Page 98 of Villains and Vengeance
I put my forehead to hers, a painful lump in my throat. I don’t want to leave her here like this. She deserves better.
But there’s nothing else I can do.
I stand up and take a shuddering breath as I look down at the watch I took off Dante.
It’s only been a couple of hours. How can that be when so much has happened?
I still have a few minutes to make the window.
I turn and I run. Something isn’t right. My legs are taking longer steps and I know I was never this fast. I don’t look like myself either, but there’s no time to find a mirror now to find out how striking the changes might be.
So, I keep running.
Across the deserted throne room and through the main corridor.
There are supes everywhere, but all they do is turn and gape. Whether that’s because I’mThe Femaleor because I definitely don’t look the way I did a few minutes ago, I don’t know.
I hear one or two give chase, but I leave them in the dust. I don’t even look back.
I take the steps upstairs three at a time and reach Arania Alley in seconds.
Five hundred steps are counted quickly, but I’m in the wrong place because my legs are too long.
I have to go back, feeling for the opening and I gradually feel more normal again as I go. My skin changes from a kind of dark turquoise to my regular color. I realize I’m still wearing the shirt Dante gave me, but it’s ripped all the way down the front.
Feeling chilly now, I grasp it to me and keep walking down the edge of the passage with my hand on the wall, feeling for when I get to the hole.
I almost miss it; I’m going so fast and when I freeze, I practically topple over.
But I scramble into the tunnel and haul myself through at record speed, knowing that the portal is already open because I can feel that ancient fae magick concentrated in front of me. But it won’t stay that way for more than a couple of minutes.
I fall out of the shaft, landing hard on the floor of the cavern and I see the breach in front of me. It looks like almost nothing, a tiny sliver of muted light that you could easily miss if you didn’t know it was there.
Jayce is being carried over someone’s shoulder, but they’ve already gone through.
It’s going to close!
I scramble up and sprint the last few steps. Jayce is staring at me with a shocked and desperate expression. His arm reaches out to me.
I lunge for his hand as it disappears, and I gasp as I’m pulled into the portal with him.
A bright pulse of light has me scrunching up my eyes that have been so accustomed to the dark over these past months that this much brightness is painful.
The tunnel is long, but I remember this journey from before and I think it’s because this window is so ancient. It doesn’t feel like the others I’ve travelled by before.
I realize that I’m not holding Jayce’s hand anymore and I reach out, squinting in the light and trying to find him. But he’s gone.
The breach casts me out suddenly and I fall hard, landing in wet grass with an oomph.
Fresh air has me breathing in deep and my hands claw at the dirt. I’ve missed the outside.
I turn onto my back and stifle a sob.
Stars.
I close my eyes as I cry, trying to keep quiet because I have no idea where I am.
My joy at being out of the Mountain, for having survived Dante and everything else is heavily tinged with acute grief over Siggy.
