His weapon slices and spins. Mine whisks and lashes.
Leaping to an adjacent plank, I land and thrust. The whip gyrates, flogging the javelin’s next strike. Again, this smashes us together. Our chests pound, the weapons grinding between us, the pressure forcing my heels to skate across the plank.
I cling to the one fact he can’t deny. “I got out fair and square. You have to let me pass.”
Cerulean’s wrath ebbs, his features contorting with realization before darkening with pleasure. He withdraws the javelin and settles it against the plank like a scepter.
I stumble, taken off guard. Shit. What’s he got in mind now?
“You’re right.” Sparks crackle, the weapon shrinks to a compact size, and he affixes it to his hip. Prowling backward, his jaunty fingers stir up a feather from thin air, which he juggles without making physical contact. His digits flex into a dizzying sequence, the feather flipping and revolving. “Indeed, I do have to let you pass.” Then he hurls the feather into the welkin. “But they don’t.”
Carefully, I turn on my heel and watch the plume. It catches on the gust and pitches into a buzzing swarm of creatures that appear from nowhere. Fibrous antennas and spiky limbs hatch from their droning, insectile bodies. Their wings dither from azure to gold with every rapid beat, forming a meteor shower of fluctuating colors.
Hornets. Colossal hornets.
I back up, then stutter in place, in case I bump into my nemesis. But as I pitch around, I already know. He’s not there.
A thousand wiry wings beat the evening sky, a giant reverberation that stirs up a cyclone. The legion splinters and synchronizes. The hemisphere may as well be liquid as they tilt and vault into a complex pattern.
I whirl and race down the rampart, then jump sideways onto another one, and another one. I lose my sense of direction. Logic’s a lost cause, and I don’t have a second to gauge the wind with my whip.
The predators corkscrew, their stingers jabbing. They expect me to keep running, so I drop and crash onto my stomach. My arms and legs flop over the platform, the hornets swooping past. The cloak and my hair thrash around my face as I glimpse illuminated treetops, the forest hundreds of feet under me.
I tremble violently, scoping out the remaining distance to the opposite landing. As if tethered to a hook, the swarm of insects loops around and launches toward me. My eyes trace the movements, locate the last plank, and mentally backtrack to where I’m dangling.
An idea plops into my head. They can catch me if they want, but they can’t keep me. Tottering to my feet, I unravel the whip and await their approach. I lash the cord upright, hooking it around one of the creature’s limbs. It buzzes in offense, but it’s got me, as far as it knows.
My feet leave the ground. I hang on, kicking at nothing as the swarm twists toward the thicket. The woodland below swims by and vanishes as I plow into a crust of shrubbery.
The whip gives slack. I’m suspended no more than seven feet off the ground.
Wrapping my fist around the handle, I give the weapon a deft jerk. The rope releases from the hornet’s limb. I go down, smacking into the grass, the rope flopping across my back.
The whir of wings recedes into the landscape. Either they didn’t realize I jumped ship, or they’re about to start looking. I gather the whip, lurch off the ground, and check the perimeter of lanky spear trees. From the other end, this area had appeared denser and emitted a glow.
But now I survey only a handful of trees, a vertical bluff, and another signpost, which points up. Chunks bulge from the escarpment—tiny steps reminiscent of the bricks from my chimney days.
Nothing else. No other way to go.
I ram my heel into the grass. “Fables curse you!”
A faint chuckle interrupts my tantrum. When this is over, I’m gonna disembowel him. Wherever he is, I hope he’s ready for the privilege.
I hitch the whip, tighten the chest strap of my pack, and prepare to suffer. The cliff is as straight and flat as a board. The slabs protract far apart and form a sloping path, except there’s hardly room for my big toe, much less my whole foot.
I’ll have to dig my fingers into whatever notches I find, as I used to with the masonry inside the flues. Terror tingles my nape. Cramped or not, I haven’t made this type of climb since my knees were smaller and bloodier.
Papa’s dark face floats through my mind, followed by Juniper and Cove. I think about scuffed ankle boots—the shoes of my family, because we wear the same ones, because we walk this world together, because we’re a band unbroken.
My sisters are depending on me as much as I’m depending on them. We’re in this together. All or nothing.
Furious tears prick my eyes. Wiping them with the back of my arm, I plaster my body against the wall, wedge my digits into the first groove, and clamber up the bluff. On either side, ivy trickles down the edifice.
I yelp as my foot slips. Clinging to the crags, I rest my forehead against the stone. Of all things, I think about a Fae boy peering at me from a cage.
I never saw him again. I’ll never see him again.
He’s dead. Because of me.
