Page 185 of Mud

I screamed.

The feel of their legs and sharp teeth biting my hand and fingers was too much. It was equally as scary as the big fucking spider at our back.

I thought I wouldn’t make it. I thought these tiny spiders in the nest were going to eat me raw by the time I thought to move my hand away, but then something cold touched my fingers. Something undeniably metal.

The key.

The tiny legs and teeth forgotten, I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled my hand out.

A fucking cylinder with engraved spider legs wrapped around it, and eight blue sapphires at the very top—just like Madame Weaver’s eyes.

“I got it! I got it! I got?—”

Three things happened at once.

Taland began to whisper a spell as his magic sprung to life.

The spider was already behind us, and her leg sliced a clean cut across his shoulder when he couldn’t move away in time. Blood exploded right in front of my eyes.

And Taland’s Blackfire magic slammed against the spider.

It’s not going to work.

We knew she was immune to magic, and yet Taland was trying to spell her again.

It’s not going to work, you fool!

Everything went dark—well, darker than it already was, but inside my head, too. Suddenly I felt like I wasn’tmeat all, or maybe I just slipped into momentary insanity. Because when Madame Weaver came for him again, I moved.

The spider acted like I wasn’t there at all, though I was half sitting on the thread next to Taland. Probably because I’d already gotten my key, but that served me. My last dagger was still in my hand, and I stabbedher leg with all my strength just before she could stab Taland in the chest.

She wailed in pain and moved back a little bit. Just a little.

It was enough time for me.

Training with the IDD meant my muscles had developed their own memory and they could function even when I wasn’t thinking straight. That was the best gift the exhaustion and the pain and the torment of all those training months had given me. Before I knew it, I’d put the key in the pocket of my pants, and I had no choice but to let go of the dagger still buried in the spider’s leg. My gun wasin my hand within a second, and I was pulling the trigger furiously.

I shot her four times straight in her fucking eyes as I screamed.

Then I slipped.

Blood everywhere, and I was slipping, the threads moving to the sides to let me through, all of them silky smooth now.

“Taland!” I screamed at the top of my voice, gun in hand still.

Had it worked? Had the spider backed off? Had she been wounded—could bullets even hurt her? Had she given Taland the chance to grab his key?

Where the hell are you, damn it?! Why didn’t you get the key first?!

Water right below me.

A second before I fell in it, I saw a dark shape falling somewhere over me, too.

Taland. It’s Taland, it’s Taland, it’s Taland—that became my new mantra.

The water claimed me, ice-cold and unforgiving, and it didn’t let me go for a long time.

Chapter 35

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