Page 107 of Thorn Season
Tari spat onto the grass as her breathing evened.
Lye looked to me, eyes wide with concern. “You all right?”
I gulped, shaking. I was not all right. Not as my specter settled inside me with an unfamiliar heaviness. The heaviness of gas-rich air before a spark set it alight.
An axe shot up from the hole, and gloved hands clawed after it.Goren’s immense muscles shuddered as he hefted himself out. Dashiel emerged a moment later, and the entry collapsed with aboom, soil gushing from the sunken hole. As if they’d been the last force keeping it open.
Dashiel ripped away his mask and sucked in the clean air.
I stilled.
It took me a second to fit the face to memory. The deep brown skin, the broad jaw and full lips, the rough scar etching his chin.
“It was you,” I breathed. “Carmen metyouat Backplace.”
Goren looked toward Dashiel and growled.“Fool.”
I stood, ready to wring him for answers, when Tari touched my shoulder.
“We need to go,” she said. Her face was dirt-stained, her eyes still watery from heaving.
A more powerful guilt twisted my stomach. Tari had never let me face trouble alone. And tonight, it had nearly gotten her killed.
She was right; we had to go.
But Dashiel staggered upright and stood before us, one palm raised as it had been the day he’d cornered me in the parlor. “Please, my lady. Can we talk?”
“Don’t let them leave,” Goren said.
But they were all exhausted, their specters frayed from carrying the walls of a collapsing mine. My power was unspent. Even in its current state—bloated and unsteady—I could take them all.
“Get out of our way,” I said slowly.
“Please.” Dashiel went to step closer. I slipped a thread of my specter under his boot before it met the ground. He lost his balance, stumbling.
I shoved Tari forward and ran.
We made it twenty yards before a fierce tendril snatched my ankle. I hit the ground, palms scraping, arms reverberating as they caught my fall. I knew instinctively that the thick, undulating power belonged to Goren. He wrenched me back, and I dug my nails into the dirt.
Teeth gritted, I reached for my specter. I would not let him drag me through this field.
But then Tari was at my feet, a blade glinting in her grip.
“Hold still.” She thrust her hand out blindly, jolting when she met with Goren’s specter. She kept her palm there for guidance, then swung the blade down.
The phantom grip released me. A roar sounded, and I glanced around to see Goren collapse in agony.
Tari lifted the eurium knife and smirked. “You didn’t think I’d leave without it?”
We were riding before their voices could reach us, the ropes we’d used to tie the horses snapping in the wind.
31
The door ricocheted off the wall before slamming shut behind me.
Keil had been pacing his ambassadorial chambers, arms crossed over his chest. His face slackened as he looked between me and the door. The door he’d locked. “How did you—?”
“Your cronies nearly got my friend killed last night,” I said, storming forward.
