Page 109 of The Cost of Blood and Bonds

“Rye.” His hands tighten on my shoulders. “Rye, look at me.”

The edges of my vision go dark. My heart is going to explode. I’m going to die right here without finding her⁠—

“LOOK AT ME.”

He cups the back of my neck, forcing my eyes on his face.

“Breathe.” His voice cuts through the static in my head. “In. Now.”

I try. It shudders, then catches.

“Again. Slower.”

I pull in another breath that scrapes through my lungs like broken glass. The darkness recedes, just slightly.

“She was thrown north of us.” Grier’s voice is strained but steady. “We’ll find her.”

I nod. Try to speak, but nothing comes out.

We push into the destruction, climbing, crawling, and tearing through branches that feel strangely warm where they brush my skin. My palms are slick with sap until I catch the color. Red, I must be bleeding. I don’t stop.

“GEMMA! GEMMA!” My throat is shredding, and I can’t stop. Her name keeps tearing out of me like I have no control over it.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. I just found her. I just—we were just⁠—

Something green cuts through the brown and gray. A flash of color through the branches—her emerald silk.

I lunge toward her, crashing through branches, tripping over roots.

She’s crumpled at the base of an oak, not moving. And there’s blood—too much blood—soaking through her side.

I drop to my knees. My hands won’t stop shaking, but I touch her anyway.

“Gemma.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Please.” I try.

The ground hums low, almost felt rather than heard. It’s not an aftershock; it’s something deeper, something wrong. Grier’s face drains of color. He looks at the ground, then back at me. The earth shifts under my knees, and I pull her in close, locking my arms around her. It has to be enough this time.

The hum deepens before the ground splits open and gives way. Then we’re falling with soil and rock closing around us, and the light vanishes all at once.

I pull her into me, my arms caging her in, my body the only shield I have left. I failed her once tonight, and I won’t do it again.

Chapter 35

Grier

Iforce my eyes open, and all I see is white. There’s snow falling from a gray sky, blanketing the ground around us. There’s no debris, no rubble, just snow, like we were placed here, not thrown. It’s wrong, all of it is wrong.

My brain catches up in pieces. The ground splitting open and swallowing us whole. Then the pressure, the weight of a thousand tons of soil crushing in from every side. Darkness followed, so thick I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even make a sound. Then the cold, biting and vicious, seeping into my bones like a blade. The ground spitting us out somewhere it shouldn’t be able to reach. I know what magic looks like, and that wasn’t it.

My heart slams back to life. Where’s Gemma?

I push myself up, and my body screams in protest. But my eyes are already scanning. There⁠—

Rye is on his knees a few feet away with Gemma clutched to his chest.