Page 19 of Outcast Fae
Pain erupted all over my body. The world went gray for a moment as my head spun.
When I blinked my eyes open, Vaughn was standing over me, glaring with those cool green eyes. “Leaving so soon?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Meadow Song’s voice answered for me.
“Attempts at escape are not allowed. You had already been warned.”
“What does that mean?” Vaughn asked, glancing up.
Before I could ponder an answer, the ground began to shake as if it meant to buck us off. Then, I watched in horror as the very earth beneath us cracked in two.
Chapter Eight
The ground shook beneath us,sending us staggering in all directions.
My first instinct was to fly up, but my wings would not respond. They were frozen, useless. Ourgòrakcaptors had used magic to restrain them. By now, I had been the victim of enough spells to know when someone was tampering with me.
Panic at being grounded ran through me, but there was no time for such emotions. Not when the very earth was falling apart beneath our feet.
A crack ripped the ground, and the jungle floor split apart as if cleaved by a giant ax. Branches and rocks tumbled into the crevice as it widened. It grew larger, swallowing up earth like a hungry mouth.
We reeled away from it, the males ending up on one side and Daniella and me on the other. Arms windmilling, we crouched, fighting to stay on our feet as the ground continued to roil. How large would it grow? Would it swallow us all? Daniella shot me a terrified glance, but I had no comfort to offer. The Dean had said there were no rules about what they could do to us.
The crack expanded, elongating toward the spot where Elon had been building the fire pit.
“The food!” Vaughn exclaimed.
He tried to go for the packages that rested next to the fire pit rocks, but he was forced to jump back as the crack spread faster, swallowing the packages and rocks.
Vaughn let out an angry growl as he moved away, scrambling, struggling to stay upright as the earth beneath his boots trembled like the back of a shivering giant.
The ground jerked violently, throwing me backward on a pile of jagged rocks. I struggled to my hands and knees but was unable to stand. From nearby, Daniella screamed, “Stop it, please!”
On the other side of the crack, Elon and Wally were scrambling away on all fours, their movements jerky and uneven as they maneuvered over the quaking ground.
My eyes darted around, searching for Daniella, but there was no sign of her.
“Where is she?” I screamed over the tumbling of rocks and grumbling ground. She’d been right beside me. Where could she have gone?
Vaughn had started retreating in the same fashion as Elon and Wally, but when he heard me, he glanced back over his shoulder, eyes roving all around.
Palm fronds rained from above, hitting the ground next to me. My arms flew up to cover my head as I tucked in my wings protectively. The whole world was shaking as if bent on swallowing us all through this new mouth it had fashioned for itself.
I yelped as something hard hit the back of my thigh. I glanced down and found a large green coconut had fallen on me.
“Gòrak!” I growled under my breath and glanced back toward Vaughn who had moved closer to the crack and was peering down into its depths.
“She’s over there!” He pointed his finger into the pit. “On your side.”
Oh, gods! She’d fallen in the pit.
Desperately, I tried to make my wings work again, but they wouldn’t even flutter. Cursing, I crawled toward the edge as the ground beneath kept buckling, threatening to throw me off like a wild horse. Maybe I would fall into the crevice, ending my misery.
I thought of screaming for help like Daniella had, of begging our captors to stop the earth from shaking, but I knew they wouldn’t stop. They had caused this to begin with, a punishment for my insubordination.
“Help!” A small voice reached me, barely audible through all the noise of falling debris.
I crawled forward as quickly as I could. When I got close to the edge of the fissure, I dug my fingernails into the ground and slowly peered in. Through the raining dirt and rocks, I spotted Daniella, her thin arms wrapped around a pointed boulder that protruded from the wall of the pit. She blinked up at me through askew glasses.
