Page 6 of Hunted

“She’s not gonna make it!”

By sheer grit alone—and maybe the unmatched determination to piss Sebastos off—I finally succeeded. I hauled my top half up onto the platform, but—in perhaps my stupidest move yet—let my eyes flick down past my feet, which were dangling in the open air.

Nothing lay between my boots and the bottom of the mountain. Nothing but empty space and the promise of freefall.

Shaking off the instant nausea at the thought of falling, I forced my gaze back up to face the next ledge.

What the fuck am I going to do now? I only just made that jump and I don’t have a runway for this next one.

My mind whirred, dismissing every possible escape route. All except one.

“My turn.” Seb’s taunt settled heavily on my skin, though it had been barely more than a murmur.

A short grunt signalled that he’d landed the first jump. A thud and subsequent hiss of pain announced his success on the second.

“You’re toast, princess,” he jeered. “Say your last prayers.”

Like fuck.

I had one minuscule sliver of survival—and I was going for it.

Instead of climbing back atop the tiny platform, I pivoted until my feet hit the solitary metal beam connecting it to the mountain at a forty-five-degree angle. Easing myself down into a crouch, I sent a prayer up to whichever god might be listening and leaped, using the steel as leverage.

Hades must not have wanted my soul today, because my damaged hands held fast to the cold steel on the underside of the next man-made platform. I swung back and forth like a trapeze artist, pointedly ignoring the fact that there was nothing but my bloodied hands preventing me from a deadly descent.

“My, my, we’ll make a birdy out of you yet, princess!”

It was a well-aimed jab. Everyone at Blackwing knew that the female recruits tended to end up leaving in one of two ways: in a body bag or as a Swallow. I’d made it my life’s mission to leave as neither.

While body bags were self-explanatory, Swallows were not. They were the designation that female agents tended to receive on Graduation Day—employed solely to use what their mother gave them. Their missions were to seduce their way into a target’s bed and pull off an assassination in the dead of night. And while the handful of other women in our cohort relished the idea of frequent beauty treatments, high-end clothing, and personal makeup artists, I’d made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t aiming for that particular career pathway.

I wanted the only sniper designation that had popped up since Instructor Pearce graduated four years ago—but so did almost everyone else.

I swung across to the next beam, using the underside of the platform like a set of monkey bars on a children’s playground until I reached its end and listened intently for any further progress from Seb.

I needed to move quick—he’d already reached the stepping stone gap with Eric and Bodie right behind him.

Despite the throbbing ache in my shoulder, I wiped what blood I could onto my pants. Clinging to the final rung with my right hand, I reached out to grasp a jutting section of rock face with my left. Once my feet were wedged in place, I repeated the action with my right.

It was a tenuous thing, knowing you were moments from death. Knowing you’d rather let the mountain claim you before the microdick-swinging douchecanoe a few metres behind.

Flicking loose strands of hair out of my face, I shimmied across the six-metre expanse, gritting my teeth when tiny rocks jammed their way into my torn-open palms. Thankfully, the rain had eased and the only thing I had left to contend with was the wind.

After five agony-filled minutes with Seb breathing down my neck, I finally flipped over the lip of the track’s edge and back onto the Sapphire’s course. Without sparing even a second to catch my breath, or worry, or rest, I bolted into the day’s first light, with a parting threat from Sebastos lingering in my ears.

“You can run, princess, but we all sleep in the same dorm come nightfall!”

[ 3 ]

ADDIE

FRINGE ELEMENT – ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Running down a steep mountain pass is no easy feat even under the best of conditions. Once you add in shitty, obscure dawn lighting, mud from recent rainfall, howling winds, a fucked-up shoulder injury—not to mention a trio of would-be assassins hot on your ass—you’ve got a recipe from hell.

I guess Devil’s Pass was living up to its name today.

Five hundred metres flew by beneath my waterlogged boots until I came face-to-face with the second of three obstacles down the Ridge: a ten-metre-long, ten-centimetre-wide balance beam.