Page 70 of Run Like the Devil

“But those dangers found us here! The last trap literally yanked me off the Path and away. Guardian keeps going for me, and before you know it, it’s going to stop playing coy. We don’t have another choice.”

“Of course we do. We could return to the Chasm. If we turn back, if we want to leave, the trail back should appear.”

“And have this all be for nothing? No. That’s not an option.”

“What are you arguing about?” Hale sat down on the same sleeping bag as me, on the other side as Gorrin.

“We’re leaving the Path,” I said.

“We aren’t,” Gorrin argued.

Tyrus approached as well, sitting in front of me. Yazmor came closer, but his eyes burned brighter, his color not pale but darker, as if his other form bled through this one. Neither spoke, but their expressions said they’d heard.

“Pretty sure the one piece of advice everyone has given us was to stay on the Path,” Tyrus said.

“Not Koller.”

“Koller is probably mad,” Gorrin said. “She has been here a very long time. There is no way to know if what she said was true or if it was nothing more than her own insanity trying to draw us to our own demise. Even she said we shouldn’t trust her.”

I shifted, moving to my knees as though that extra bit of height would make them hear me better. “You don’t get it. I’ve been thinking, and if this place is set up to protect the Plains, why would there be a Path to follow? Hubis doesn’t want anyone to make it through, so why would he set up a safe route to do it? That wouldn’t make any sense at all! Even if that was the case, we’ve been walking for what feels like days, probably weeks, and we’ve gotten nowhere. We’re running low on supplies, we’re injured, exhausted. We don’t have a lot to lose at this point by trying it another way.”

“We’ve left the Path,” Gorrin pointed out. “Yazmor and I have left a number of times to scout and to retrieve you when you’ve gone missing.”

“Could we not make me sound like a kid who got lost? Or like Yazmor when he wanders off? But besides that, you left with the purpose of returning. That’s different. We’ve yet to leave the Path with the intention of going out there. We’ve tried everything else—this is all that’s left.”

The men fell silent, and worse, I couldn’t read any of them. It made me glad I’d never tried strip poker with them because I’d have been naked in a hand or two.

Still, the fact that none fought with me said they struggled to find a good argument against my point. Was it a bad idea?

Absolutely.

But when a person had no good options, they had to pick between whatever shit they had. We’d done what we could on the Path, we’d tried that, taken it as far as we could, but that clearly wasn’t working.

Which meant we had to do something different.

“Fuck,” Hale muttered, his curse as close to agreement as I’d probably get.

“I don’t like it,” Tyrus said. “But I can’t come up with a better option either.”

Yazmor shrugged, a flash of his old smile making my chest tight, like seeing an old friend. “You know I adore the unknown.”

I faced Gorrin, the final hold-out, and honestly the one with the most say. He knew more than anyone else about this place, about where we were headed.

He let out a sound of frustration, like a low growl. “You will stay close. We will walk in a line, with me up front, and you will step only where I step. There is no telling what is out there, and the farther we venture into it, the thicker the fog, the more dangerous it will become.”

With his agreement, we packed what little we still had—the benefit was that the packs we still had were lighter than before.

I pulled in a deep breath, my gaze peering out into the fog, the forest, the unknown, before taking my first step, following Gorrin, off the Path.

I’m coming for you, Hubis, no matter where you hide…

Chapter Seventeen

Just act like it’s no big deal.

That was the advice I used for myself when some weirdo on the subway with his dick out was having the time of his life, but now it seemed I needed to use it for Yazmor, too.

I would have preferred his dick out over this, but he hadn’t asked my opinion.

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