got him here. Everything will be fine.” Still, she glanced over my shoulder at Frost, so it wasn’t the most reassuring reassurance I’d ever gotten.

It was Frost who made a dent in my panic, his soft deep voice as soothing as it had ever been. “He seems okay, Kit. But you said his ankle is broken, and you’ve been climbing the mountain for two days. If he’s also bonded Verelle and...did you say he’s bonded the mountain ?” His expression, firmly incredulous at the notion of a person bonding a mountain, suddenly transformed into something beautiful, a smile like the sun had come out. “That’s why it’s stopped responding to Mother. I was afraid she’d just angered it beyond repair, but if it has someone kind to talk to, why would it bother speaking to Mother anymore?”

Well that was a fucking excellent point. But still, I?—

Frost shook his head, turning to lean down and bump his shoulder to mine, since he didn’t have a free hand to pat me with. “Come on. Let’s go inside. We’ll get Aubrey laid down and I’ll look at his ankle. I’m sure one of the others has at least some rudimentary medical knowledge as well.”

“I can call for a medical evacuation,” Titania said, brandishing a phone. “They can have a helicopter here in an hour, that’s what they said when we called after the quake.”

And frankly, at this point, Slate could fucking deal. Or maybe it would explode and the world would end.

I didn’t care anymore.

The Plan was done.

“Do it,” I told her, and then I followed Frost into the mountain.