Page 115 of The Weaver

Ahmya flung branches and brush aside, digging wildly. The fire was close, so, so close, that she could almost feel it licking her skin, and if she didn’t get outnow…

Her hand closed around something hard and thick.

A bone.

She wrenched up on it. Flames rushed closer, fueled by the fresh air flow created by the disturbed kindling. Her flesh stung from the heat. Ahmya closed her eyes and turned her face away from a cloud of scorching embers, pulling on the bone with all her might.

She stumbled backward when it came free, catching herself against the wall.

“Ahmya!” Rekosh’s tormented call rose over all the other sounds, jolting right through her already shattered heart.

Ahmya spun around, took the bone in both hands, and jabbed it into the wall as hard as she could. It sank deep into the dirt.

Please work.

Holding her breath against the acrid smoke, she jumped and grasped the upper edge of the pit, this time planting her boot on the bone jutting from the wall as she pulled herself up.

She pushed up with her leg. The bone angled slightly down, but it remained in place.

Her fingers dug into the ground, caking dirt under her nails, as she dragged herself out of the pit. Yet even after her boots were clear, she had no time for any relief—and she barely had time to suck in a much-needed breath. From this vantage, she could just make out Rekosh, who continued battling his way toward the pit despite the trio of vrix holding him back.

Ahmya’s eyes darted up to Zurvashi’s skeleton, which loomed almost directly over her now. Waves of heat from the pit sizzled over her skin. There was a lot of silk on the skeletal shrine, and that wood framework throughout…

Ahmya knew what she had to do.

Without letting herself think, she lay on her belly and reached into the pit, stretching her arm as far as possible to reach for a long stick that had landed standing against the wall.

Flames crackled below her hand, their heat very quickly approaching the unbearable. Her fingertips brushed the stick.

She pushed with the toes of her boots, sliding herself another fraction of an inch forward.

Yes!

Her index finger hooked under the stick, and she tugged it up. Flames danced along its end.

Moving as gingerly as she could, Ahmya crawled back from the edge, eyes fixated on the flickering flame. She felt her heartbeat throughout her body, from head to toe. Keeping the stick as steady as possible, she climbed first onto her knees, then onto her feet.

“The creature!” a vrix shouted. “It is out!”

Ahmya couldn’t fight these enemies, couldn’t outrun them, but she could give Rekosh the precious time he needed.

In the best vrix she could manage, she called, “Ash and bone are all your queen will ever be!”

On the far side of the pit, vrix faces, still hazy through the smoke, snapped toward her.

Ogahnkai bellowed a command.

Ahmya turned toward the skeleton and held the flame to the voluminous purple cloth around its waist. The instant the fabric ignited, she wedged the end of the stick into one of the joints of the framework. The wood caught fire much more readily than the silk had.

Huge, dark forms raced around the sides of the pit.

Rekosh cried out Ahmya’s name again.

Please escape…

She spun and ran deeper into the camp, away from the vrix, away from her mate.

Please, Rekosh. Live.

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