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“I know.”
I stared at the alien force behind us in growing horror, my heart racing so fast it felt like it was about to tear out of my chest. And maybe it was, because tendrils of the rift’s energy were now whipping around us. The vehicle was shuddering under the force of them, and my skin stung and shivered and bled.
“We can’t outrun this, Jonas.”
He glanced in the mirror and swore. “You’re right. We can’t.”
With that, he slammed on the brakes and flipped the doors open. “Run. Get as far away from this vehicle and the road as you can.”
I was out and sprinting before he’d even finished. Energy was fiercer out in the open; became a storm that was dust and destruction and nigh on impossible to run against. The empty landscape disappeared and all I could feel, all I could hear, was the roar of the rift approaching.
A hand grabbed mine and held tight. “Faster,” Jonas yelled, almost yanking me off my feet. “You have to go faster.”
“I can’t!” I was already at top speed. There was nothing more to give, nothing more I could do. “Shift shapes and leave me, Jonas. One of us needs to get out of here.”
“A ranger never leaves a man behind,” he snapped. “Now fucking move.”
I somehow found the strength to increase my speed. But only incrementally and that wasn’t enough. My lungs were burning, my legs felt like lead, and the storm was so close it felt like fragments of my body were tearing away.
We raced on, speeding across the unseen landscape even as time and the rift now seemed to be crawling. Just for a minute the force of it waned and hope surged. Maybe Rhea had taken pity on us; maybe we would escape.
Then Jonas swore, his grip left mine, and the rift hit us and tore us both apart.
Chapter 11
Everything seemed to end. Everything except pain and consciousness. There was no sense of movement in this rift. It held no light, no sound, no life, even though it moved through a world that contained all those things. It was suffocating and deadly, and alien in a way I couldn’t even begin to understand. It tore me apart and examined every particle and every facet of my being, as if each tiny piece of me needed to be fully understood before it was discarded. It was almost as if the rift was in some way sentient, though how that was possible when it was energy and magic rather than life I had no idea.
On and on it went, endless and unforgiving. But somewhere in the midst of it all, stubbornness flared. I’d been torn apart once already in my lifetime, though the source had been chemical rather than a force from another world. If I could survive the melting of flesh and muscle, I could survive this.
Death, some distant part of me thought, you are once again rejected.
And in a single moment of serendipity, that thought had no sooner crossed my mind than the force of the rift abandoned me and I was spat out whole and breathing into sweet sunshine.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I simply lay there, sucking air into still-burning lungs as I stared up at blue skies and thanked Rhea—and every other god that might be listening—for the miracle of survival. And not just survival, because I could feel my fingers, my toes, and though every bit of me in between seemed to be nothing but a mass of agony, everything still seemed to be where it was supposed to be. I hadn’t become some twisted, unrecognizable remnant of what I’d once been.
I was alive. And that meant I could return to my little ones, just as I’d promised.
Of course, to do that, I first had to uncover where the hell I now was. There was nothing but silence around me. There were no birdcalls, no familiar scents, no sense of life . . .
Oh Rhea, Jonas . . .
I tried to speak, to call out, but my throat was raw and no sound came out. I tried to move, to turn my head and look around, but my body was still a mass of quivering, aching jelly and refused to obey my commands. Had I been wrong? Had I come through in one piece but little more than an inert lump of flesh? Panic surged and a scream of denial tore up my throat. And though it came out as little more than a squeak, it broke through the fear and forced me to get a grip on my emotions. If I could squeak, I would eventually be able to talk. And I would probably be able to move, too. All I had to do was keep control and heal.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on regulating my breathing. On fighting the panic and ignoring the burning in my lungs that suggested I wasn’t getting enough air into my body. But the simple act of breathing in and out in a calm, orderly manner had never seemed so damn hard.
Eventually, though, the pain and weakness began to subside as the peace of the healing state descended. It was a state I remained in for hours—long enough that by the time I emerged, the heat of the day had left the air and dusk was spreading pink fingers across the darkening sky.
I took a deep, shuddery breath and sat upright. The sudden movement had my head spinning, which meant that although my body no longer felt like it had been pushed through a meat grinder, I was a long way from being fully healed. But it didn’t matter; nothing did, except finding Jonas.
The plain stretched before me, a vast and empty space. There was no forest, no road, nothing to indicate where I’d landed. I twisted around and again saw nothing but emptiness. Rhea help me, he couldn’t be dead. Surely the goddess would not be so cruel as to tease me with possibilities and then snatch them away . . .
In the distance far to my left I spotted an unmoving brown lump. Hope flared, even though I knew it might be nothing more than a rock twisted into a humanlike shape by the rift’s force.
I pushed upright and scrambled toward it. The nearer I got, the clearer it became it was no rock.
I dropped to my knees beside him and felt for a pulse. It was there—rapid and thready, but there. Relief surged, a force so fierce that a sob escaped. I leaned my forehead against his arm and battled the sting of tears. Against
all the odds, we’d both survived and in one piece . . . I stirred at the thought and began checking him for wounds, breaks, or any other sign that the rift had done something extreme to his body. But there didn’t appear to be anything untoward. Nothing visible, anyway.
