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“I can take a few arrows; you can’t!”
“That’s more than a few!”
He turned around and grabbed me by the front of my tunic. “Look at me. I am the captain now, all right? Now get the hell in front!”
But as it happened, I didn’t have to.
The current whirled us around a second later, leaving us facing the wrong way, and Ray gasping as three arrows slammed into his back, almost at the same time.
“Fuckers,” he yelled again, although it sounded more like a wheeze, his lungs having just been shredded.
“I need a weapon,” I gritted out, furious.
But I didn’t have one. Our pack was long since gone, lost along with everything we owned in the raging rapids. But then a fey dropped down on top of us from the slick side of a stalactite, and it turned out that I had everything I needed, after all.
I snatched him out of the air before he could grab Ray, who had slumped over. I wasn’t sure how much leverage I had with my useless legs, but for once, luck was on my side. They had become entangled with the wreckage of our raft, giving me enough control to punch the fey repeatedly in the face, throwing all my weight and rage behind it.
I felt teeth shatter and tear the skin of my knuckles. I felt bones break—his, I was pretty sure, although at that moment I didn’t care. I felt his nose cave in and something that might have been an eyeball squash against my hand, before popping like a grape. My arm shuddered and my shoulder muscles cried out at the sheer amount of force I was demanding of them; my face was splattered with blood and my throat was sore from screams I hadn’t even realized I had been making. Yet I continued—
Until a hand grabbed my wrist.
“I think . . . he’s dead,” Ray gasped.
I looked down at what I was holding.
Yes, I thought; yes, he was.
I looked up, and saw half a dozen fey, the only ones close enough to have witnessed the fight, clinging to rocks and limestone formations, staring. I bared my blood covered teeth at them. Yes, I thought. You understood that, didn’t you? Then understand this, and I tore the fey’s head off, ripping the sinew and muscle from the bones, and tossing it to one side of the craft while the body slipped away on the other.
Then we fell down another vortex.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dorina, Faerie
I hadn’t realized that the vortex was so close and I wasn’t prepared. And perhaps it was because I was exhausted, but the currents seemed harsher this time. They felt like they were going to tear us apart before the fey had a chance.
I barely noticed when we surfaced again, didn’t even feel the rotation when the world flipped and righted itself. I vaguely understood that someone was hitting my back, but didn’t know who. But the blows were hard, shuddering my ribcage, and forcing water up and out of my throat.
“Damn it, breathe!”
It was Ray. He sounded upset. I frowned, because I couldn’t remember . . .
Oh, yes. He had four fey arrows sticking out of him. Three in his chest and one in his thigh. And something about that thought did what nothing else could, and roused me.
I came back to myself, only to find that I was sprawled over the raft, face down and puking my guts out into the river. I still couldn’t half breathe, but Ray was rhythmically beating on my back, which seemed to help. Every time he did it, more water and phlegm came up, or perhaps that was the remains of breakfast. Didn’t know; didn’t care.
And then my eyes were crossing at a neatly fletched arrow that was sticking out of my shoulder, a bright shock of pain.
“You bastards!” Ray sounded like he was sobbing.
I looked back at him and my thoughts, my heart, and quite possibly the blood in my veins halted, all at once. I stared at him for what felt like an hour, because I had been wrong. There were not four arrows.
The fey had riddled his body with them while I had been out, to the point that his skin ran with rivulets of blood, blood we could no longer replace. There were twenty or thirty shafts; I didn’t know. Couldn’t count. They had literally ripped him apart and he had allowed them to do so, in order to shield me.
Another shaft slammed into him a second later, forcing out a small cry that had me trying to surge to my feet, forgetting that I couldn’t. I collapsed back against the raft, and almost fell out. Only my unwounded hand caught me.
“This is the great warrior we’ve been told so much about?” A fey appeared on the river banks, flanked by several others. One of them had a bow in his hand with another arrow already nocked, but the leader put out an arm, stopping him. “I have to say, I’m disappointed.”
