Their shouts were getting closer. We had to hurry.
I glared down at him. “You know, a simple thank you would suffice.”
“I’m still stuck in a pit, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Will you two stop your arguing?” Shadow said from somewhere nearby.
She was right. We didn’t have time for this. I grabbed the heavy grate with my gloved hands and used every bit of muscle I possessed to shift it over. I didn’t need to move it far. I just needed to move it enough to make space for Penn to wriggle out. I grunted, my muscles straining with the effort.
“She must be here to rescue him,” one of the guards yelled, his fire magic appearing, a ball of light now bobbing closer.
“Oh, shit,” Penn said. “Hurry.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I grunted as I heaved the grate, arms and legs now shaking.
I dropped to my stomach and lowered my hand down. “Grab my hand,” I said, hoping I’d be able to pull him up. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough, Penn.”
He gripped my hand. “Lower your other one.”
I did as he said, and he grabbed that hand as well, then I pulled with all my might, but Penn must’ve had other plans because I heard his feet digging into the dirt.
He was using his feet to walk his way up the wall while holding onto my hands as leverage. I dug my own feet into the dirt, straining with my entire body to stay in place.
“Almost there,” he said, and within seconds I felt the heat of his breath on my face. He let go of my hands one at a time as he gripped the edge of the sand pit and hopped out.
The firelight, now joined by four other lights, was getting closer. Penn and I ran to Shadow’s pit as other prisoners started catching wind of what was happening, shouting for us to release them as well.
We got Shadow out in seconds.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Penn said in the dark beside me. “I have no idea how we’re going to escape. My plan didn’t include the entire guard knowing we’d gotten out.”
That part might have been my fault.
“Let me out,” a prisoner shouted from the pit next to us. “I’m ready to gut those guards for what they’ve done to me. Twenty years here for a crime I didn’t even commit.”
“That’s it,” I said and turned to Penn. “We have to let the other prisoners out. Create a distraction.”
“That might actually work,” Shadow said.
We wasted no time, all of us springing into action. We let out a prisoner just as the guards got closer, their fire magic illuminating the dingy space. I didn’t have time to look at Penn, to notice my surroundings. We needed to release more prisoners. Shadow and the prisoner faced off against the guards as Penn and I worked to move more grates, pull out more prisoners from the pits, who joined in fighting the guards. Soon, more guards arrived, more prisoners released. The cavern erupted into chaos, blood spilling and spattering, screams wrenching the air, fire flying everywhere. Shadow slipped from the amassing crowd.
“This is our chance to escape,” she said to me and Penn, who stood by my side.
“But how?” I asked. “We can’t exactly just waltz out the front door.”
“There’s another way,” Penn said, nodding toward a darkened corner, a big grate placed into the wall.
I didn’t like the looks of that, but we also didn’t have a choice, all thanks to me and my terrible planning.
I nodded. “Then let’s get the fiery hells out of here.”
Chapter Thirty
We ran toward the grate, all of us pulling on it until it came free. An awful stench floated from it, and I nearly gagged, bile rising up in my stomach.
“Oh, spirits below. What is in here?”
“Sewage,” Penn said, once again in the dark as we got further away from all the fire magic.
