Page 43 of Till Death

“I’m gonna be sick,” Lisa gasped.

“Hold it in. I’m not in a good place to deal with your puke,” Tamara groaned from my left.

When I finally opened my eyes, my breath caught in my throat.

I stood once again on a cliff’s edge staring at a long bridge. Rickety and falling apart. Held together by fraying ropes with a dense fog curling around the opposite end.

At once I was right back at my Trial. Unsure how far the bridge stretched and knowing I had no choice but to cross it.

I turned to Eli.

He stood still with his gaze trained on something in the distance.

What had Amon done?

Had he gone straight into my head and drew out my worst nightmare? My fear of heights and…

Every muscle inside of me squeezed painfully as though my body absolutely refused to go through this again. I knew what I’d see if I peered over the edge of the cliff, too. A steep drop. A cavity so dark there was no bottom in sight.

Bile once again began to eat at the lining of my stomach before crawling up my throat.

“Jade? Oh G-God, Jade, is that you?”

My blood turned to ice. That voice… I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. It was real. I forced myself to look into the mist, only then seeing someone trapped at the center of the bridge.

Kay.

She finally swam into view and as her gaze found mine, the terror I saw in her echoed tenfold through me.

“Help me!” she screamed.

Her arms were bound at her side and her feet manacled together.

We weren’t just running out of time. Amon had stacked the board against us with a new obstacle. One I’d never be able to walk away from.

My heart ached and the part of me that was afraid to let Kay go, the one that missed her even when we were together, went into pure dread at the sight of her.

“Don’t move.” I cupped my hands around my mouth to make sure she heard me. “Don’t move a damn muscle, Kay. I’m coming to you.”

I didn’t see Amon anywhere, but I heard his voice as though he stood directly in front of me. “Silly little witch.” Except he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Tamara. “When you leave the back door open, you have to prepare for the consequences. Otherwise you learn the hard way to lock it shut behind you.”

“Tamara, what did you do?” I shouted.

My insides continued to shake and rattle with nerves.

It was a moment of sheer and absolutely overwhelming panic. The kind of panic where my lungs forgot how to work and soon black dots began to dance in front of my eyes.

NowIwanted to puke.

How did I get to Kay? How did I help her?

“Jade, please! Help me!”

This time Kay’s frantic cries were real. They twisted a knife deep into my heart. This wasn’t a fake Trial where the consequences were all in my head. This time, there wererealconsequences. The kind where I may actually lose my best friend and not get her back. The kind where I might leave a man without his girlfriend, a child without his mother.

As if sensing my alarm, my light began to flicker around my fist. The sensation didn’t last and a quick second later it tapped out again.

Worse?

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