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Thank God! Relief flooded my body, damn near making my grip go slack.
I didn’t have time to dawdle. I’d already delayed moving as it was. Exhaling, I centered myself and continued forward.
Shrieks echoed through the arena … or I thought they did. It was hard to tell over the crowd’s cheers.
One thing was certain. The mist, smoke, shadow, or whatever the hell it was was still working its horrific magic. I suspected it revealed our greatest fears, and Stan had been the perfect candidate for that, signifying everything that could hurt me.
By the time I reached the halfway point, my arms and legs were jelly. I wasn’t sure how I would make it to the end. I could still see competitors flying erratically ahead of me, so I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t crossed the finish line.
As I leaned against the stone, something dripped on top of my head.
Something that couldn’t be my tears.
I looked up to find a woman with cranberry-red hair, a woman who had sat at the Winter fae table, dangling from a shard of ice, her body slowly sliding down as her warm blood melted the ice. My stomach roiled, threatening to spew. This place was worse than Earth, something I never thought I’d ever say. Beauty was an amazing disguise.
Warming frozen heaticles! That probably wasn’t even the right way to curse here, but that was all I had because if I didn’t move, she was going to fall on me.
Break time was over.
Adrenaline fueled me, giving me a much-needed second wind as I moved forward. I hated that the woman had died, but I didn’t want her corpse falling on me.
Determined to get to the end of this nightmare as quickly as possible, I moved faster than before. I needed to capitalize on this adrenaline rush.
The mist thickened again. Trying not to panic, I kept my eyes on the next stone. A cold scream stopped me dead midtransfer, hanging between two stones. My body grew heavy as my arms and legs screamed from the pressure.
“You’ll pay for that,” the familiar frigid voice of the dark-haired Winter fae who’d sat next to King Kieran last night rasped. “You won’t take him from me. No one will.”
“Ginevra, it’s not real,” Rowan sniped. “We need to go. This mist is messing with you.”
Ginevra snarled. “You’re in on it too, and I won’t let you have him!”
Ten yards from me, the two women hovered in the air. Rowan was facing me, her forehead creased, and Ginevra hovered underneath a gigantic stalactite.
Rowan lifted both hands. “I don’t want him. I’m trying to help you. Like we agreed.”
The crowd chanted, “Fight, fight, fight,” indicating they could see everything.
“This is how our friendship ends!” Ginevra flew upward, her wing hitting the speared edge as she kicked Rowan in the stomach.
As Rowan flew back several feet, Ginevra’s face twisted in a grimace, and she screamed in pain.
The sharp point dug into her emerald-feathered wing. A knot formed deep in the pit of my stomach as her body dropped and the right portion of her wing floated away as it dislodged from her body.
“Ginevra!” Rowan shouted, but she hadn’t righted herself.
No one could help Ginevra.
Something exploded inside me. I hadn’t helped Stan, and I couldn’t stand by here and let someone else die needlessly for the fae’s enjoyment.
Pain ripped through my back, and my body levitated. My back muscles bunched and spasmed like stealing my breath for a second, and then I was barreling toward Ginevra.
Wind blew through my hair, but seconds before I reached her, Ginevra’s body wrapped around a stalagmite. She grunted and lurched, and as she began to roll, I slid my arms underneath her armpits and pulled her front side to my chest.
Our bodies jerked, shifting our momentum, and my back muscles bunched and strained again. We lifted several feet and hovered between the two death traps.
Boos were shouted from both sides, louder than they had been at any other point in the competition, and I knew it had to do with me helping Ginevra.
I gulped and glanced around then nearly let Ginevra go in shock. The cherry-blossom-colored wings flapping in my periphery were attached to me. The muscles in my back moved in a way I’d never experienced before, and hysteria lodged in my throat.
