Page 55 of The First Trial
More rocks fell from above, causing screams as others were crushed. People were pushing and shoving, trying to force their way to the front like they could outrun the earthquake. We all were, because there wasn’t anything else to do. There was only one person I knew with enough power to stop it, and she wasn’t here. Fuck, for all I knew, Junie could have been crushed beneath her own falling ceiling.
No, stop it,I admonished myself.You can’t think like that. She’s fine. You’d feel it if she weren’t.
Suddenly, a crack formed up ahead, a trickle of lights streaming through. We were so close to getting out. Safety wasright there.
‘Go! Go! GO!’Abaddon yelled when a few rocks fell a little too close, one of them scratching a deep gouge on his arm. Once we were safe, I would need to heal that.
‘Oz!’ a familiar voice called out to me, and I looked ahead, past the falling debris and through the clouds of dust pluming the air, and there they were. Thorne and Enid were running right for us, and I could see him scanning the crowd, frantically searching for me.
A crack sounded louder than everything else, and I looked up in time to see a stalactite break free and fall, the point headingstraight for Hawthorne and Enid. Without thinking, I pushed my legs as fast as they could run, and reached my friends just in time, shoving them out of the way right as it broke loose.
Everything happened in slow motion from then on, and I sent up a quick prayer to Hecate to keep everyone safe. I knew I was dead. There was no way I could move out of the way fast enough to survive this. As long as the people I loved were safe, I was at peace with my fate.
‘Goodbye, Junie. I love you.’
‘Oz! No!’
The wall beside me blasted outwards, chunks of rock slamming into those in the impact zone, but none were big enough to cause more than a bruise. The next thing I knew, vines had wrapped around my waist in a vice-like grip andyankedme out from under the stalactite, just in time to save me from having my skull caved in.
‘Holy shit, Oz, are you okay?’
‘Fine,’ I wheezed, the vines still painfully squeezing my stomach, but I couldn’t complain. Junie was here, and I was alive. ‘Help the others.’
‘Already on it, Ozzie.’
‘Oz!’ Thorne yelled, skidding to a halt at my side. Enid stumbled to a stop just behind him, her green-hued hazel eyes wide with fear.
‘I’m okay,’ I assured them as the rumbling finally ceased. It was so silent, all I could hear were whimpers of pain, the sobs of mourners, and heaving breaths. Junie was part of the latter, and I knew she had to have overexerted herself. Stopping an earthquake would have taken an immense amount of power, and even from here, I could see her arms shaking, sweat dripping down her face with the effort of maintaining her Earth magic.
‘Thanks, sis,’I managed to send her way before the vines squeezed the breath out me of one last time, and I passed out.
Chapter 21
Juniper
Even when I’d cast the shielding spell for the Fae, I hadn’t felt this depleted. My arms shook with the strain of maintaining my magic, sweat was dribbling down my face and sticking my clothes to my skin at an alarming rate, and the well of magic inside me shrivelled up as it emptied. And that was just from holding back the earthquake. The curse had other objectives, which made it even harder to hold on to my magic.
Grabbing Oz with my vines was the only acceptable option. He was about to die, and I wasnotabout to lose him (to arock,no less), regardless of the curse’s response, which was why I was currently fighting the urge to collapse under the sheer force of the pain it was using to punish me. Even my magic wasn’t allowed to touch him in front of others, but I had no other choice, so I was being punished through that, too, when it took over control of my vines and squeezed. It only released both him and my vines once he’d passed out.
I also had never exerted so much power on my own in my entire life, so I was getting a double whammy of negative side effects. I wasn’t going to last long, so everyone needed to get the fuck out of these tunnels before I couldn’t hold it all back anymore.
The ground fought me, and I scrunched my face in concentration as I pushed even more of my Affinity into holding it at bay. But that energy had to come from somewhere, and it apparently chose my legs.
‘Juniper!’ Phenex shouted in alarm as my knees buckled, catching me before I hit the ground.
‘I’m… okay…’ I managed to grit out through clenched teeth, but my voice sounded weak even to my own ears as I shook uncontrollably in his hold. ‘Get… everyone… out.’
I fell for him a little bit more when he didn’t argue and just did it, and not once did he let me go. Instead, he scooped me up and called over someone named Don, though I was too focused on keeping my tenuous hold on my magic to pay attention to whoever it was that showed up.
‘We need to get everyone out of here,’ Phenex told him, urgency tightening his tone. ‘Now.’
‘On it.’ The voice was even deeper and more gravelly than Phenex’s, and it sent shivers skittering down my spine at the sheer inhumanity of it. I didn’t know what it was, but when I heard Phenex, I felt a warmth and familiarity, as if I were coming home. That didn’t seem to extend to other Deamons, apparently.
In the back of my mind, I knew that we were moving. Taking a ride in Phenex’s arms was surprisingly smooth, or maybe it just seemed that way because all of my attention was on my magic. I knew we were finally free from the caves when light blinded me, and Phenex bent his head down to whisper in my ear.
‘It’s okay now, my soul flame. You can let go now. We’re safe. Everyone’s out.’
I didn’t bother pretending I was strong enough to keep going. As soon as I released my hold on the Earth, I sagged into my man’s arms and let the darkness take me.
