Page 193 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“Wear your pack on your front,” Pete advised. “Keep your arms tucked in, your legs together.”
The obtuse angle my body adopted when I sat in the rushing mud alarmed me, though I knew a decline was coming. Afraid the swirling rapids might take me before I was prepared, I clutched at a branch, several berries bursting between my fingers. Thank the Goddess there were no thorns.
My heart galloping, I stared past my flames into utter blackness. I released a tremulous breath, whispering a prayer to Danu.
“Shorty—”
Spraying rain, I whipped toward Pete. He hadn’t shown me the courtesy of using even that infuriating nickname since we’d split from Sedge, the worry creasing his brow now the only emoting he’d done besides grizzling like a bear.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Be careful, aye?”
Unable to respond, I simply faced forward, clutched the bulge of my backpack, and slid into the looming unknown.
To my own credit, I didn’t scream until I went airborne the first time. After that, I shrieked my throat raw as I careened down a twisting, undulating, spiraling, endless death flume. Leaves smacked me in the face, branches and rocks scraping my exposed skin as whoops from a cluster of some version of a tree ape taunted my descent. And given that I’d lost concentration the moment I’d gone down that slick, earthen shoot, my fire had flickered out, so I couldn’t see what hurt I barreled toward next. Not that I had the control to skirt obstacles anyway. Danu had definitely taken the wheel.
On my last scream, the ground abandoned me completely. I flipped backward in a flailing summersault, positive I’d gone off a cliff and into a fatal freefall. At any second, I’d hit the ground and become something that would never be. Images of people flashed through my frantic mind—my family, friends, and anyone who relied on me—to take my place in the Spring Palace—to change the world.
Then, I saw Pete. Pete in all his varieties—the harbinger, the jester, the scholar, the friend, and the only male, besides Daddy or Ace, who’d ever seen me for who I was. The only one I’d never been scared toletsee me.
As I’d done when the entrapment curse summoned fire ants in my blood, I clung to my memories of him—and a wind caught me in a cradle, rocked me downward like a baby.
Then dumped me like garbage in a pool of stinky, sandy mud.
Sludge on my tongue, I thrashed in the pit, a drowning duck, until I heard a gloopy splash and a deep-voiced diatribe.
“Pete!” I squawked. “Where are you? My fire’s out!”
“Are you all right?” Slopping sounds preceded hands clasping my arm. “Are you hurt?”
I clutched his slimy jerkin, his body solid beneath it. “I’m fine. I almost had a heart attack at that last ramp, but I’m okay now.”
“What in bloody hell were you doing winging around like a leaf on the breeze?” he shouted, his face stark and creased. “You frightened the piss out of me!”
“I—I—I—”
“I thought you were being abducted by another zephyrist!”
“I wasn’t! I—” Wrenching from his biting fingers, I steadied myself in the mud. “I think I went off a cliff and—”
“There was no fecking cliff! I was on the downslide when I saw you soar up into the trees, cackling and flapping about like some Witch who’d lost rein of her broom!”
I bleared at his general shape. “I did?”
“Aye.” He snatched his filthy rucksack out of the mud. “Since I can’t scent anyone nefarious nearby, I suppose I merely witnessed a dimwit letting her powers run amuck. Praise heaven that you floated back to ground, for only Danu knows where you’d have ended if you’d kept on as you were.”
Exhaling, I eyed him. My vision must’ve been adjusting to the darkness, for now I could make out the frown within his mud smattered, rain drenched face. “Maybe if we’d spent any time training this past week, I’d have a better grip on my powers, but we didn’t—so that’s what we get!”
His mouth twisted. “Have you ever heard ‘practice makes perfect,’ Shorty?” He waded through the muck toward higher ground, raindrops plunking down like stones. “You don’t need me to practice what you’ve already learned.”
I glowered, trudging after him toward a swampy meadow where Sionna already lay, hyperventilating after her trip down the ravine. She glared at Pete, rain washing her coat.
His jaw flexing, Pete reshouldered his rucksack. “Females,” he grumbled. “Come along, both of you, so that I may see to your every comfort.”
His sarcasm earned him another glare.
We did come along, as it was, and it wasn’t long before we finally—finally—stopped.
Before us, amid an overgrown, wild jungle, stood a viny, crumbly, gated temple, so tall I couldn’t see its peak above the canopy. The gate was a high, stone structure topped by heavy corbels and finials carved into fae busts rocking wizard beards. Its flora-twined archway, fashioned out of a substantial, arced tree, had a capstone wedged into its highest point—a statue of a regal pregnant female with elegant ears and flowing hair. An image I’d seen before on Uncle Neel’s official circle center stationary—Danu, the mother of all. Beneath her glory stood a lanky feyr in substantial homespun robes.
