Page 198 of Mud

When the feeling got so heavy that I couldn’t breathe easily, and when I lost Taland in the white canvas completely, I looked ahead and found a creature with black scales resting against a piece of ice that had curved almost all the way around her body.

It was my vulcera, I knew it in my bones. It was her, even if she wasn’t moving. Even if I couldn’t see her face until I was close enough to realize her eyes were only half open and her chest was rising and falling rapidly.

But she was alive, and she wasn’t bleeding.

Something inside me snapped and my legs gave up on me. I hit the ice on my knees, my body about to collapse from the sudden exhaustion. My cheeks burned, my lungs could have been frosted over—but she was here and she was alive still, even if she couldn’t move her head at all while I crawled the few feet to get closer. And there was no doubt in my mind that I would do everything in my power to find a way to heal her.

Chapter 37

Rosabel La Rouge

Present day

Save them from their suffering,the hologram said.

Magic won’t work for their disease, but you must save them from their suffering; you must do the right thing.

In other words, he meantif you can’t heal them, kill them. Kill the animals you were forced to bond to in the beginning, animals you forged a connection with deeper than you are able to understand, animals that will tear your soul to pieces when they die, that are almost as muchyouas you are—but kill them anyway. Rid them of their suffering.

Goddamn it, such a typicalWhitefireway of thinking about life. In absolutes. Fucking perfectionists—pain is a stain,they taught us. We must do whatever we can to cleanse the world from it.

So, of course, they were going to come up withthiskind of bullshit for their challenge—what the hell did I expect?Evil,just like Taland said. This was pure evil.

Tears streamed from my eyes as I held the vulcera’s head on my lap. My ass was numb, completely frozen over, but my tears were very warm still. The vulcera kept on breathing like that, like she couldn’t quite fill her lungs with air, and her beautiful green eyes were only half open. I’d put my jacket over her, but I wasn’t sure if it was making any difference. Her scales had lost their shine, and that tail of hers didn’t move an inch. Her antennas didn’t burn green like they used to—and not because I’d ruined them when I sat on her back.

“Have you even eaten?” I wondered, my voice a shaky mess, but my stomach was growling, demanding food, and I realized the vulcera probably hadn’t eaten, either. “What…what did they do to you?”

Fuck, the words killed me a little on the way out because these fucking monsters made her sick, and I couldn’t heal her, couldn’t even try. Now she was going to die because of me. Her only mistake was that she didn’t kill me, that she chose to accept me even without magic in my veins. Her only mistake was that shechose me, and now I could do nothing for her.

She was dying, and it was my fault.

The fucking guilt was going to crush me under any second now. Anyone who came near me suffered. Anyone who came near me ended up in a very, very bad place. Madeline was right—I was a fucking curse on legs.

If I’d only been on that plane with Mom and Dad…

The screams that reached me from both sides no longer surprised me. Around me, a couple of players were making the choice they had to make to complete this challenge. Whether they were here a long time, or whether this was their first or third or whatever challenge, I had no idea. It was my last, and by the looks of it, here was where I died.

But the sharp cry of a man that came from somewhere to my left made me raise my head, and that’s how I noticed the silhouette in the distance, black against the white background, walking slowly toward me.

My heart skipped a beat. It was Taland, and he was holding something against his chest. Something bundled up in black leather—his jacket. He, too, had taken it off for his familiar.

I kept my eyes on his as I petted the vulcera’s face just a little—my hands weren’t working very well from the cold. My blood could be halfway frozen.

At last, Taland was close enough for me to make out his face properly.

He looked worse than I’d ever seen him before, eyes dark, hair all over the place, his lips pressed together. He was dragging his feet behind him, and when our eyes locked, I could swear I heard the echo of his pain, mirroring mine.

He felt it, too. The stabs in the gut and chest. The weight of the guilt that these animals were like this because ofus. I wasn’t alone in my misery for once—they all felt it, too.

I wanted to run to him and jump in his arms and not let go until I’d absorbed every ounce of pain into my body. Until he was completely free of it. I couldn’t—not only because my vulcera was on my lap, but because his familiar was in his arms as well.

When he was close enough to us, he sat down on the ice in front of me. I’d never seen Taland crying, but I was willing to bet everything that he’d never been this close to tears before. It made mine rush out even faster.

Slowly, without word, he lowered his arms and showed me the bundled-up creature he’d been holding against hischest—a gorgeous eagle with a yellow beak and white and brown feathers, breathing just as heavily as my vulcera. Eyes just as lifeless, barely open. Halfway gone.

He was big, the eagle, barely fitting on Taland’s lap.

“Ritis Mayol,” Taland said after a moment, his voice as cold as the ice we sat on. “They infected them with the Ritis Mayol.”

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