Page 69 of Faerie Fate
We crawled toward the door and Mike’s frantic pounding as the house reverberated. Debris fell from the ceiling and Poppy yelped, jolted to the side away from me.
Someone called out a warning, but my body, slow to react from the force of the vision, from the echoing word in my head—battle,battle—made it difficult to get out of the way. To do anything other than scream when the falling beam nailed me in the spine.
Chapter Twenty
My head. I swam through a sea of pain with a heavy weight pressed against my legs. The more I came to, the more I felt my body and the less I wanted to. My heart thundered out a reckless beat as a wet cloth brushed roughly over my face. First my forehead, then my cheeks, my mouth, my nose.
I lay on my stomach, my arms splayed out on either side of my body, my head tilted awkwardly against the ground.
My ears rang with the force of the earthquake but the sounds were distant and slightly muffled. The earth wasn’t shaking anymore. It was me. My arms trembled and I reached up to push the cloth away.
Hot breath panted against my fingertips and forehead. “Noren?”
The croak that came out instead of my voice was worrisome. The weight on the back of my legs seemed to increase as well as the frequency of the licks. His excitement at finding me awake and halfway okay warmed the pieces of my heart but the next inhalation brought with it haze and heat.
I flung my hand out and found his leg. My fingers wrapped around him to ground myself.
“Help me? Please?”
Noren crouched closer but I couldn’t see him through the dust. Nothing but the foggy outline of his shaggy shoulders as he bent, letting me use him for balance. I grabbed his fur and he rose slowly and dragged me with him.
There was nothing but blue sky overhead. I squinted against it, froze, and looked closer. Blue sky and not ceiling.
What happened to the house?
The ache in my legs was nothing compared to the tightness in my chest. Still holding on to Noren, trembling with the effort, I twisted, debris marking permanent indentations in my stomach. I somehow got my elbows underneath me and sat up, turning?—
One of the thick ceiling beams rested across my legs, trapping them. The same one that hit me on the back of the head, on the spine. I should be dead.
Why aren’t I dead?
I dropped my head back down against the dirt-strewn floor and probed the massive knot.
“Is everyone else okay?” I asked. “Did you check on them?”
My glimpse of the cabin showed nothing but ruin. It was a carved out husk of dirt and toothpicks instead of an actual house.
Maybe this was hell. Or some kind of painful middle ground where I had to suffer while I waited for actual judgment. But no, Noren was here. He’d done nothing wrong.
The direwolf growled and butted me with the top of his head. Drawing on my reserves, I turned again, staring at the beam.
An earthquake in Faerie…
Balanced on one elbow, I reached down and shoved. Solid wood met my fingertips. It felt as immovable as a boulder and just as thick, just as heavy. It refused to budge.
“Okay, I’ve got this.”Didn’t I?
Eyes shut, I drew in a dust-coated breath and dug down deep. My shifter powers rose in a steady wave, strength condensing in my wrist and forearm as my muscles bulked. I shifted into a concentrated halfway form until my skin strained like I’d taken steroids.
Grunting, I pushed at the beam.
It wasn’t enough.
Nothing felt like enough and the wood only grew heavier the harder I tried to move it.
Out of breath, panting, I drew more magic up. Agony flared in my left leg and I ignored it until the beam finally budged, giving me an inch of room to draw myself forward. It was all I needed.
And all I got.
