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They were mere feet apart now. Jael could see the whites of Talos’s eyes, even the intricate and jagged facets of his murky blue irises. Something in the elf’s expression shifted, from cold anger to something cruel and knowing.
“Not yet,” he breathed, the words soft and for Jael alone. “But she’s promised to me. She will be mine.”
The words only kindled the angry despair Jael had been battling for several days. The wanting of the thing he could never have. Of the person who didn’t want him back. It made him ache and burn in all the wrong ways. This monster didn’t deserve Anrid, and the thought consumed him as he moved to beat the brute senseless. Hands caught hold of his arm to stop him, but Jael drove his elbow back hard to free himself. An oof and a feminine cry of pain revealed his aim had been true, but Jael realized too late it hadn’t been Kora who tried to stop him this time.
He whipped his head to the side as Anrid recoiled, one arm pressed against her stomach where his elbow must have impacted.
“Uh-NEE!” a frightened voice cried out in alarm.
Jael barely had time to register the sight of little Medda behind Anrid, toddling toward them, when white hot rage exploded in his head. But this time it didn’t originate within him. The Bifrost heaved and snarled, lashing back as if in Anrid’s defense. Before Jael concocted any sort of apology to clamp down on the rising tide of magic, the ground began to ripple beneath them. Cries echoed around the chamber as the shockwave shook the room. Bits of limestone plunged from the ceiling and shattered against the stone floor.
Behind him, Anrid went down on one knee, an arm wrapped around her stomach and the palm of her other hand pressed against the rumbling floor in an attempt to stabilize herself. Jael stepped to come to her aid. However, Medda crashed hard to the floor and screamed. For one awful moment he hesitated, torn between who needed him most in that moment.
The decision was made for him when the ground beneath their feet groaned and shrieked, stone shifting against stone. The ground split apart with a scream, as if it were a living and breathing thing. Anrid slipped downward, toward the crevice yawning open in the earth. Jael shook off the indecision and dove toward Anrid at the same time Kora scrambled toward her from the other direction. More limestone pelted them from above. The floor wrenched again, this time splitting open mere feet from Jael. He slid sideways, his foot plunging into a jagged crack in the stone.
He yanked his foot free just as a huge chunk of limestone shook loose from the ceiling and plummeted downward.
Chapter 29
Anrid slid toward a crack in the floor created by shifting slabs of stone. She flung out her hands, fingers trying to find purchase in the uneven rock. She managed to dig them into a flaw in the rock and halt her descent. She scrabbled to get her knees under her, to find stability, balance. A horrifying crash slammed her back to her stomach. Something nicked her neck. She wrapped an arm around her head as more bits of flying rock sliced at her.
The floor shifted again with an inhumane scream. She skidded to the side and cried out as the crack in the floor widened like a giant mouth opening to devour her whole.
She slid straight for it.
A hundred thoughts crashed through her mind, a thousand regrets. She thought of her sister. Of the goblin children. As she tumbled over the edge of the hole in the floor, she thought of Jael. His panic lashed out at her.
A hand snatched at her wrist at the last possible second. Her body swung and smashed hard against the rock floor. She screamed and kicked for purchase, but the sheered rock was too smooth. Her shoulder ached as the weight of her body pulled against it. She managed to reach up and grasp the wrist clutching her arm.
He’d saved her yet again. The thought flooded her with gnawing certainty. But when she twisted her head back, it wasn’t Jael holding her. Kora stared down at her, jaw set in grim determination as he fought to keep himself stabilized on the edge of the chasm with one hand while reaching down to hold on to her. He bared his teeth and lifted her upward. She released her hold on his wrist to grab for the floor’s edge. Kora caught hold of the back of her dress and dragged her unceremoniously to safety.
A moan filled her head, but it didn’t come from her own lips. It didn’t come from anything human. She lost focus of all around her as the emotion swelled inside, lit by flashes of familiar white light and icy hot stabs of regret. The Bifrost, she realized, as she battled to catch her breath.
The magic felt…bad.
She peeled her eyelids apart as Kora tugged her into a seated position away from the jagged hole in the floor. An eerie silence reigned after the growling of moving rock faded away. Where were the others? Had anyone been hurt? She swept the chamber, skimming over and away from the dark elves hunched along the far wall. Away from Math, still on his hands and knees and blinking around as if in a daze. Now that she began to settle her breathing, she noticed the stings on her neck and arms where flying bits of rock had left shallow cuts in her skin. She wiped away a couple mild streaks of blood but didn’t see anything too serious.
“By the flames!” One of the elves swore soundly, tugging her attention back.
Math staggered to his feet. “Is anyone injured?” He addressed this to the elves and hurried in their direction, palms held toward them almost as if he hoped to placate them and salvage this situation.
“Injured?” Her elf husband shoved away from the wall and stalked toward the young apprentice. “That—that—” He said a word Anrid had never heard before, but it must be an awful word indeed. “—attacked me!”
“You asked for it.” Kora moved to put himself alongside Math, in a show of solidarity.
“Please,” Math was saying as Anrid’s attention began to drift.
She honestly didn’t care what he had to say right now. She searched until she found Jael’s stooped form huddled on the ground halfway between her and the doorway. He was alive. Relief flooded her body, but a new sort of terror snapped in its wake when she realized he cradled a tiny limp body in his arms. He lifted his head and stared straight at her, eyes red rimmed and horrified.
“Medda.” She gasped the child’s name, the choked sound of her voice somewhere between a cry and a plea. She scrambled across the ground on all fours, scuttling like an animal to get to them as quickly as she could. She collapsed beside Jael and reached for the goblin child.
Then she saw the blood smeared all over Medda’s ghostly white face.
“There’s so much blood.” Jael sounded dazed. “I don’t know where it’s coming from. I—I—”
His emotions flooded through her, bare and unguarded. She didn’t know if he meant her to see—to feel—but nothing stood between them, his soul as exposed and unprotected as hers.
“Lay her on the floor.” Anrid barked the words. When Jael only stared at her as if confused or hesitant, she bared her teeth. “Now!”
