Page 111 of The Mortal Trials

Seconds stretch, and finally, the boar’s strength leaches away until it can only twitch. Its wild eyes fix in one spot.

Everyone watches, panting, as August jerks the spear out of its body. His relieved eyes meet mine.

My shoulders relax. I take a deep breath, thinking it’s over and that we just need to find the portal now.

But then we hear Veronia scream. “Help! Help us! Hazi! Help us, please!”

We run. An unchampioned man who’s tasted age but hasn’t shed all the strength of his youth staggers toward their tree. He’s infected, his inner thigh badly mangled. Blood stripes his calf and streaks his shirt where he dragged his hands over the white. He reaches out for Koda.

Veronia shrieks and tries to kick his hand away, but she can’t fight him off and hold Koda in the tree.

Hazi takes off in a sprint, and when he’s close, he uses his spear like a bat, cracking the man in the temple. The infected man collapses with a groan.

Veronia squeezes Koda a little tighter as Hazi pushes the man’s shoulder back with the blunt end of his spear. “This is the first man I told you about,” he tells me. Foam spills from the man’s purplish lips. “Whatever’s happening to them is getting worse. Look at his eyes.”

The veins beneath them are dark and webbed.

Koda lets out a groan, his head lolling forward. The tiny tin of tea sits heavy on my thigh. “We have to get him out of here.”

“We don’t know who or what else is in this mist. We don’t even know where the portal is!” Veronia panics.

“Well it’s certainly not here!” Hazi snaps. “We have to move before the gods insist upon it.”

Aymes hands the golden spear to me and takes Koda into his arms just as we hear a loud, breathy snuffle behind us. We all turn as the boar August killed begins to wriggle.

“There’s no way,” Niall breathes. “It was dead.”

I place the golden spear in Niall’s hand. “Go with August and Koda. Guard them.”

Elias narrows his eyes at Veronia. “You want to reach the portal? Then help.” He tosses the woman a sharpened branch before hurrying after Niall and August.

23

Hazi runs the boar through again, holding it to the ground. “Go!” he hisses. Veronia and I hesitate, neither of us wanting to leave him here alone, but Hazi insists. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I take off, spear at the ready.

Veronia falls into step beside me. “Where’s Torsten?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” Don’t care.

We rush between the trees, upsetting the fog that’s already devoured August’s trail and settled again. A branch cracks overhead as a woman leaps from a tree and onto Veronia’s back, tackling her to the forest floor.

The veins under her eyes are sooty. I can’t hit her like Hazi did the other infected man without hitting Veronia. I consider it, though, then grab a handful of the woman’s red hair and try to wrench her off. The crazed woman snaps and gnashes her teeth at me.

Veronia throws her weight to the side, rolling them both until she’s on top and straddling the woman. As the woman tries to bite her, she holds her head to the ground.

“Kill her!” Veronia screams. “Use your spear.”

But killing her won’t help. It didn’t stop the boar. And I don’t want this woman’s blood on my hands, or people blaming me for her death when the gods are the ones who caused it.

I grab the obsidian end of my spear and drag it across the back of her heel. With a pained howl, the infected woman writhes in pain and stops biting at Veronia long enough for her to extricate herself.

“Callalie!” Hazi shouts from behind us. “Veronia!”

“Over here!” I yell.

“Hazi!” Veronia reaches out as he almost runs past us.