Page 149 of Of Blood and Banes
CRUMBLING
“We have to go! Carry her if you must!” Sethan screams, his voice ragged with fear.
A gasp rips through my mouth and I straighten, my sight twinkling back into vision from the endless black.
Through the archway leading into what Queen Elara referenced as the Stone Gods’ Garden, a set of movements catches my attention. The water sloshes in violent waves. A massive, stone figure wades through the pool, with more behind it. They move for the stairs leading into the crypt we’re in. All their faces are carved into otherworldly elegance and fury.
“Go!” Cole screams, breaking into a sprint and sweeping Melaina and Archie with his arm until the three of them race down the steps into the crypt.
Sethan waits at the bottom of the stairs, slapping their backs as they pass him before he takes the rear of the group and runs. I link my arm with Marge’s, and we bolt from the other side of the coffins toward the exit. The walls around us thunder, with stones the size of my chest dropping from the ceiling. More threaten to shake loose. We all meet at the other end of the room and slip through the door. Archie grabs Melaina’s hand in his andpulls her faster through the blood message hallway to the bridge. Cole stops to offer Marge and me a hand, but Sethan growls and shoves him to keep running.
“Keep going!” I scream. “We are right behind you!”
He hesitates, but as Marge and I close the gap between us quicker than he anticipates, he races across the bridge. I don’t dare look behind us. Already terrified by the ever-increasing thunder of heavy stone footsteps hot on our tracks. And the sound of crumbling walls.
The bridge sways beneath our feet with a vigor that would make me dizzy if I weren’t solely running on adrenaline. Either side of the pathway drops to unimaginable depths. “Faster!” I grunt.
The rest of our group swats the hanging chains Vue was suspended in out of the way and clear the other side. Marge’s staff taps faster and faster as we stride forward. The thunder of the Stone Gods grows closer behind us, and the end of the bridge stretches farther and farther away.
“Katerina, you must leave me,” Marge pants.
“I’m not fucking leaving you,” I growl, tightening my grip on her.
She glares at me, as if the profanity is the biggest of her problems right now. I smack the chains out of our way with one hand, but it slows our pace. One swings back and hits me in the side of the head. Another whacks Marge’s arm, throwing her staff clear out of her grip. She falls forward, taking me down with her.
“Kat!” Cole yells from the other end of the bridge and races toward us to help.
I scramble to pull Marge up. The five towering Stone Gods burst from the hallway, spraying boulders into the cavity below. They fight to the front of the bridge, squabbling until one ofthem falls off the cliffside into the dark pit below, disappearing in seconds while the others advance without a second thought.
The bridge creaks with a sound dangerously close to snapping, and it whips back and forth beneath us with a dizzying speed. Pressure pinches in my ribs where my scar is.
I snap my eyes to Marge as I scream at her with an outstretched hand. “Get up! We have to move!”
Marge’s expression is steadfast as she looks up at me, her unsheathed sword lifted in one hand as she places Queen Elara’s journal in my outstretched palm.
As I take it, she stands and slices open her hand with her sword, whispering foreign words. Her blade flares like a blue flame. When I stand with her, I realize the pressure pinching my left ribs isn’t from my scar, but from where she slipped one of the hooks under my corset.
“Hold on,” she commands, her choice of words chilling my blood.
“Don’t youfuckingdare!”
Before I can stop her, she slices through the bridge between us in one swoop.
CHAPTER 47
HOLD. ON.
As the bridge swings down into two separate halves and my center of gravity leaps out from beneath me, I lunge. I snatch her by the wrist with a scream, “No,youhold on!”
I cling to her as we both fall a few feet, and our bodies snap as the chain adhered to the ceiling drops us as far as it’ll go. Nearly breaking my grip on her, and her sword falls. The bridge and Stone Gods vanish into the thick fog below.
She looks up at me with her gray-blue eyes. “Katerina, you have to let me go.”
“No!” I roar.
“It’s me…” She slips an inch from my sweaty hand. I’m furious I’m not wearing her gloves. “Or the journal. And we both know what the right decision is.”
I have Queen Elara’s journal still tucked beneath my right arm as I hold Marge with my left. I can try to slip it into my satchel down at my hip, but I’m terrified if I move too much, I’ll lose my grip on both.
