“We need to cut it, but there’s no way to get in there,” Sig yells.
Roley whimpers above us, and my heart pounds louder in my ears. I need to get him outnow.
I raise the bow and line up my shot. This might be the only way, and I have to work fast.
“Roley, listen to me!” I yell. “I’m going to try to kill it. You might fall, and it might hurt a lot, alright? But we’re going to get you out!”
“We have to take him back after this,” Sig hisses in my ear.
“I know. He saw you,” I mumble, and let out a breath. Releasing the string, I watch as the arrow sails through the air and hits my mark, tearing a huge gash into the stalk. An ear piercing squeal erupts from it, and Sig and I throw our hands over our ears. Vines lash out toward us then, as the others shake Roley in the air. Sig lets out a cry as one wraps around her leg, and she hacks at it with her sword.
I grab another arrow and let it fly, following quickly with a third. With the last arrow, the stalk starts to turn brown and shrivel. The thorn covered shoots unwrap from Roley’s limbs, flinging him to the ground where he lands in a heap. The vines retreat into the stalk, hissing and squealing as they go, until it disappears into the ground, as if it were never there.
I run, dropping to my knees in front of him, Sig close behind me.
“It’s alright Roley,” I say. “Anything hurt?” I grasp his shoulder, turning him from the curled position he landed in so I can assess him.
“Just the cuts,” he whimpers. His clothes are torn, and puncture wounds cover his entire body. He needs the salve immediately. We don’t know if the thorns had any poison in them, and we can’t risk taking too long to find out.
“It’s alright. We’ll get you all cleaned up,” I say.
“Lennox, we have to go,” Sig says. Her unease is palpable, and I nod quickly and turn back to Roley.
“Roley, you’re going to come with us, alright?”
Terror fills his wide eyes, and he shakes his head roughly.
“No! She’s a Castaway! I can’t go!” he cries and tries to crawl backward away from me, wincing in pain as he moves.
“I promise it will be fine. You have to trust me.”
His head swivels between Sig and me, and I see reflected in him what I believed before, that the Castaways were monsters and being with them would change who we are.
“Come on, Lennox,” Sig grumbles.
“I’m going to carry you, alright?” I lean toward him as a rustle of leaves causes his eyes to flick over my shoulder.
I spin around, looking past Sig, and my breath catches in my throat.
Sword raised to strike with fiery hatred in her eyes, Mara charges right toward us.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Mara! No!” I scream, as she lifts the sword over her shoulder. I leap forward, tackling Sig, and pushing her out of the path of the sword that comes swinging down over us, right where Sig had been standing a moment ago.
We land on the ground in a heap, but quickly scramble to get back to our feet. Mara’s sword is embedded in the ground, her strike so fierce it pierced through the soft dirt. She yanks on the hilt, grunting and screaming before it releases, and she turns on her heel, stalking toward me.
“You!” she screams, the tip of her sword pointing directly at me. “You were trying to take him!”
“Mara, please, listen to me!”
“You fucking traitor!”
Her sword slices through the air, aimed right at my head, and I duck under it.
“Mara, stop!” I yell as she charges at me. I stumble backward, almost falling to the ground, trying to keep my eyes on her when I feel Sig grab the shirt at my shoulders and yank me away and back to my feet.
“We need to run!” she yells, and I don’t hesitate.
