I turn and bolt.
Sig is steps ahead of me, her longer legs giving her an advantage. Leaves and branches tear at us as we push through the forest toward the open path, in the opposite direction of the lookout. We can’t go back to it; it would lead Mara straight there.
“Shit, we left Roley!” I yell to Sig. Mara’s steps pound behind me, and I push myself harder, trying to stay out of reach of her sword.
“It’s too late! We need to get out of here!” Sig yells. I can barely hear her from the pounding of my feet and heart, the swish of the leaves as we fly past. We weave and dodge, trying to throw Mara off, but she knows Dawnlin as well as we do, if not better. We burst through the tree line and sprint across the main path into the grassy plains that lead to the cliffs.
“Where do we go? We need a portal!” I scream at Sig’s back. She stumbles in front of me, then picks herself back up.
“They’re too far, and we can’t lead her right to one. We have to lose her!”
Fuck, she’s right.
If we lead her to a portal, she will know exactly where we can enter and exit. She’ll know how we get across the island. There’s no way of knowing how long she or others would wait for someone to use it. We’d be putting Castaways in danger. We?—
Pain erupts in my arm and I scream, the intensity so strong I fall to my knees. The tip of a blade pokes through the front of my arm, and bile rises in my throat. I reach behind and pull the knife out, dropping it to the ground as another wave of pain comes over me and my mind spins.
Sig skids to a stop in front of me, her eyes wide as she yells at me, but her voice sounds far away. My ears ring and my stomach rolls. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shake my head.
Focus. You’ll die if you don’t.
Sig’s scream cut through the fog. “Behind you!”
I can’t think. I clutch my arm and blood oozes through my fingers as I roll to the side, just as another knife sticks into the dirt where I knelt.
“Castaway scum!” she screams as her sword drives down toward my head again. My eyes snag on my bow laying in the grass, and I reach for it, scrambling for some way to protect myself from her next strike.
My fingers wrap around the wood and I shove it above me, just as her hands come down again. The metal blade hacks into it, splintering the wood, and jarring my limbs, weakening me enough that I don’t know if I’ll be able to ward off another strike.
I have to get through to her.
“Mara, listen to me! We don’t hurt our own, remember?” I yell as I crawl backwards, the heels of my boots slipping on the slick grass under me.
“You aren’t one of us! You chose them!” She pulls a knife from her belt, eyes blazing down at me. “And now I’m going to bring you back to Dane, and he’s going to see you for the traitorous bitch you are.”
My arm slips out from under me and I fall, slamming my other into the ground with a cry. I can’t fight her off. My bow is broken and useless without both of my arms. I let go of it and try to move, try to scramble back away, when suddenly Sig is there, her fist slamming into Mara’s cheek.
The force of Sig’s blow whips Mara’s head to the side, and her knees hit the ground. Sig stumbles forward, catching herself before she’s on me in the next breath, yanking me up to my feet as I scream in pain. Our feet pound on the ground as we get farther away from Mara. I hope Sig’s punch was enough to give us time.
“Cap taught you how to swim, right?” Sig says as she runs alongside me, not ahead any longer, her hand gripping my arm and urging me faster.
“Uh-huh,” I say, and her plan clicks in my mind.
We sprint through the grass, straight toward the edge in front of us. Mara is behind, screaming and giving chase.
Pain sears through me with every pump of my arms, but we don’t slow down. All I can see is the edge, the expanse of water below. My nightmare flashes before my eyes, the first ever I had here, with the Voyagers and Dane chasing me off the cliff. The fear I had then, so different from the fear I have now, but it’s as if the island knew.
Was Dawnlin warning me?
“Don’t slow down! We need to clear the rocks!” Sig yells, and lets go of my arm. “Point your feet and take a breath. Do you hear me, Lennox?”
I can’t respond to her. I can’t do anything but run and think about hitting that water below. The edge gets closer with every step. I don’t think. I don’t stop. My foot hits the edge and pushes me into the air.
I’m weightless.
Wind whips at my clothes and hair as my arms and legs flail, running without purchase into what just days ago was my biggest fear.
The surface gets closer with every second, and I slam my legs together, pointing my feet and sucking in all the air I can before I crash into the abyss below.
