I glanced around, but the cavern was empty. The lanterns had been turned down low, although oddly enough, I could see much better now than before, when Conley had shoved me into the chasm.
I looked down. Thirty feet below, I could see my own body lying on the ledge, still partially sprawled across Penelope’s corpse. My eyes were shut, and my chest was rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
I sighed. I wasn’t awake. Not really. Sometimes, when I was asleep, or in this case unconscious, I sort of . . . hovered outside my physical self, as though my mind and body were two separate entities. This sort of ghosting usually only happened when I was extremely troubled about something—or when I had been severely injured. Alvis had said it was a defense mechanism, that my magic was letting my mind wander free while my body struggled to repair itself.
I sighed again, but I leaned forward and peered down at, well, myself. It was a bit like looking in a carnival mirror, although far more unnerving. A shiver rippled through my ghostly form, as well as my physical body below, but I studied the cliff face, which looked as slick as glass. Even if my arm and leg hadn’t been broken, I still wouldn’t have been able to climb to safety. I might have used my magic to glue myself to and then push my body up the rocks, but I was far too weak for that now.
The truth slammed into me as hard as I had hit the ledge earlier. I was going to die down here, alone in the dark—
“What are you doing?” a deep, familiar voice asked.
Startled, my ghostly form jerked back, and my head snapped up. A moment ago, I had been all alone in this fever dream, or whatever it truly was. Now Leonidas was standing in the chamber.
The prince looked much better than when I had last seen him in the clearing outside my cottage. The color had returned to his face, and his body no longer seemed stiff with pain. He was also wearing a new black riding coat with glittering amethyst buttons, which added to his tall, strong, imposing presence.
My heart lifted like a gargoyle shooting up into the sky, but it plummeted back down just as quickly. Leonidas Morricone wasn’t here. Not really. He had just wandered into my fever dream.
“What are you doing?” he asked again.
I sighed for the third time. “Dying.”
Leonidas’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he walked forward and peered down into the chasm. A frown creased his face when he spotted my body lying on the ledge.
Several seconds ticked by in silence. I expected him to return to his own dream—or mind—but instead, he lowered himself to the ground and sat on the edge of the chasm next to me, the sleeve of his coat close enough to brush my elbow, if either one of us had been in our real bodies.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Something I should have expected. Conley, the mine foreman, shoved Penelope into the chasm and killed her. Then he did the same thing to me. He didn’t want to share his blood money with us. Greedy bastard. My only regret is that I didn’t find some way to drag him down with me.”
A small smile quirked Leonidas’s lips. “I didn’t realize you were so murderous.”
I thought of how I had frozen when the miners first attacked me. Over the years, I had worked so bloody hard with Alvis and had trained so bloody much with Rhea to keep from being overwhelmed by other people’s thoughts and feelings, to keep from being paralyzed like I had been during the Seven Spire massacre, but it had happened again anyway.
That was the problem with my mind magier magic—it made me feel too much. Most people only had to handle their own fear, anger, or terror, but I got assaulted by everyone else’s emotions too. Or perhaps the problem wasn’t my magic. Perhaps the problem was me, and my inability to handle all those messy feelings, especially my own, no matter how deep down I tried to shove them.
Either way, it was finally going to cost me my life. Although I supposed that was fitting, since I had cost so many people their lives during the massacre. Poetic justice was finally being served to Coward Gemma.
Leonidas kept staring at me, so I shrugged, as though I weren’t silently cursing my own bloody weakness.
“Perhaps if I had been more murderous, I wouldn’t be in this situation.” I changed the subject. “What are you doing here?”
“I was going about my business when I heard you cry out in my mind. Even worse, I felt your pain. I knew that you were in trouble, so I sort of . . . cast my mind about and followed the cry and the pain back here to you.”
It sounded like he was talking about seeking, an ability that let some mind magiers step outside their own bodies and view whatever person or place they wished. If he could do that, then he was even more powerful and dangerous than I’d realized.
“I also heard another cry, but it didn’t sound like you,” Leonidas continued. “It was lower, rougher, almost like . . . rocks crunching together.”
He had to be talking about Grimley. The gargoyle must have felt my injury through our mental bond, the same way that I could sense whenever he had been hurt. I had been in so much pain before that I hadn’t even tried to communicate with him.
Grims? I sent the thought out. Are you there?
Gemma! he replied, although his voice was the faintest whisper in my mind.
Grims! Grims!
I called out to him again and again, but an eerie, buzzing silence filled my head, along with a gaping emptiness in my heart where his strong, solid, comforting presence should have been. His absence made me want to weep, but I didn’t have the strength for that either, not even in this ghostly form.
Thanks to my injuries, my magic was rapidly weakening, right along with my body. Strangely enough, the thought didn’t fill me with as much fear as I’d expected, just a cold, growing numbness. I’d joked to Leonidas about dying, but the truth was that I was already dead—my mind and body just didn’t quite know it yet.
“Don’t do that,” Leonidas snapped, intruding on my morbid musings. “Don’t give up.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m facing the inevitable.” I gestured down at my physical body. “My left arm and leg are both badly broken, and I probably have other internal injuries. I’m trapped deep in a mine on a ledge that could give way under my weight at any time. I’m dead. The only thing that’s left to ponder is if I’ll wake up—truly wake up—before the end.”
Leonidas’s jaw clenched, and determination flared in his eyes. “You’re not going to die. I’m going to save you.”
I barked out a harsh, bitter laugh. “How are you going to do that? Unless I miss my guess, you’re already back in Morta. Even if you could return to Blauberg in time, there’s no way you could get past Conley and the other miners, much less make it down into this chamber.”
He stared at me, his jaw still clenched tight, and the determination burning in his eyes never wavered or dimmed, not even for an instant. He truly thought he could rescue me. He was an even bigger fool than I’d realized.
Leonidas leaned over and nudged me with his elbow. The motion was careful, gentle, controlled, as if he was concerned that he would send my ghostly form tumbling down into the chasm just like my physical body had. To my surprise, I actually felt the sensation, as though he had touched me in real life, and I had to hold back a shiver.
“My friends call me Leo.”
“Do you have a lot of friends?” I asked. “Back home in Morta?”
Perhaps it was a trick of the gloomy lantern light, but I could have sworn that sadness flickered across his face. “There’s Lyra, of course. My sister, Delmira.” He paused. “And my mother. But I suppose she has to be my friend.”
Maeven’s smiling face filled my mind. I remembered the smug glee that had rolled off her as the turncoat guards had cut people down during the Seven Spire massacre, along with her silent words. I’m going to enjoy this.
I shuddered. “No, I don’t think your mother has to be your friend.”
“No, I suppose not,” Leonidas replied.
We sat there in silence, each of us lost in our own dark though
ts. I didn’t have the strength to sit upright anymore, not even in this ghostly form, so I pulled my legs up over the lip of the chasm and scooted back. Then I lay down on the cavern floor, using my right arm as a pillow to cushion my head.
“Goodbye, Leo,” I said, my words slurring a bit. “Enjoy the rest of your princely life. Oh, and pet Lyra for me. I always wanted to pet a strix, but I never got the chance.”
I must truly be dying to sputter nonsense like that. The thought made me laugh, at least in my own mind, but no sound came out of my lips.
Leonidas leaned over me, concern creasing his face. He shook my shoulder. “Hey! Stay awake! Don’t go back to sleep!”
But the sharp motion didn’t rouse me, and I was already asleep. This was just a dream, after all. Still, for some reason, I could have sworn that I felt the hot shock of his hand cupping my cheek before I tumbled back down the cliff into the blackness waiting in my body.
Chapter Ten
The blackness wrapped around me like the softest cloak, blotting out everything else.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay on the ledge. Minutes, hours, days . . . Penelope’s body quickly grew cold and stiff against my own, and I couldn’t tell where the ledge ended and she began. But it didn’t really matter since I would soon be as cold, stiff, and dead as she was.
Gemma! Gemma!
Every once in a while, Grimley’s worried voice would pierce the blackness, like a low, gravelly bell tolling in the night. But I didn’t have the strength to respond, and I tumbled back down into the darkness again.
Eventually, that darkness grew brighter, sharper, until it morphed into a river of dreams carrying me along and showing me all sorts of images.
Grimley crouching on a rooftop, snarling and staring at the mine entrance. Topacia standing in a barracks, speaking to a stern-looking captain of the royal guard. Conley sitting at a desk, letting coins trickle down through his fingers and spatter onto an even larger pile of gold.
No, these weren’t dreams. For once, my ghosting magic was showing me things that were happening right now, out in the real world. My friends were trying to save me, and Conley was counting his blood money. Greedy bastard.
I got glimpses of other things too, of places I had never been before. Lyra perching on a tower of a small, crumbling mountaintop castle, her purple feathers ruffling as she squawked at the other strixes gathered around her. Leonidas shoving food and other supplies into a satchel. Then Leonidas climbing onto Lyra’s back, and the two of them sailing up, up, up into the brilliant blue autumn sky . . .
Those images faded away, and that cloak of blackness wrapped around me again. But the cloak was just an illusion, and my body soon grew as cold as the rocks around me. I didn’t mind the chill, though. It helped douse some of the hot pain throbbing through my broken bones—
Thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Noises rang out, interrupting my slow spiral down toward death. I couldn’t tell if I was actually awake or just dreaming again, although some small part of me struggled to figure out what was happening. The noises almost sounded like . . .
Footsteps.
Several sets, all headed this way.
My heart lifted, but it tumbled back down just as fast, like a baby strix trying—and failing—to fly for the first time. No one was coming to rescue me. The miners were probably just returning from lunch, or whatever time it was now. Even if someone did enter the cavern, I didn’t have the strength to lift my head, much less call out for help. That cold, numb lethargy swept over me again, pulling me back down, down, down into the darkness—
A light fell on my face, snapping me fully awake. My eyes popped open, but I had to shut them against the harsh glare.
“Over here!” A familiar feminine voice assaulted my ears, further startling me. “I see her!”
Other voices rose up, although I couldn’t decipher any of the excited chatter. More lights blazed to life, illuminating my face, arms, and legs. After being in the murky gray gloom for so long, the bright white glow brought tears to my eyes. I squinted, trying to figure out what was happening, but all I could see were the lights bobbing up and down like fireflies.
“She’s blinking! She’s still alive!” the feminine voice sounded again.
“Stand back!” This time, a deep, masculine voice rose up above the others.
I frowned. That almost sounded like . . . like . . . I tried to concentrate, but the answer wouldn’t come to me.
Several seconds passed by in silence, although the lights remained bright and steady on my body. Then my fingertips started tingling, the way they always did in the presence of powerful magic. An instant later, this . . . pressure wrapped all around me, as though two giant hands were scooping up my body and slowly hoisting it—me—off the ledge.
Gentle though it was, that first, slightly jerky lift made the pain of my injuries explode in my body again, like stitches that had been ripped open with a dagger. This time, I couldn’t stop myself from screaming, although it was a weak, hoarse sound, like the keening of a wounded animal.
Those invisible hands holding me flinched, as though I had startled them. I screamed again, and again, but those hands slowly, relentlessly, ruthlessly hoisted my body higher and higher into the air.
“She’s in pain.” That feminine voice intruded on my cries. “Perhaps you should set her back down.”
“No,” the masculine voice replied. “I know she’s hurting, but this is the quickest, easiest way to get her out of there.”
Those invisible hands lifted me higher . . . and higher . . . and higher still . . .
I must have passed out because the next thing I knew, I was lying on the cavern floor, with people gathered around me.
How long has she been down here . . .
She’s a broken mess . . .
Can’t believe she survived that fall . . .
Their thoughts crashed over me, along with their curiosity, sympathy, and horror, but for once, the sensations didn’t overwhelm me. Right now, they were as insignificant as spiders skittering across my skin compared to the pain of my injuries.
My gaze flicked from one face to another. I didn’t recognize any of the people, but their helmets and coveralls marked them as miners. Panic filled me. I studied them all again, but none of them were Conley’s men, and no one seemed to want to kick me back down into the chasm.
Someone pushed through the ring of miners and dropped to a knee beside me. The figure took off their helmet and lifted their head, revealing black hair, green eyes, and pretty features.
Reiko, the dragon morph, leaned down closer to me. “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Heal her.” That masculine voice called out again. “Now.”
The icy command boomed through the cavern, and a man scuttled forward, crouched down beside me, and removed his helmet. This man looked to be in his sixties, with brown eyes and gray hair that was pulled back into a low ponytail. Deep wrinkles grooved into his bronze skin, although his face and hands were curiously free of the dust that coated the other miners.
“Hello. My name is Javier. I’m one of the mine’s bone masters.”
Javier studied me with a sharp, critical gaze, magic flaring like matches in his eyes as he took stock of my injuries. “I’m sorry,” he murmured in an apologetic voice. “But this is going to hurt.”
Before I could croak out a response, he placed one hand on my left arm and the other on my left leg. More magic flared in his eyes, making them gleam a bright topaz. Then his power slammed into my body.
Javier was probably trying to be gentle, but the bones in my left arm and leg writhed around like coral vipers as they wriggled into place and then fused back together. Then those vipers invaded the rest of my body, relentlessly pulling, yanking, and tugging everything back the way it was supposed to be.
In some ways, the pain was even worse than when I had first hi
t the ledge, and the continued, prolonged, white-hot agony was so intense that I couldn’t even scream, although tears and sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes and adding to my misery.
Slowly, much too slowly, the writhing vipers stilled, and the white-hot agony dulled to warm daggers stabbing into my body. Eventually, the daggers shrank to pinpricks, which faded away to nothingness. I lay on the ground, still crying and sweating, although my breath came much easier, and my mind was clear now.
Javier dropped his hands, released his magic, and sat back on his heels. “I took care of the worst of her injuries, but she needs several more rounds of healing, as well as food and water and good, old-fashioned rest.”
“Can she be moved?”
Javier nodded. “Yes. She is stable enough to be taken out of the mine.”
He stood up, and another man strode forward and knelt down beside me.
Instead of a miner’s grimy gray coveralls, this man was wearing a black cloak over a black riding coat, along with matching gloves, leggings, and boots. A light gray tearstone sword and matching dagger dangled from his black leather belt.
The fluorestones gilded his black hair in a silvery sheen that also accentuated his sharp cheekbones and straight nose. His eyes seemed more black than purple, and he looked like a shadow knight, a dark, unstoppable force that had stepped out of a nightmare and into the real world to wreak havoc and destruction on anyone who dared to get in his way.
“Leonidas?” I rasped, my tongue heavy in my dry, dusty mouth. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you.” He bent down and put his mouth close to my ear. “And it’s Leo, remember?”
His warm breath tickled my skin, and an involuntary shiver swept through my body.
Only to your friends, I murmured in my mind.
Amusement filled his face. Aren’t we friends? After all, we’ve saved each other’s lives.
If I’d had the strength for it, I would have shaken my head. I don’t know what we are.
Certainly not friends. Like it or not, he was still a Morricone, and I was still a Ripley. We might have saved each other’s lives now, but we had both tried to kill each other as children, something that I clearly remembered, even if he did not.
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