Page 105 of Thorn Season
My specter flared, about to redirect toward him. I painfully tugged it back.
“Alissa,” Tari said, voice strained.
“AndIthink”—my specter juddered with my growing agitation—“that if you don’t release my friend, you’ll be sorry you ever set foot inside this kingdom.”
“Alissa—”
“We handled the other Capewell just fine. I’m sure we can fend off a pretty noble girl who doesn’t want to scuff her boots.”
“Goren,” Dashiel warned.
My specter shook inside the earth and I couldn’t subdue it. Apitter-patterdrummed over the floor.
“Alissa!”
All heads snapped to a wide-eyed Tari, whose attention was fixed above—on something that made her legs tremble.
For one stunned second, I thought she could see my specter as I did—a vein of power feeding upward, frantic wavelets running along its length.
Then thunder growled through the tunnels.Not thunder, I realized, looking higher. To where the earthen ceiling had cracked from the pressure.
Lye’s hand slipped off my shoulder. “It’s collapsing,” he whispered.
I hadn’t just destabilized this portion of the tunnels. I’d destabilized the entire complex.
My specter flinched out of the earth. A mistake. Because, like yanking a blade from a wound, soil hemorrhaged from the opening.
Urgency whip-snapped through the group. Goren discarded Tari and ran toward the noise, Dashiel close behind him.
“Get them out of here!” Dashiel called over his shoulder.
Osana pushed us forward, Lye leading the way. The rumble chased us through the tunnels as our boots pounded the earth, our breaths rasping. I tripped, and Osana grasped my elbow to steady me.
Lye halted, and Tari slammed into his back. Another earthen mound blocked the path ahead. He ran his torch over the area. Then the mound shuddered—shifted—as an invisible force threaded through it.
He rounded on Osana. “You’ll bring the whole thing collapsing around us!”
“There’s no other way out,” she said, the rigid set of her shoulders marking her exertion.
“It’s true,” I said, panting, remembering the map. “There’s only one exit.”
Earth spurted from the mound, and we shielded our faces. The walls shook around us.
“Help her,” I said to Lye. “She can’t hold it alone.”
“I don’t need help,” Osana said.
Tari threw her hands up. “We’re about to be buried alive, and you’re being proud?”
“I don’t need help,” Osana repeated tightly, straining against the weight.
I swiveled to Lye, about to throttle him into Wielding his specter, when I noticed the strange mix of helplessness and acceptance shadowing his green eyes.
I staggered back. “You’re a Wholeborn,” I whispered. “Aren’t you?”
His eyes crinkled, suggesting a grim smile beneath the mask. “You can’t tell right now, but it wouldn’t be fair for someone so handsome to also possess the power of a specter.”
I swallowed and turned to Osana. “Can you bear it alone?”
