Page 91 of Burn Her They Said
Stomach twisting, my chest constricts.
“Hold on as tight as you can,” Fray instructs. “I’m going to put the harness around you. I just need one free hand.” I shake my head as terror controls my reactions. “You can do it, Tasch. You’re strong, I promise. And I’ll still have hold of you with one arm, yeah?”
I nod, since it’s not like I have a choice, while tears start to crystallize along my lower lashes, freezing rather than falling in the thin wintry air. My arms comply with his command, winding around his neck, pulling myself in as much as I can in this weakened state, feeling as if we are spinning through the air as the dizzying sensation fucks with my vision.
Fray slowly releases an arm, and I gasp, despite the fact I knew he was going to do exactly that. Lungs burning with the chill aggravating my need to cough, it challenges my hold as Fray tightens the arm still wrapped around me, while all I want to do is scream.
The creaking of leather tells me he’s pulled the harness from the side compartment in his uniform. We haven’t ever been in the air long enough to need this contraption, though we’ve practiced utilizing it enough for me to know what to expect. He pulls the leather band around my back and switches the arm that braces me to him, reaching to the opposite side where he hooks the harness in to secure me.
Opening my eyes is futile at this point, since dizziness is spinning my vision and the clouds remain too thick to see the Palace.
Fray breathes steadily, and the rhythm of his chest expanding seems to help settle my heart rate. I relax my hold around his neck as we float within the pitch-black sky filled with blinking stars, bodies shivering in unison as the chill cuts straight to our bones.
Fray’s eyes rove, scanning the clouds below as we wait in silence, bracing for the tell-tale sound of an explosion. Blinking dislodges tiny ice crystals forming along the line of my lashes, and we hear it?—
But that can’t be it.
It was barely a muffled thump.
Fray’s furrowed brows communicate that we both expected something louder, though it does nothing to lessen the impact of the detonation, feeling it hit me square in the chest.
Pained cries emit from between my quivering lips as I desperately cling to the only Guard I have left.
But it took so long for it to detonate.
Maybe that means they did get out.
Maybe they are safe.
Doubt creeps in without feeling the same sensation I did with Henry, where it felt as if our soul-bond was severed.
Memories flash from the devastation at sites where similar bombs went off?—
“You have seconds,” General Sal explains, gesturing at the destruction of a significant section of the encampment. “A minute at best—to flee as far away as you can, and even then, you’ll still most likely be caught in the blast zone.”
Clouds pass below us, yet my view is mostly obscured by Fray’s arm. Even when my eyes clear from tears, the dizziness makes it difficult to focus on anything I’m seeing.
We must be too high to make out much detail on the Imperial Palace, though I assume Fray would notice a giant black hole from an exterior wall no longer existing.
“Can you see any damage?” I ask, my voice shaky as my teeth chatter incessantly.
“No, none.”
“What do you mean?” That bomb could have taken out the entire side of the Imperial Palace.
“Could the stories be true? Could the Imperial Palace really be incapable of falling?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sorrow bleeding through.
Subzero temperatures and the stress of the evening finally catch up with me, sending my body into shock as my muscles quiver and my vision fades to black.
Fray rubs his frozen hands up and down my back, and I nestle my face in the crook of his neck while he tries his best to warm me. Yet the chill is too intense, and my muscles jerk violently in his hold, with shivers taking over without him being able to add any more warmth since his body is just as frozen.
I need stable ground. A fire. To know, for certain, the fate of my Guards.
Though I know there’s no way they could have survived a bomb that large.
Nothing I think, feel, or hope can bring them back.
