Page 135 of Brambles and Bellflowers
He jumped so suddenly that I fell back, breaking the circle, as he moved to his hands and knees. I’d landed on my back, and I pushed up with my elbows as he grabbed at his head. “Miles?”
His attention snapped up at the sound of his name, and his eyes glowed a golden caramel as he lunged forward, reaching for me. The breath was knocked from me as heavy hands closed around my throat, and his much larger form settled over my hips.
“M-Miles!” I could hardly breathe his name. I grasped at his hands, but my attempts to dig my fingernails into his wrists had little effect other than to annoy him.
“I can’t do it!” he said, grasping my wrists with his right hand. I could scarcely breathe as he held my arms above my head, and his grip on my throat tightened.
“What—” I gasped, trying to stay calm. “What are you doing?” This wasMiles—he would never get violent with me. Although, at the moment, the maniacal glint in his eyes didn’t offer much reassurance.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
Well, Iwould. My skin was crawling, and I needed to flee. But how could he expect me to listen if I waspinned to the ground?
“Then l-let go!” I tried to buck him off, but it made no difference. The lines on his face were taut, and there wasn’t even an ounce of recognition in his darkening gaze.
My chest felt heavy, and I stopped fighting as a lethargy turned my limbs to lead. A roaring echoed through my ears, and it was hard to string together a coherent thought.
A large, pointy rock pressed into my shoulder, and a shadow passed over my vision as the pressure against my chest threatened to crush me.
I wasn’t sure what was happening, but the crazed, distant look hadn’t faded from Miles’s expression.
My vision tunneled until I could only see his expressionless eyes. There was a darkness in the air surrounding us, and while he made no further move to hurt me, the Miles I knew seemed to grow more distant with every passing second.
Long moments seemed to pass, and my hope grew more distant as a dark shadow moved over him. His expression was growing more shuttered, snuffing out the light that made him,him. His features blurred now until he’d become only a shape—an impenetrable force—above me, threatening to crush me into the ground.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Tu is testing you,” Mu’s voice rang. “Fight back.”
Fight back?How?
Miles was exceptionally bigger and stronger than me. I’d never win against him.
“You’re theonlyone who can beat him.”
No, I couldn’t. I gasped, freezing air ripping through my painful chest. His hands were cold, and I was turning to ice from the inside out.
He’d asked me to trust him, and I did. And now I was dying because of it.
Miles was going to be crushed when he figured out what happened.
What would the aftermath be like? Would he eventually come back to himself and see my dead body? Or would he stay this way until the others eventually found us? With Kathleen’s barrier gone, it was only a matter of time.
They might kill him.
I couldn’t let them kill him.
The wind whistled—a sound that grew louder with every passing second. A breeze moved across my face, washing away the shadow as, with slow, shaky inhales, the world moved into focus once more.
Miles was still on top of me, unmoved. Still in the same position, holding me trapped under him. But as the spots faded, a calm sense of clarity returned.
He was distant, unreachable, even as tears stained his cheeks.
I couldn’t give up; I had to win—if only so Miles didn’t die later.
However, Mu was wrong. I couldn’t beat him.
“You’re at a disadvantage, true,” the small voice whispered. “But nobody said you had to play fair.”
