Page 34 of A Fractured Song

“Meeting you changed me as well, you know.” Marieke’s quiet voice surprised him as she matched her tone to his this time. She gestured at the canyon below them. “All of this changed me. You went back to your old life after you left, but I…couldn’t. There was so little of it left to go back to.”

Something in the region of Zev’s heart throbbed painfully at her mention of him leaving her. She hadn’t used the wordabandoned, but he still heard it. Just as he’d heard it in his own thoughts every day since he walked away from her in that marketplace in Ondford.

“I didn’t just go back to how things were before,” he said. “I suppose I tried to. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t just forget.”

“So here you are,” she said softly.

“So here I am.”

For a moment they just looked at each other, the light of their moment of intimacy flickering almost back into life. Perhaps if it had been a declaration they’d shared, it might have been enough to give body to the feelings hovering between them. But it hadn’t been a declaration, it had been a mere kiss. Everything that mattered had been left unsaid, and in another moment, Marieke was turning away again.

Clearly it would be left unsaid today as well.

“But here is not where either of us want to be,” she was saying briskly. “We need to keep moving if we want to get safely to the canyon floor before dark. We can’tafford to spend the night on the cliff face, and we can’t afford to rush. So let’s go.”

Zev followed her lead, silently taking the mallet and peg from her when she’d mapped out their next stopping point to her satisfaction. Muscles straining, he hammered the metal into the rock, not stopping until it was almost all the way in. It took all his strength, and he couldn’t help giving Marieke a sardonic look.

“So you were planning to do that part alone, were you?”

“Not alone,” she said with dignity. “I was going to use magic.”

Zev shook his head, but he had to admit once they’d descended to another, much smaller, ledge that it was mesmerizing to listen to as she used her song to untie the rope above them. The peg stayed lodged in the stone, thankfully having held better than the stake up on the surface.

They repeated this process a few times, some of the landing points precarious to say the least. Zev insisted on going down the rope first each time, and his heart hammered in his chest whenever he saw Marieke clinging to handholds with determination, very little between her and a horrifying fall below.

Thankfully they were on a section of rock wide enough for their whole feet to stand flat when they ran into a new problem.

Marieke raised her face to the landing above, clearing her throat and opening her mouth.

Nothing came out.

“Marieke?” Zev prompted her.

She frowned, trying again with the same result.

“I’ve lost my voice,” she murmured, her own words startling her. “No, I haven’t. What’s going on?” She cleared her throat again, but nothing emerged when she opened her mouth. “Curious,” she said. “I can speak, but I can’t sing. Blast.”She bit her lip as she studied the rope. “I suppose I should be grateful that the canyon hasn’t taken my voice completely like last time, but this is going to make things a lot harder.”

Zev looked around before replying, squinting to his right. “I think I can see the section you were talking about before. We don’t have much further to go, and then the terrain should be more passable, right?”

Marieke nodded. “But I don’t see us getting over there without a rope. And I don’t want to be without one when we get lower down. I couldn’t sense all the way to the bottom of the canyon. There may be more sheer sections lower down.”

“I’ll get the rope,” Zev said stoically. “I think I can climb the section we just did without it.”

“Zev.”

Marieke’s voice showed her reluctance, but Zev didn’t stop to argue about it. The task wouldn’t get easier for being left. Already it was getting dimmer in the canyon, the sun having passed out of sight above them long before.

Pulling himself hand over hand, Zev scaled his way back to the previous stopping point. As long as he didn’t look down, it was easy enough. The most dangerous part of it was the thought of what would happen if he fell. He just needed to be resolute in not entertaining that thought.

He untied the knot as swiftly as he could, coiling the rope across his torso before starting to climb down. He’d thought the descent tense enough with the rope—it was a very different experience without it. His palms began sweating at once, and the need to find footholds prevented him from avoiding looking down altogether. The ledge on which Marieke stood, anxiously watching him, wasn’t like the one above—if he lost his grip, it wouldn’t be wide enough to stop his fall.

Just as he drew close enough to Marieke to start relaxing, the jutting rock he’d grabbed with one hand broke away fromthe cliff face. Caught off guard, Zev lost his hold and, to his horror, found himself sliding down the rock out of control.

He heard Marieke’s cry, and the next thing he knew, she’d thrown her arms around him as he slid to her level, trying to use her body to pin him to the rock.

It slowed him enough to allow him to get his footing on the little ledge, but with him against the wall and Marieke on his outside, she had barely any purchase for her feet. She was still pressed against him such that he felt when her foothold gave way.

There was no time to cry out. Silent and panicked, Zev reached around, gripping her arm just as she jolted downward. It took every bit of his self-control to stay stationary, and every bit of his strength not to lose his own hold on the rock. But he managed it, and once everything was still and he was sure of his footing, he pulled her slowly back to his position, his arms straining with the effort.

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