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LUCA
I opened my eyes to a sun that was much brighter and higher in the sky than it should have been.
“What the fuck, Blaise?” I mumbled, sitting up and scrubbing at my eyes. She’d taken the night watch, and we’d agreed to get moving at daybreak. Kingston was just stirring a couple of feet away.
We must have needed the sleep, but damn, I wished she had woken us earlier. We had a lot of ground to cover.
“Blaise?” I repeated, finally looking around and realizing she wasn’t even fucking here. Seriously? There were way too many threats out here to leave us sound asleep.
Unless...
“Kingston, get the hell up. Blaise is gone,” I lunged to my feet, surveying the area outside the shallow cave we’d slept in.
It was rough going in this labyrinth - every Goddess-damned creature out here had a nose for blood. And it was more than just the normal animals in Saori Sang. We’d come across plenty of beasts from Aralia and shifter country too, though no actual fae or shifters, thank the Goddess.
Kingston was up and alert much faster than I’d managed, scanning the rock walls warily.
“There. Scattered rocks and maybe a trail,” he said pointing. Sure enough, there was something that looked like drag marks in the dirt. Fucking hell. We exchanged a guilty look.
I’d actually started enjoying Blaise’s company, and Kana would be seriously pissed if her new friend was already dead.
Not to mention the rage we’d face from Valentina.
Gathering the small amount of supplies we’d scraped together so far, we did our best to follow the trail Blaise had left. More drag marks in the dirt. A bit of dried blood.
“Ah,fuck,” I said, coming up short as I rounded a corner and found the mist, thick and heavy along the ground. It was almost knee high, and there was a dark shape mounded in the middle of the corridor.
Kingston cursed under his breath, but we both headed in, fearing the worst for our teammate. The mist wouldn’t hurt us - not now, anyway.
We’d barely made it six steps when the mist proved me fucking wrong.
I gave a shout as it surged up my body, crawling and wrapping around my arms and legs, pouring down my throat the way it had in the banquet hall, right before...
“What the fuck...” I managed, blinking open my eyes and coughing. The sun was no longer bright in the sky, but slanting down over the labyrinth walls, nearly disappeared from sight.
Seriously, what the goddess-damned hell was going on?
I sat up, hacking up more shit from my lungs. Kingston was flat on his back nearby, and Blaise...
“Blaise! What the hell? Fucking get up, Kingston,” I shoved at him, feeling the oddest sort of deja vu.
“Dude, I’m so fucking confused right now,” he said, sitting up and blinking around us.
When his eyes fell on our third team member sprawled a few feet away, he scrambled over to her. “She’s breathing. Just barely. Where’s the water?”
I handed him the water skin we’d fashioned from a rabbit on the first night, drying the hide over a dangerous fire. So dangerous, in fact, that we hadn’t built a fire since, even though we kept storing the few scraps of wood we found.
Kingston managed to get some liquid down her throat, and she heaved, suddenly shouting and thrashing around like she was fighting something off.
Her skin had a greenish pallor to it that I’d only ever seen on dead vampires, right before the mist gobbled them up. But her eyes finally focused on us, and she calmed her movements.
“Holy Haret, I think I died last night,” she finally managed, nervously scanning the sky above the rock walls every few seconds.
“You sure looked dead when we found you. Covered in mist and everything,” Kingston told her, his voice puzzled.
“Well, don’t cry about it, boys,” Blaise said wryly, though there was a shaky sort of tone underneath.
“What do you remember?” I asked, turning the subject to something useful. Had the mist somehow protected her?
