Page 54 of I Summon the Sea

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. Allhehas to do is let me fall back to the ground and get onto that tower. Takethe 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, didPhaethontell 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…

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