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I fall.
I fall through fog and smoke. Dreams and desires.
I decide that I’ve plunged myself to my death.
Not for the first time, I wonder what will await me on the other end.
If it’s Blaise, sitting over my sleeping body. If her voice is the first I’ll hear, or if it will be Claudia’s or any of the others I’ve murdered. Those who deserve better than to have to see me again on the other side.
Perhaps they’re waiting for me.
Perhaps they always have been.
I land, but it’s not on solid ground. It’s in a substance that’s sticky. Somehow firm and pliable at the same time. It cushions my landing, slowing me as I rip through whatever the substance is.
I find myself wondering if, in slipping through an eyelet, I’ve landed on the Fabric itself. If I’m tearing rips through it, shearing through separate realms to cushion my fall.
The soft, sticky substance beneath me gives way once more, and I find I’m wrapped in it. My fae vision adjusts to the fog, able to see more clearly now that I’m in it rather than looking down upon it from a distance.
Something silky, glimmering like liquid diamonds, stretches out around me, above me, below me. The material that broke my fall. It hits me that this must have been what cushioned the scorpion’s fall, why we never heard it crash into the ground.
Because I haven’t hit the ground yet either.
Nausea turns over in my belly when, all at once, the fog in my vision clears and I recognize exactly what I’ve landed in.
I’ve landed in a web.
I fight back the urge to gag, but my reflexes have me kicking frantically against the webbing that’s tangled itself around my limbs. I don’t know how far I’ve fallen, but I broke through several layers of the film, judging by looking upward and the fact that I’m not dead from the impact. The webbing must run as deep as the lower half of the cavern, obscured by the fog that drifts up from the ocean.
It takes me a moment, but I wrench my foot out of a tangle of web.
Of course, at that exact moment I hear a scream.
Zora’s face flashes before my eyes, her mouth warped into a mingled wail of terror and howl of delight, before she comes crashing into a section of webbing above me and slightly to my left.
The weight of her fall breaks the webbing beneath her.
On the way down, she grabs onto my hand, yanking me with such force that the webbing beneath me snaps, and we go plummeting downward.
My back hits the hard earth, and soon enough Zora’s splayed hand shoves into my face, blocking my nose from any chance of getting air. She shrieks and crawls off of me, but only after I practically shove her off.
“Are you crazy?” Her cheeks are flushed red with rage, the only color in this abysmally white crevasse we’ve found ourselves trapped in.
“Apparently it runs in our blood, considering you followed me,” I hiss, yanking clots of tangled webbing off my clothing as Zora does the same. “Why did you jump?”
Zora’s jaw drops. “Why did I jump? Why did you jump? You jumped first!”
“Yes, but I wasn’t intending for you to come after me.”
This must be the wrong thing to say, because Zora crosses her arms, water pooling and glazing over her blue eyes. “So you were just going to leave me then? The whole time, you were just going to leave me.”
I run my hands through my hair, which is a mistake, because it’s also caked with the filmy substance. “No, of course not. I just didn’t want you to follow me into danger, that’s all.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I recognize the lie in them. It’s true—I wasn’t intentionally abandoning Zora. I’d just been so caught up in getting back to Blaise, I’d jumped without considering that the eyelet would close behind me.
I think that might be worse.
Zora blinks away the tears, but she doesn’t express any sign of understanding. Instead, she pivots, taking in our surroundings. “Well, this is new,” she says under her breath.
“What, you mean the eyelets aren’t usually caked over with spiderwebs?”
