Page 3 of Demanding Discord
Discord joined me outside the cave, and the boulder blocking the entrance rematerialized. He winced and rubbed his chest. “Using magic has never affected me like this. Do you feel it too?”
I could tell it took a toll on him. Whether it was through our bond or just from his body language, I couldn’t say. I didn’t want to know. “Unless witches are using an inborn power like fire, magic always depletes our vim.”
“It’s unpleasant.”
“That it is.” I pushed from the wall and peered at our surroundings. We stood on a ledge deep in the canyon, about six feet above the acid river. Sheer cliffs rose all around, and steam hovered on the surface of the stream.
We could clamber our way down, but unless there was an invisible ladder around, we’d still be stuck at the bottom of the ravine. We had definitely ventured past the touristy part of the canyon. “How do we get out?”
“Normally, I’d bend space and drop us in front of the temple. But with the way my powers are waning…” He gestured to the jagged wall soaring twenty yards above us. “We’ll have to climb.”
I craned my neck, squinting in the glowing orange moonlight. The wall went straight up. No little trails or gradual inclines to make the feat even slightly easier. I’d visited the rock-climbing gym in Salem more than a few times, and fighting off ghouls and fae mosquitoes kept me in decent shape, but damn, that would be a long ascent.
“It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights,” I said. “Should we walk a ways and see if there’s an easier spot to climb?”
“It doesn’t get easier for miles in either direction.” He rested a hand on a bulging rock. “Grab on here. The soles of your boots should grip the protrusions and recesses.”
“I know how to climb.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’ve just never done it without a rope.”
“Ladies first.” He stepped away from the wall, his gaze flowing down my body before returning to my eyes.
I fought a grin and grabbed the rock, hauling myself up the first three feet. “You just want to look at my butt, don’t you?”
“The view is quite nice.”
I glanced down, and he flashed a crooked smile, arching a brow in appreciation of the junk in my trunk.
“Are all demons horndogs, or is it just you?” I found another foothold and pushed, using my leg strength to reach above and grab another protruding rock. Whether my heart was pounding from the physical exertion or the flirtatious demon, I couldn’t say. Probably both.
“I haven’t been with a woman in over four hundred years.” He hauled himself up and followed as I climbed. “The kiss we shared has awakened a beast inside me.”
Good goddess. I didn’t dare look down, but I could imagine his hungry expression, the fire in his eyes as he prowled toward me, the deftness of his hands and tongue. Whew. In all fairness, it had been a while for me too. Not four hundred years, but long enough to make his advances sound way more appealing than they should, especially in our current predicament.
And that beast he claimed I’d awakened… Sweet spirits and spells, how I would love to meet him. Gah! Concentrate, Cin. I was only halfway to the top, and my muscles were screaming with the exertion.
My thighs and shoulders burned, and my fingers felt like I’d scraped them against the steaming blacktop on the school playground. If I could focus on those physical sensations, maybe I could ignore the heat pooling in my nether region.
Twenty feet to go. I peered up and found an indentation in the stone just big enough to fit my fingers in. I grabbed on and pulled, gripping the wall with the soles of my boots. My pulse thrummed, my breathing growing shallow as I hauled myself up.
Sharp pain sliced through my index finger as if it had been stabbed and wrenched out of the socket at the same time.
“Son of a bitch!” I yanked my hand out and lost my footing. My left hand gripped a piece of obsidian protruding from the rock, but the surface was too slick. My fingers slipped, and I fell backward, Hans Gruber from Die Hard style.
Please don’t let me land in the acid was the only thought in my mind. Time seemed to slow as I plummeted and stared up at the weird moon hanging in the cloudless sky.
Discord gripped my forearm, stopping my fall, but my body swung, slamming into the wall with a thunk. My head smacked the rocks, and my vision swam. Thankfully, instinct made me latch on to his arm too, because his grip slipped. I caught his wrist half a nanosecond before I continued my unwelcome descent, and his fingers encircled my arm, locking us together.
I blinked my vision back into focus and scrambled around to find something to hold on to. “I’m okay,” I lied, my breathless voice giving me away.
“Climb onto my back,” he said. “I’ll carry you out of the ravine.”
“I said I’m okay.” I tugged from his grasp and grabbed another rock, pulling myself above him.
A spark of annoyance lit in my chest, fueling my adrenaline. I climbed faster than I had ever climbed before, muttering to myself the entire way up. Did he seriously just suggest a piggyback ride? To a strong, absolutely capable woman? To an elemental witch?
The good news was his ridiculous suggestion had squelched any desire I’d felt toward him. Hopefully, he could smell that too.
And hopefully, I could get my emotions off this damn rollercoaster. My own mood swings were about to give me whiplash, but I blamed that on all the trauma we’d endured since we arrived in Hell. It was enough to make anyone crack beneath the pressure. Not me, though. I refused to break.
