Page 19 of The Queen's Shadow

“Cass!” she heard Arphaxad cry. His hand closed around her arm, and he dragged her backward, toward the rift.

“What are you doing?” she cried, but her voice was swallowed up by the deep rumble of the roof coming down around them.

And then he was throwing his body over hers, her head cradled between his hands. His face, his body, was so close, she could feel the beating of his heart.

“Get off me!” she cried, pummeling her fists against his chest. “You can’t do this, Phax!”

“Keep your head down, damn it!” he snapped as debris rained down around them. The cave was collapsing. And with it, their final hope of escape. She gave a deep cry of frustration. This was not how it would end. Not after what they’d seen. Not after what they had found out. No one was safe—not with Amanakar’s idiotic plan. Not with the white-haired chanter egging him on.

A sob burst from her chest as Arphaxad grunted and the ground roared beneath them. He couldn’t do this, protect her like this. She couldn’t let him.

“Stay still,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you, Cass.”

Damn him. She clutched at the dark material of his tunic, pulling him closer. If this was the way she had to die, it wasn’t the worst way to go, locked together with him. As they had always been. As she had always wanted it to be.

The roaring grew to a deafening crescendo as debris rained down around them. The earth shook, and Cassandra buried her face in Arphaxad’s good shoulder to keep herself from screaming. She wanted to memorize the feel of him, the heat of him, the way his hands were stroking her hair, the way her body molded perfectly to his. She felt him shudder as debris bounced off his back, and as he pulled her closer, she thought she heard him murmur her name.

Then, in a great, shuddering roar, the world turned black.

Chapter 7

She wasn’t dead.

A shrill, incessant ringing stung her ears, and dust coated her eyes and her mouth and every crevice of her body. But she wasn’t dead.

It had taken an age for the ground to stop moving, for the thunderous sound of the mountain crumbling above them to cease, for the dust to settle and for the world to right. She’d kept her face pressed into Arphaxad’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, waiting for the end, waiting for the moment they would be buried beneath the earth. No one would ever know what had happened to them. Her sister—she bit back the sob that threatened to burst from her chest.

But the end had never come, just a cascade of dust that had coated her hair and her arms and her clothes, every place that Arphaxad wasn’t covering with his own body. She’d pulled her face back from his shoulder. A wall of earth and stone rose hardly half a foot from them, stretching overhead like a dome.

“Phax,” she rasped. Her throat was dry, and it came out sounding like little more than a croak.

He stirred and lifted his head from her shoulder. His dark hair had turned a dusty gray just as she knew hers had, and she could see a thin red line where a stray stone had bitten into his cheek. “Cassandra?” The way he said her name, with such a tinge of hopeful joy, sent a shock wave through her body.

“I’m here,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he breathed, running a hand along her hair, as if to make sure for himself.

She coughed again and then nodded, shivering beneath his touch. He was still so close, his body pressed against hers, his fingers threading lightly through her hair.

He coughed this time, his entire body shuddering with the pain. She suddenly remembered his shoulder, the arrow, the blood. She swore and pushed him off her. The wound was still bleeding—she could tell by the blood darkening the bandage the Inetians had hastily applied.

“You—why did you do that?” she asked, staring at him in the strange, ambient light. He’d shielded her when the world was crumbling around them. He’d been ready to trade his life for hers.

“I couldn’t stand it if you’d died,” he said softly.

His words hit her like the ton of earth that hovered above their heads. For a moment, she stared at him. He couldn’t just say that to her. Not here, not like this. Not when they were both covered in dirt and sweat and blood, and a rift of horrors pulsed at their backs. “Your life is not worth more than mine!” she snapped. Then she blinked. Light. They could see.

Her head jerked toward the rift. It was only a few feet from them, a terrible black thing, but its edges gave off a strange, otherworldly glow. Arphaxad followed her gaze.

“It worked,” he said incredulously, staring at the darkness of the rift. “I thought it might.”

She remembered with startling clarity the way he’d dragged them closer to the rift rather than away as the roof had started to come down around them. He’d been working off a hunch, but it had been right. The rift, whatever power was emanating from it, had created this little pocket of space beneath the massive weight of the earth.

“Well, that’s . . . something,” she said. The blackness pulsed as she stared at it, a swirling mass of nothingness, of wrongness, enough to drive one mad. She tore her gaze away, the nausea rising again in her stomach.

“So, what now?” she asked. She met his gaze across the small space, and in that moment, the reality of their situation hit. The rift might be holding back the weight of the entire mountain, but it hadn’t changed anything about their predicament. If anything, it had made it worse. They had no food, no water, and what little air was left down here would likely run out in a few hours.

They were going to die here after all.

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