Page 31 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
There was nothing teasing in what he said. But despite how awful I felt, my body still reacted to the rumble of his voice and the feeling of his breath against my skin.
I stifled another groan of misery. I was a ball of frustrating and uncomfortable sensations, and I needed them all to stop. Immediately.
Kieran must have sensed how I was feeling because he said, “Hang in there. We’re about to jump down onto the street, then it’s up and over the wall.”
The wall. We were going to cross the wall.
Nya was still about fifty feet in front of us, but she had paused to balance on the cornice. I opened my eyes just in time to see her hold her arm high, flash a thumbs-up, and fall soundlessly. Beyond where she had been standing, the silhouette of the wall loomed. Closer than I had expected.
“Hang on.” Kieran reached his left arm across his body and over my shoulder, holding me against him. His grip was tight to the point of pain. Not a good sign of what was to come.
I buried my face in his shoulder again, this time to stifle a scream.
When I felt the resistance of the ground, I could have wept with relief.
Then we were at the base of the wall.
One hundred feet tall, the pride and joy of Cyllene.
The wall was constructed at the beginning of The Awakening. Television channels, radio stations, and written publications had foregone all other news in favor of reporting on the strange happenings around the planet. The stories both frightened and fascinated the public, and people speculated about what all of this meant for humankind. There was a running joke that maybe another ten years would find us all riding on the backs of our unicorn steeds.
Then the reports of deaths start trickling in. Corpses mutilated in ways that baffled authorities. Encounters with creatures who were initially enchanting, but went on to suck the very life out of their victims. Phenomena like the wind that I had researched for Cato, where one gust brought madness and violence. These occurrences started to snowball, overwhelming police and filling hospitals to capacity.
Then the floodgates opened. People were dying by the thousands.
And thus…the wall. A desperate attempt to keep the now-hostile world at bay.
Every construction company, every individual with skill in building, and even citizens who were unskilled but willing to learn…they all banded together to erect the wall. Other cities did the same, and the remaining news outlets reported on the ventures with mixed opinions. Some questioned how a concretebarrier was going to keep out magic. In most cases, people could neither physically see nor understand the mechanics of how magic worked. But others questioned what else, exactly, they were supposed to do in order to keep their families safe. And that question was met with silence.
In an astounding two years from the day the team broke ground, a one-hundred-foot-high, forty-foot-thick cement wall encased the whole of the thirty miles of Cyllene. One massive, drawbridge-style gate sat on the western side. Wards—protection spells deployed by an enchantress who was willing to offer her services to Cyllene for a price—were placed around the top of the wall in the form of special inscriptions on the surface. Protection against leaping, climbing, crawling, and other wall-breaching things. As an additional safety measure, steel spikes were also adhered to half of the perimeter of the wall, with the remaining half left empty due to a shortage of steel.
Long before the wall was completed, but especially once it was, everyday people were forbidden to come and go from the city. Those who wished to enter Cyllene could only do so under special circumstances. Those who wished to leave were told they could never return.Enforcerswere the only exception. However, if they displayed unusual behavior or symptoms upon their return, even they could be declined reentry. Patrols along the perimeter of the wall could be irregular at times, but the gate itself was heavily guarded.
All of this and more on the history of the wall, I knew from the Library.
Yet none of that prepared me to cross it.
Kieran paused for a moment under the wall’s massive shadow. Ahead, Nya slowed to a halt as well. She lifted her arms in the air in exasperation, questioning what we were doing.
“This is going to get rough,” Kieran whispered. Even in the shadows, I must have looked terrible, because he gently brushed a few loose strands of hair from my face, tucking them behind my ears. “The Springing Spell is really going to kick in here to help us achieve the jumps onto and down from the wall. I’m not going to lie, if the other jumps were hard on you, these two are going to feel brutal. But just try to focus on the fact that this is the last hurdle—literally and figuratively—and then we’re going to be over the wall. Alive.”
“Okay.” I could hear how pitiful my voice sounded.
Kieran seemed to be considering something. “Also,” he said after a moment. Before I knew what was happening, he had moved me off his back and around to his front. Like a rag doll, he adjusted me into the same position I had been in before—arms draped over his shoulders, legs wrapped around his waist. “I want you facing this way so you’re not fighting against the drag on the way up. And…you know…in case you pass out.”
“This is a great pep talk,” I mumbled against his chest, my words almost inaudible.
Through the clenching of my sour stomach and the rising of bile in my throat, I couldn’t help but notice how hard his chest and abdomen were against me. My body had gotten used to the sensation of being on his back, but the adjustment made me feel the heat that radiated from him, and that his neck andarms were slick with sweat. I swallowed against a wave of nausea, and…something else.
What an uncomfortable and confusing experience.
Nya’s anxious hiss carried across the grass.
“Ready?” Now that I was hugging Kieran’s chest, his voice resonated through my whole body.
I opened my mouth to respond, but we were off again.
The rustling thud of Kieran’s footfalls grew louder, and the flexing of his muscles against me became more rapid.
