Another.
Her injured side screams. The pain makes her vision explode into white.
She almost loses her grip.
Don’t stop.
Her arms shake violently as she hauls herself higher, muscles trembling beneath the weight of blood loss and exhaustion.
The wall stretches forever above her.
Her breath comes in shallow bursts now, chest refusing to expand properly.
Halfway up her foot slips.
She slams against the stone hard enough to rattle her teeth. For a moment she hangs there. Fingers barely holding. Vision collapsing inward. The pull tightens again.
Up.
Her nails tear.
Her palms burn.
She climbs anyway, rust fabric snapping in the hot Azhareth breeze like a flag.
One desperate movement at a time.
Her knee finds a shallow ledge.
Her elbow scrapes raw against stone.
Her head swims.
The Stars above her blur together into streaks of silver light.
She doesn’t remember the last few feet.
Only the moment her body finally spills over the top.
Her weight tips forward.
And gravity takes her.
She falls.
Her body clips protruding stone, scraping skin, bruising bone. But for a heartbeat, she feels like she’s floating, weightless.
It doesn’t last.
The ground on the far side rushes up in a violent tumble of sand and darkness. Elyssara crashes into the slope beyond the wall and rolls, silk tangling around her legs as her wounded side slams against the earth with a wet crack.
The impact steals what little air she has left from her lungs.
For a long moment, she cannot breathe. Cannot move.
The world tilts and spins.
Stars smear across the sky above her like spilled paint.
