Page 95 of The Stone Curse
“Till the end,” Curi said, voice deepening.
We weren’t fully recovered, but enough to put up a fight.
“No!” Adaline said.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Levi said. “If I’m going to die today, then I want to do it fighting alongside my team.”
He dropped the shield, and with a unified roar, we rushed at the windows, shattering the unbroken ones and feeling nothing as we burst out into the night.
Serath spun toward me, sensing me, but the rest of the grounded graynites broke their attack to look up at the sky.
“Evacuate!” the general ordered.
They took to the air, flying away from the incoming graynite influx.
I kept running toward Serath, ignoring the confusion, ignoring everything because he was on his knees, his huge body swaying with the effort of trying to remain upright. I caught him before he could fall, clutching him to my chest and staggering beneath his weight.
“Serath, oh god. Serath.”
“Cameron…” His eyes slipped closed, and I buckled beneath his full weight.
“I’ve got you!” Curi appeared beside me, helping me to hold Serath up.
“They’re running,” Levi said, confused.
“What are those?” Curi pointed at the green balloons hurtling toward us.
No, not balloons, orbs. Why were they?—
“Take cover!” Shar threw herself over us as the sound of shattering glass filled the night.
The world turned green.
The air bitter.
And then nothing.
CHAPTER 46
CAMERON
Iwoke with the taste of ash and blood in my mouth, my throat so dry I was instantly coughing.
“Drink this.” A bottle of water was thrust into my hand, and it was only when I’d drained it that my brain came fully online, asking me if it was safe to drink. But Sharniza was patting my back. She’d given me the water, so it had to be safe, and where the fuck were we?
Stone floors and iron bars for walls spoke of a prison cell. Curi was across the corridor in another cell with Levi. He hurried toward the bars but stopped a foot away from them. “You okay, Cameron?”
Was I? “What the fuck happened? Where’s Serath?”
“I don’t know,” Curi said. “We woke up a little while ago. They left water for us.”
“Who?”
“Whoever took us,” Shar said. “The bars are charged with a paralyzing ward. Don’t touch them. Curi spent fifteen minutes crumpled on the ground unable to move.”
I looked back at him, noting the dark smudges beneath his eyes. His skin was streaked with dirt, and so was Levi’s and Shar’s. I doubted I looked any better.
I took in our prison—stone walls, stone floor, no window. Weak light filtered in from somewhere by the corridor. “It has to be graynites. One of the two groups at war with each other.”
