Page 13 of Lera of Lunos
“Viper!” Not trusting my legs, I crawl up the raised lip of the crack. Sand grinds into my cuts and I grit my teeth against the pain. An endlessly deep wedge stares back at me, its walls made of crumbling orange and red stone that disappears eventually into blackness. Heat wafts from the crack like the earth’s core itself has been exposed. “Viper!”
My voice echoes and ricochets down the walls like a tossed pebble.
“Here.” The male’s tight voice draws my eyes to a tiny ledge fifteen feet down from where I kneel. Standing on one leg, Viper grips a nub of a handhold. His other leg, bent at an unnatural angle, hangs off the side of the abyss. He curses and releases one hand to work the flag loose from his belt. Still worrying about winning the damn trial.
“Neither of us has a surrender left,” Viper says, as if having heard my thought. His voice strains, the words coming in gasps. “Don’t want the flag to fall with me. No need for your quint to die.”
I swallow, my hands digging into the rock. “You aren’t falling anywhere until I say you are,” I call down, sounding more like Coal or River than myself. My stomach clenches at the need to have the males close, but I shove the ache away. I have to. For Viper’s sake.
A pained chuckle reaches me. “A mortal is giving me orders?”
I run my hand along the red stone. Soft. Porous. Unstable. And the only option to save Viper’s life. “Aweaveris giving you orders.” My heart beats so hard, it’s a wonder the rock doesn’t tremble from it. “And after this trial is over, I’ll outrank you, won’t I?”
Silence answers me.
“Viper!” I survey the deadly drop in search of a way down.
“Yes.” The word comes soft and blurry, the male’s strength draining with each heartbeat.
“Yes,what?”There.A two-foot-wide ledge, just above Viper’s tenuous hold. If I can get to it, I could lower something for Viper to hold on to. Anchor him in. Except there’s a dozen feet of crumbling stone between the ledge and me, with death waiting for me to slip. “Viper. Yes,what?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the male says, not even fighting the insult. Damn it.
I look at my trembling hands, the knuckles still bleeding from trying to punch the shield. My breath comes in quick puffs, my pulse sprinting, my mouth dry and filled with specks of earth. Before my courage fails completely, I swing myself over the edge, sending sand and small stones into the abyss before me.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Viper’s suddenly awake voice cracks the air. “One death isn’t enough? You need to make it two?”
“Your confidence in me is overwhelm—” The lip I’m holding crumbles, my body sliding two feet along sharp, brittle stone before I find footing, my hands gripping tiny nubs of rock.Stars.Am I imagining it or is it already hotter here? I can’t breathe for the tightness in my chest, the sinking feeling in my gut.
“Leralynn!” Viper calls.
“I’m all right.” I’m not all right. I’m going to die. But he doesn’t need to know that. I lay my cheek against the rock, forcing air into my spasming lungs. Once. Twice. On the third inhale, I close my eyes to wash away the abyss and focus on nothing but the rock beneath me. Think. Feel. Stay alive. Keep Viper alive.
Gently reaching down with my leg, I find the next foothold and tap the outcropping with my boot before entrusting my weight to it. I feel for the next. The next. My arms ache, my already bleeding fingers leaving wet proof of my descent. Ten feet to go until the ledge. Eight. Six. I press my hips against the rock wall, trying to take pressure off my screaming arms.
My grip fails just as I reach for a solid hold, my fingers refusing to hold on for a moment longer. With a scream, I fall the rest of the way to the ledge. The thud of impact comes first, a numbness and dull ringing that echo through my body. Then pain. A hot knife driving into my ankle, lines of fire along my shin. The world wavers. Blackens.
My first, ridiculous thought is how mad Coal will be about my foiled landing. My next is a list of increasingly crude variations on the “I told you I wasn’t ready” I will scream at the bastard.
“Leralynn?” The weakness in Viper’s voice parts the veil of darkness clouding my vision.
Get Viper first. Die second.Yell at Coal in between.
Dirt coating my tongue, I breathe in the chalky dust with every gasp. But I do breathe. Do push myself up onto my hands and knees, even as my skin burns, sweat and blood wetting my clothes. Making myself look down, I find the top of Viper’s hand two feet below me—and a chasm of black nothing beyond.
With jerky motions, I unfasten my belt. Looping one end around my wrist, I extend the rest down to the injured male. “Grab on.”
Instead of reaching for the leather, Viper strains his head back, turquoise eyes wild with pain. “Do you have purchase?” he gasps. “Don’t want to pull you down.”
“There’s a spike here. I’m anchored in with my armor.” I grit my teeth, making myself believe my own lie before Viper sees through it. “Stop stalling and use the damn belt to climb up before I decide you aren’t worth the trouble.”
Viper’s hand moves off the stone, the nub of rock he’d been holding breaking off with the shift of weight. For a second, he hangs over the abyss, one foot and one hand his only anchors to life. Then he grips the belt, and my shoulder roars as I brace his climb.
The sight of my enemy quint leader pulling himself up beside me on the ledge is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Tipping my head up to the arena’s sky, I make a crude gesture that I hope Klarissa knows is meant for her. Beside me, Viper chuckles softly and rests his back against the stone.
“So what now?” I ask.
“Now we wait. The static shield will go down in thirty minutes or so and our quints will charge in with a grand rescue. Then you get to win, and we go to breakfast.”
