Page 346 of The Spider Queen
But I saw nothing.
The hissing grew louder. A few feet from me, mist shot up from the ground. It sprayed my skin. Hot. Another blast of vapor launched on the other side of me. I clutched the satchel to my chest and looked around; the hissing was so loud it felt like it was inside my head.
Geysers of mist and steam continued to shoot from the earth. And then the ground began to rumble. Tree roots emerged from the damp soil, and the whistling was drowned out by the sound of snapping branches. The land cracked open right underneath my left foot, and I would’ve fallen into the split earth, but I was faster than a mere mortal.
I lifted my foot and took off. Cracks in the soil dogged my heels. A few times, I tripped and fell. I scrambled to my feet and kept running. Branches tore my white shirt and scraped my cheeks, but I didn’t dare stop. I didn’t stop until I got to a meadow at the edge of the forest and nearly plowed into a boulder. And just as suddenly as the hissing had started, it stopped.
The boulder moved and I hastily darted away, but I didn’t back up toward the jungle. My eyes widened when I realized that the boulder wasn’t a boulder at all.
It had limbs.
Two arms.
Two legs.
It was a sleeping giant! I had no desire to wake it. The snoring reverberated through bones. I wished I had something to plug my ears because the noise made my brain feel like it was rattling around in my skull.
I gave the sleeping giant a wide berth, but the snoring suddenly ceased and I froze.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” the giant asked right before his meaty fingers wrapped around me.
He lifted me off the ground and brought me close to his face.
I stared at the center of his forehead, peering into his giant eye—only it wasn’t an eye, it was the last pearl.
I was tied to a pole twenty feet off the ground.
The sun had risen a few hours prior, and I’d been alone for that long, too. As soon as the giant with a pearl for an eye had tied me to the stake, he’d left, his booming footsteps fading into the distance.
Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the pole, wondering how I was supposed to get out of this mess. And more importantly, how I was supposed to take a giant by surprise.
I heard the flapping of wings.
Great.
A large bird of prey was going to make a nest out of my hair or eat me whole.
“You really got yourself into it, didn’t you?”
My eyes flipped open and I gasped. Jax hovered in front of me, his stone wings beating the air. His smile was wide in amusement.
“How did—where did—”
“You didn’t really think a harpy could do me in, did you?”
Tears prickled my eyes. “No. Lucifer told me you’d be back to yourself soon. I—I’m very glad to see you, Jax.”
“Even though we were fighting right before the harpy witch pummeled me into rubble?”
“Friends fight. They make up.” I smiled tremulously, offering the olive branch.
He took it when he grinned back. “You don’t look like yourself. What happened to you?”
“Long story.” I paused. “He finally broke the chains, didn’t he?”
He nodded and I swallowed. I was suddenly cold despite the sun.
Lucifer was coming for me.
