I ducked. She’d aimed too high, and I felt the blazing whoosh of her shinai as it whirred overhead.
“I hate you,” she snarled. Fresh rage distorted her face. “I hate your hair. I hate your clothes. I hate your stupid face. ”
“My stupid face, huh?” My heart galloped in my chest. There were only so many times I could duck. I tried to summon the feel of the blood, but my mind was racing too fast. “Now, there’s a new one. ”
Think.
But I didn’t have time to.
She trapped me, grabbing me with her left hand, holding her weapon in her right. She reached back with her flaming sword and I ducked, anticipating a strike.
It was the wrong move.
She let go with her left hand, swinging in an uppercut, punching me on the chin as I squatted. My teeth clacked together, and the impact rang through my brain.
I didn’t have a second to gather myself.
Lilac grabbed a fistful of my shirt and slammed me back against the cave wall. “I smelled my skin burn once. And now I’ll smell yours. ”
It took only a second to realize she’d pinned me against her fiery sword.
I didn’t catch fire. Not at first.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I shrieked. Hysterical thoughts cascaded through my mind, rapid-fire wishes for some fantastical miracle to occur. Maybe my wet hair won’t catch. Maybe my uniform is fireproof.
I writhed, but Lilac was bigger than me. She’d used an elbow to restrain my arm, but I still had one hand free. I wriggled, clawing at her face. “Get off!”
She bore down on me, using all her weight to hold me against the damp stone. “I always wondered what Sunny looked like when she burned. How soon did she fall? Were her eyes open or shut?”
I felt heat growing at my back. It rocketed straight from a simmering warmth to excruciating intensity.
Think, Drew, think. I grasped at Priti’s mantra. I am Watcher. I am Watcher. But the words were meaningless. I was too frantic, too panicked.
My hair had been soaked through, but it began to smolder and hiss. Steam rose in a cloud from my wet uniform. The steam became smoke. I got a whiff of it. It singed my lungs, and I turned my head from it, coughing.
Smoke curled up from Lilac’s uniform sleeve. The smell of burned flesh mingled with the acrid smoke. She was catching fire. But she didn’t feel it.
She really didn’t feel pain. “Oh, God. ” My voice was hoarse. Speaking wracked me with coughs.
“I get to watch this time. ” Lilac laughed, but then she coughed, too.
The smoke hung thickly around my neck. It grew denser as my fat braid began to dry, began to burn. It stank.
Tears stung my eyes. From the smoke. From the stench of my burning hair.
Think, think, think. I refused to die here. I didn’t survive my childhood, survive the island, for it to end like this.
I coughed again, and she was coughing, too. The cave felt airless. The smells noxious.
Then it hit me. I stood still, frozen in her grasp.
I knew why the steam reeked. It wasn’t fresh water that’d soaked my hair. It was water from a hot spring. Springs contained sulfur. This one was rich with it. The walls dripped with it. I could still taste it on my lips.
Burning sulfur created sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide was a toxic gas.
Craning my head away from the thickest smoke, I sucked in a last breath. My chest spasmed, protesting the poisonous air in my lungs. But still, I held my breath.