Page 9

It ’s Her… Or Me

I skid to a halt at the familiar sound of crackling a heartbeat before a fountain of ice sprays up into the sky over the tops of the maze. It explodes in a shower of ice chips.

Vos. Mimick is definitely after Vos.

A chunk falls at my feet, narrowly missing me.

“Get your ass moving,” one of the Shadows commands.

But even as close as they all are to the surface, they aren’t in charge of me yet. And if the grasses are determining my direction, then damned if I’m following where they lead.

So I stay here, listening and watching the skies.

I need to find the others, gather us together. We’re strongest together.

Another shout—Horus, I think—sounds close to my right, like he’s running on the other side of a thin wall parallel to me. An arrow flies out of the grasses and directly across my path, close enough to my chest that I yelp in surprise.

A shadow overhead is my only warning. Dirt and grass and rock block out the sun as Mimick lands fifty yards in front of me. The Snarl magically clears out of the monster’s path, like it’s giving us an arena in which to face off.

Mimick stares me down with creepy-as-sin stone eyes that don’t blink. Can she see me if I don’t move? Some predators are like that.

What other options do I have?

Sand isn’t readily available in this soil, I can feel that much. Running is out—she’s too fast and the Snarl is helping her. My knives would be an annoying spike in her paw at most, only likely to piss her off more. And the darkness doesn’t listen to me like it does Reven. I can’t create weapons, or walls, or even a puff of smoke to hide within. Beyond containing the shards of Eidolon like a vessel, I’m useless.

Mimick rears back, then runs straight at me. The ground shakes with every pounding lope.

When I was ten, Cain taught me to mount a running horse. And that’s all I can think of in the seconds I have.

I wait, staring her down, not running, counting the rolling lope of her feet. I have to time this perfect. Just as she gets close, I jump to the side and spin to run parallel to her. I don’t think she expected that because she doesn’t immediately change course, giving me time to take several running steps as she pulls up beside me.

Mimick tosses her grassy head, spraying dirt everywhere, swinging to the side like she’s trying to pulverize me or knock me to the ground, but I leap at her and grab a tuft full of the grasses that make up her back and sides, the way I would a horse’s mane, allowing her speed to pull me.

Using her momentum, I swing and toss my body up and over her back.

What I don’t account for is the fact that this creature is much taller than a horse and so I really just end up clinging to her side, like a burr to a tail, my body straining not to be shaken loose.

Thank the goddesses there aren’t any trees or structures out here for her to slam me against. Mimick skids to a halt, her dragon-like talons leaving deep gouge marks in the ground, and a terrible noise like the roar of a storm surrounds me. She whips her head around, mouth open, trying to pluck me off her side, but her neck is too thick and shoulders too broad to reach me.

That’s right, bitch. Sometimes being small and smart is better than being huge and not smart.

The thing gives a full-body shake, but I manage to hang on even as a wet stickiness starts to trickle down my arms, making it harder to grip. Out of nowhere, something long and slender snakes around my ankle and jerks me into the sky just like Pella earlier. This time I see what it is.

Long tendrils of grass sprout directly from Mimick’s body like a tail.

I’m high up enough in the air that I can see across the maze and all the pathways the Snarl has reconfigured itself into. Keeps reconfiguring itself into. It moves like it’s alive. Jerking around desperately in the air, I search, but I can’t see or hear any of my friends.

Where’d they go?

“They’re dead!” a Shadow shouts.

“Shut up!”

Fear ratchets through me like a lever cranking through gears. The monster opens her jaws wide and dangles me overhead, and I swear the thing gives me a big, rocky-toothed grin.

I’m looking down into a pit of my own death.

“You’ve killed us all ,” the Shadows wail. “ Let us free.” Their voices are so close to the surface, it’s as if they’re standing beside me rather than trapped within me.

“Never!”

I’ll die before that happens and take them with me. One less evil in the world.

Reven didn’t give them to me just to let them loose on the unsuspecting world. He didn’t sacrifice himself for that.

I swing my body back and forth, flailing and kicking and trying to get loose. With a grunt, I reach for the knife tucked into my boot. I’ll bloody well cut myself free.

But another tail of grass snares around my wrists, binding them together and pinning them to my stomach. I don’t stop fighting, though, wriggling like a worm on a hook. Maybe if I can hold off death until Cain or Vos can get to me…

Even though I’m braced for it, I’m so focused on getting away that when Mimick lets go, the drop sends my stomach into my throat. In that instant, it’s as if the sands in the hourglass of time slow just for me and I can count the jagged teeth I’m falling toward.

The Shadows all punch outward in a desperate bid to escape, and agony is everywhere.

I’ve known fear. Battled through it. Conquered it. Sometimes given in to it. But not like this. This fear clears my thoughts like rain knocks dust from the air, and in those seconds that feel so stretched out, I realize the most important part.

I want to live.

When I was a child and would take my sister’s place sleeping in her bed in the palace, when the servants would draw back the heavy curtains in the morning, flooding the bedchamber with sunlight, the brightness of the sun always made my eyes water.

This is like that. Like I’m blinking at the truth which was there all the time. I’ve been walking around numb since Reven left me, half-dead already. I had to do that to keep the Shadows at bay.

But I was doing all this, putting one unsteady foot in front of the other, without really believing I could win in the end.

Now, I want to live. For him. For me. For Tabra. For my friends. For my people. For the possibilities of a future that will die a slow death if I don’t at least try to stop Eidolon.

So, it’s Mimick…or me.

Rage sizzles through me like Hakan’s lightning bolts, except this is bitterly cold, unstoppable, physical fury so frigid it burns, purifying me from the inside out.

Time suddenly speeds back up. Faster than my mind can track, a purple glow lights up the monster’s mouth. One instant I’m falling to my death, and the next, the monster beneath me disappears without a trace. Not a sound. Not a puff of smoke.

Existing and then just…not.