Page 126 of Crown of Chaos

Trees pushed up through the ground, sealing the path we’d arrived from. The air around us filled with the sound of rushing water. The sky went from day to night, filling with rainbow-hued colors. Galaxies of stars fed us their light, bathing the landscape in its glow.

“It looks simple enough,” Esme pointed out, and before she’d finished jinxing us, a howl came from somewhere in the forest of trees.

“You said the quiet part out loud again, asshole.” I snorted, stifling the groan. “Dire wolves,” I whispered before twisting to look behind me, gasping at thelivedire wolves rushing toward us.

I pulled myself up and onto the nearest branch, nodding for Esme to follow my lead as I climbed higher. When I was as high as I could go, I gazed over miles of streams that flowed from the edge of the cliffs surrounding us. Esme landed beside me, opened her mouth to speak, but then her eyes went as wide as mine did.

“What in the . . .fuck!”I screamed as the branch flung us off it and launched us into the air.

I landed in the water, yelping as pain shot through my submerged flesh. It was ice cold, and if I wasn’t mistaken, that was freaking frost fire ice burning through my skin. I grabbed on to the nearest limb and pulled myself out of the water and onto the sliver of land the tree’s mangled roots attached to.

“Esme?” I snapped, scanning the area for her and discovering her dragging herself out of the water.

“I don’t think the trees want to be stood on.” Once she was on dry land, she collapsed onto her back next to me.

The dire wolves snarled and shuffled around the edge of the water. Their teeth snapped together, and then one howled, which was then echoed by hundreds of dire wolves deeper in the forest. Goose bumps broke out over my arms, and a shudder of fear slipped down my spine.

“Holy shit,” Esme muttered, sitting up to scour the area for an immediate threat.

The wolves didn’t linger, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, or bad. We could still hear their paws treading over the soggy ground, but the few that had chased us had creeped back into the shadowy terrain, vanishing from sight.

Getting back up wasn’t easy, but we had to keep moving. I stared down at the water, glaring at the ice beneath the crystalline surface. I summoned magic, but nothing happened. Blinking slowly, I tried again, but it was as if there was nothing to pull from here. Again I tried, and again, I failed, and panic was beginning to burn through my veins at the vacant place my magic normally sat.

“Esme, try casting.”

After a second, her frown mirrored mine and panic colored her eyes.

“Nothing, Aria. I have no magic.” She pushed from the ground, peering back toward where we’d started. “And there’s no way out of this shit, either.”

Groaning, I jumped toward her and barely escaped being dunked again as the ground gave out beneath me. We both jumped to a different patch of ground and watched in horror as the tree sank into the water behind us.

“Go!” I demanded, following behind Esme as we moved from one small patch of land to the next as the trees began dropping behind us. They were making sickening cracking sounds, and then the earth shook, forcing me to glance back, watching as they fell toward us. “Run!”

We sprinted as fast as we could over the slivers of land. The patches were growing thinner the farther we ran. Esme paused, but I grabbed her and threw us both toward a small island off to our left. Seconds later, a tree slammed onto the ground where she’d stopped.

Rising to my feet, I tried to figure out which way to go. In front of us was a quickly moving river that rushed over the edge of a cliff, and behind us was a never-ending hopscotch full of sinking trees and wolves.

“Which way do you think we should go, Esme? You want to go over or across?” We needed to make the choice before the land gave way and forced us both into the water.

She didn’t have time to choose before the land mass we were on dumped us into the water. Pushing up from the bottom, I spit out water searching for Esme, who I found clinging to a large branch that was sinking. I swam toward her, but a sudden current caught me, yanking me away.

Esme howled in fear, forced to abandon the branch as it sank and threatened to take her down with it. The haunting sound of rushing water grew louder. Spinning, I scanned the edge of nothingness.

“Esme, breathe!” I demanded, knowing we couldn’t swim fast enough to escape what was coming.

She released a piercing cry as she saw the edge. I swam toward her, but before I could get close enough to grab her, we were both shot over the edge of the falls. It was deafeningly loud and far longer of a drop than I thought it would be. Rocks stood out of the water we were falling toward, and their jagged tips reached into the clouds we were falling through. I could only hope that we weren’t on a direct collision course with a hidden spike.

I spread my arms, gasping as I slammed into Esme’s body. Her arms and legs snaked around me as we plummeted toward the large body of water below us. She screamed, and it was the only thing I could hear over the rushing water and wind whipping by us.

“We’re going to fucking die,” she bellowed before she started laughing hysterically.

“Neither one of us is dying today! Breathe in, now!” I ordered, inhaling a gulp of air before we slammed into the water. Pain shot through my feet, moving up through my thighs until it threatened to engulf me.

I refused to accept dying in a pool of frozen freaking water. The moment my feet touched the rocky bottom, I pushed off it, and swam as hard as I could toward the surface, looking for any sign of Esme.

When I didn’t find one, I dove back under, spotting something with a tail moving toward me. The murky depths didn’t allow me to exactly see what it was, and I definitely didn’t notice it had a row of razor-sharp teeth until it slammed into my body, knocking the air from my lungs. Grabbing the dagger strapped to my thigh, I gripped the handle and brought it up to slash it toward the creature.

It swam slowly, forcing me to react. My motions were slow, and it felt like it took forever as I punched my hand out, stabbing the monstrous creature, turning everything red with its blood. Ripping the blade through the creature’s side, I stabbed it repeatedly until something grabbed my arm, jerking me up toward the surface.

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