Page 44 of Hallowed Games

You are the evil we must burn.

Leo would’ve been better off without you.

Death flows through your veins.

You have no one.

I gripped my temples, trying to remember who I was, where I was, what I was doing, but anarchy ruled my mind. All I could remember was that I was alone, and that I’d always be alone, and that it was time to give up.

A heel slammed into my back, and a dark wind whipped over me as I fell.

I landed hard, my head banging against a stone. Pain screamed up my legs, up my back, vibrating through my bones. When I brushed my hand over one of my thighs, I felt the bone was jutting out in a place where it did not belong. The stitches had fully ripped open, and I thought I’d broken a bone.

Far above me, a dull, rosy light shone in from the setting sun.

My heart stuttered. I was in no condition to get out of here.

CHAPTER 21

Nausea climbed up my throat, and I tried to fight it. I was stuck lying on my back, and I didn’t need to add lying in vomit to the mix. I swallowed hard, feeling the shadowy ground around me for any clues, any hint of a possible escape. Tempting as it was to give up, that wouldn’t get me back to Leo.

By now, most of the whispers had slid from my mind, apart from the one telling me that I was alone. Because that, unfortunately, was true at this point. Alone, and with a bone-shivering pain ripping through my thigh. Right now, it felt exactly as I’d expect it to feel if someone was stabbing me in the thigh repeatedly.

My thoughts flitted back to a few moments ago, before I’d fallen in. That bastard had used magic on me, hadn’t he? After all that bollocks about me being a real witch, about how I was the reason we were here…he’d pummeled me with a confusion spell, then kicked me into a hole in the ground.

I breathed in the scent of smoke that coiled in from above. If the fire kept spreading, could I roast in here? Once, Lydia had told me something like that—rumors from the northern kingdom of Sumaire. Apparently, a fire had raged through the capital of Sumaire, burning those who lived in stone tunnels.

Half-delirious, I let my eyes drift shut.

Lydia used to tell me creepy stories in her room. I wasn’t supposed to go into the manor house, but the Baron indulged her. She’d even once convinced me it was a good idea to scrawl ghost stories on the walls all over her room in black ink. I remember thinking she was so brave. At the time, I hadn’t realized that maybe she was just a spoiled brat, and that it was easy to be daring when you’d never faced a single fucking consequence.

Well, she finally had one.

As the memories faded, I felt the pain shooting through my thigh once more, sharpening my thoughts. Could there possibly be a way out of here?

As my eyes started to adjust to the shadows, I started to make out markings on one of the walls. What were they?

“Elowen? Are you there?” Percival’s clipped voice floated down to me from above.

At the sound, tears stung my eyes. He’d actually come back for me?

“You’ve got to get out of here, Percival,” I shouted. “It’s almost dark. And I’m pretty far down here. Someone used magic on me, just so you know. I didn’t just fall in a hole.” Even if I was going to die in here, it seemed important for him to know I wasn’t stupid. “But you need to get going because I’m in bad shape here, and the wolves are coming for you.”

“Give me a second,” he said. “We can throw you a vine. The fire is dying down.”

I shuddered at the idea of trying to pull myself up on a shattered leg. I called out to him to wait, but he disappeared. A moment later, a vine came tumbling down into the hole—still too high for me to reach, even if my leg didn’t feel like it was in twenty-seven pieces.

“Percival?” My voice cracked. “I really appreciate it, but you all should get out of here. I can’t climb that. I can’t even reach it.”

He leaned down into the hole, twenty feet above me, and stretched out his hand. For a moment, I wondered if he was daft enough to think I could reach it. Then I caught a glimpse of a faint golden glow burning in his palm, like an ember. The ember spun in the air, growing larger, until it whirled into a sphere of fiery light.

My breath caught. He was risking his life, using magic to help me.

“What can you see?” he asked.

Percival’s firelight slid down, illuminating a wooden door inset into the stone wall. In the center of the door was a wooden wheel carved with symbols. My chest flickered with hope. A way out?

Wincing, I pushed up on my elbows. As I did, jagged agony ran up my thigh, and the noise that came out of me was akin to an animal growl.

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