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My body froze as a different terror surfaced.
“Is that true?” Lila said, her voice sounding withered and hurt.
“Lila, I …” I choked, but I couldn’t form the words with my throat in a vise grip.
“Let’s find out,” the Magi said, her wicked laughter like poison in my ears. “I will spare one of them. The other will pay the price for trespassing in my kingdom. I’ll let you choose, Kovak.”
My eyes darted between Raven and Lila. I searched their faces for any indication one was a mirage, a cruel trick created by this cursed forest. But to my eyes, both girls were real, both flesh and blood. I couldn’t choose between them.
“Take me instead,” I said. “Let them both go and take me.”
“Tempting, but no. Youwillchoose. And if you cannot, I will kill them both,” the Magi said, dunking me under the water’s surface as if to emphasize her point.
She held me down as I thrashed and fought against the burning need to breathe, until my lungs were about to burst. Then suddenly, her tentacle released from my neck.
I resurfaced just in time to see Kah tear off the tip of one of the Magi’s tentacles, making her stumble backward, losing her grip on all three of us. Kah flung her shorn limb into the lake like a flailing fish.
“Kah! Where have you been?” I cried, coughing and gasping for air. The taste of copper filled my mouth from where I’d bitten my tongue underwater.
“Oh, sonowyou think it was a bad idea to split up?” he called back, his black eyes homing in on the Magi.
“Get the girls out of here,” I shouted. “I’ll hold off the Magi.”
“What girls?”
“Lila and Raven!”
“Lila and Raven aren’t here!” he shouted, glancing around wildly.
What? They were right there in the water beside him. Unless—unless theyweren’treally there. Blazenhell, I didn’t know what to think anymore.
By now the Magi had regained her balance. Her metal eyes became black holes, ready to put an end to playtime. As her tentacles reached for us again, I yanked another knife out of my bracer and stabbed it into the slippery flesh, slicing a deep gash. Kah reared up on his hind legs and sank his teeth into the tentacle headed for him, ripping it apart with a savage roar that shook the trees.
The Magi’s laughter morphed into shrieks, her tentacles thrashing and smacking the water.
“Come on!” Kah shouted, pushing me with his head to get me moving toward the shore.
While the Magi flailed, we careened out of the lake, breathing hard as water splashed like fireworks around us.
“Jeddak, no!” It was Raven’s voice calling from the water.
“I have to go back for them!” I said to Kah, stooping to grab my staff.
“They’re not out there, Jeddak!” Kah shouted, positioning his huge body between me and the lake. “The forest is playing tricks with your mind.”
“Jeddak!” It was Lila’s voice this time. “Jeddak,please!”
“Help us!” Raven cried.
“I’m not leaving them,” I said, fighting to get around Kah.
“We have to go,” Kah ordered, forcing me away from the water toward the tree line.
“Get out of my way! I can’t let them die. I can’t?—”
But Kah wasn’t listening. He clamped his teeth down on the fringe of my soaked shirt and led me toward the trees.
“No!” I ripped my shirt out of his jaws, but before I could sprint back into the water, he locked down on my forearm instead. I howled in pain as his sharp teeth dug into my flesh as he dragged me away.
