Many of that kind skittered off when I started fighting back, some instinct telling them to flee. But others stayed. Too mindless to know what was happening or too drunk on power to care.
Or too strong to think they’d lose.
And they might be right. Because the ones who didn’t belong here, the hunters, had increased their drain. Trying to finish me off when they realized they had a fight on their hands.
I ripped a huge leech off my side, gasping in pain. It was amorphous, too busy feeding to manifest features, and plump and bright with stolen energy. My energy. I felt it rake me with claws, snarling and thrashing like a wild animal as I fought it, with my back against the wall.
A wall that was suddenly feeling more porous.
A moment ago, it had been hard as glass; now it was more like rubber, giving behind me, but not enough.
The creature in my arms clawed and squirmed, but I was a living spirit, and I was stronger. I hung on, hugged it to me, felt its power begin to seep into mine. Felt life flood back, felt pain, a thousand weeping wounds, felt the barrier give some more, stretching like taffy. But still holding.
I needed more power to break through, but it was a double-edged sword. The more I fed, the brighter I became, attracting attention from the larger fight. A lot of attention.
I stared as a mass of spirits broke away from the main cloud and headed my way. I fought and twisted, knowing it was now or never, and sent a swarm of the smaller things tumbling into the void. A number of the larger ones left of their own accord, sensing that we were about to be overrun. Except for the creature in my arms, which was noticeably dimmer now, having given back much of its stolen energy.
But not so much that it couldn’t grab the fabric of time and rip it open, in a desperate bid to get away.
But not as desperate as I was. I held on, even as it scattered itself, knowing this was my last chance. I felt myself falling, felt my senses return, felt freezing cold. And then I was slamming back into a body writhing in pain, Jonas’ last dose of Tears having been completely stripped away.
The aches and pains of the past, plus a flood of new ones, hit me all at once. I screamed, a so
und that echoed in the vastness of the great hall, almost causing the woman holding me by the arms to drop me. Johanna, I realized. And a second later, I realized something else: one of the reasons my body felt like it was on fire was that it was being dragged across burning ice, straight toward—
I rolled and somehow broke her hold, right on the edge of the great gash running the length of the room. The one she was trying her best to shove me into. I stared over the edge as she got behind me, and I saw our reflections for a second in a flood of cold, dark water.
I didn’t know why she thought it would hurt me; the drop only looked to be a couple stories.
But if she wanted me in there, I didn’t want to go.
“What does it take to kill you?” she snarled, struggling for purchase on the ice-covered floor.
Until I suddenly twisted, flinging her off her feet using one of the moves Pritkin had taught me. And then over my shoulder, grasping and fighting to the last, still trying to take me with her. She might have succeeded—except one of my hands had just frozen to the stones. I hung there, half in the gash and half out, clinging on with deadened flesh—
And realized why she’d wanted me down there.
Because the water wasn’t cold; it was supercooled. Some strange alchemy had kept it in a liquid form, right up until she crashed into it. And instantly turned the water into a field of ice, one that crept over her stunned face, freezing the skin, whitening the hair, and icing over the eyes that were still staring up at me in shock and hatred.
“More than you,” I whispered, and rolled onto my back.
Chapter Fifty-six
I just lay there for a long moment, panting and dizzy, staring upward. The room was strangely beautiful from this angle. I couldn’t see the ruin all around me, the broken mosaics and slashed mural, the overturned tables and muddy boot prints. Just snow, clear and white and dazzling, and highlighted every now and again by lightning flashing beyond the ice dome, sending little spots of light spinning crazily across my body.
It was beautiful.
It also wasn’t helping with the dizziness, or maybe that was me. I didn’t know; I only knew I had to get up, to find out where my acolytes had gone, to warn them about what was about to go down in the arena. And to hope they still had the power to do something about it, because I didn’t.
I didn’t have the power to do anything except lie there, trying to will myself back onto my feet. But my feet weren’t listening, and neither was anything else. I was alive; I was breathing; my eyes were focusing, more or less. But that was as good as it got.
And that wasn’t enough.
I thought I’d become thoroughly familiar with exhaustion these past few weeks, thought I knew every desperate description and pooped permutation. But I’d been wrong. So, so wrong. I was bone tired, wearier than I’d ever been in my life, to the point I honestly thought I could go to sleep, right now, right here, with no trouble at all. And for a split second, I wondered if it mattered. What good could I be to anybody like this? I was half-dead, my power utterly spent, and the battle hadn’t even started yet.
Which meant there was still time to stop it, if I could get my lazy butt off the floor.
I tried rolling over, to use my hands as leverage, and was quickly reminded that one was still stuck to the ice. So I rolled back the other way, toward the chasm this time, tugging and yanking on a hand that felt less like it was trapped by the skin than by the flesh underneath. I started prying it up anyway, feeling like cursing—