Chapter 11 You Owe Me Twice
There’s a hole in the wall on your right, crawl through it.
“The vines?” I gasp, unsure.
The vines are under my control, now do it!
I dive for the ground, seeing in my mind's eye the hole the voice means. The vines part before me and pull me through, propelling me as if helping me instead of hindering. They spit me out on the other side and I fall in a foot-deep puddle of water.
Out of the water! The lightning is coming!
I push to my feet and jump, clearing the puddle in one bound. My boots have no more than touched solid rock before the lightning crashes down, but instead of a crackle of electricity, I hear screams. Slowly, I turn and see the body of a man seizing as electricity fries him.
He tried to jump too, he must have been running down this path and seen me do it.
Pity he doesn’t have a voice in his head as well…
Ignore him, there's nothing you can do. You’re close to a scale, but the odds are stacked against you! Run!
The voice in my head guides me around corner after corner, steering me away from death traps and challengers alike.
“Can you see everyone or just me?” I ask, feeling insane.
I see all, everything, at once.
“Then why didn’t you warn me about the first minotaur? Why did you warn me away from Oberon?”
I had to see what you were capable of before I knew how much help you needed. As for the boy, how would I know you knew him?
“I thought you were all-knowing?” I smirk, taunting my own insanity. I can feel him bristle in my mind, but no words of reprimand come.
My job is to get you through this alive. My concern is not for the other contestants.
“Is he alive?” my heart skips a beat as I ask the words, but I have to know. “Is Zaries alive? And Oberon?”
Silence answers me, a silence so real that it makes me wonder if the voice was ever there at all. I steel myself for the realization that it’s all a fabrication as I round the corner and see a flash of red.
“Sylvain!” I call out, relieved to see she’s alive.
She turns to face me, a brilliant grin on her face and a green iridescent scale wrapped in a handkerchief in her left hand.
“Look! I found one!” she shouts, waving it at me excitedly.
I smile ear to ear, about to congratulate her, when everything plummets. My upturned lips, my joy, my stomach. The dark shadow behind Sylvain gains substance as Malachi appears and wraps a thick arm around her neck.
Sylvain screams, dropping the scale and grabbing Malachi’s beefy arm in desperation.
“Both of you bitches at once?” Malachi roars with laughter as he closes his arm tighter and tighter around Sylvain’s neck. “How did I get so lucky?”
The boys are alive! Take the green scale and run for it!
“No fucking way!” I roar at the voice in my head. I don’t focus on my joy that Zaries and Oberon are alive. I have to save Sylvain. “I won't let her die just because you say so!”
Malachi’s brows draw together as he looks around for who I’m talking to. “Have you lost it, bitch? This is going to be so much fun. Pity I don’t have time to enjoy it more before I kill you.”
“I’m not the one dying here, Malachi!” I hiss, spinning my sword in my hands. “Let her go and fight me like the man you pretend to be.”
Malachi laughs before slamming Sylvain’s head into the wall. It bounces before she crumples to the ground, unconscious. Hopefully nothing more than that. Malachi crouches, picking up the green scale in the handkerchief and tucking it into his chest armor. Then he extends his hand and beckons me toward him with a crook of his finger. “Come to me and die, little maid.”
“You underestimate me, Malachi. You’ve seen what damage I can inflict with a needle, and now I have a real blade. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll kill you with your own sword, you little bitch,” Malachi spits, throwing himself at me with only his fists.
I try to duck, but he's deceptively fast for one so big. His fist catches my cheekbone and sends me spinning, hitting the ground with a teeth-rattling thud. The wind’s knocked out of me and as I roll over on my back and try to breathe through the pain in my chest, Malachi lunges again.
I roll, only just missing his fists intent on crushing my skull. I’m on my knees when I feel him grab my ankle and yank me backward. My chin hits the stone ground with a jolt and I bite my tongue. A coppery taste floods my mouth as pain floods my mind. I decide to use both to my advantage.
The pain fuels my fury.
When Malachi picks me up by my hair, I spit the blood into his good eye, then kick him in the gut.
He grunts and drops me, wiping his face. I should run, just go now, but something stops me. He has the scale. If I leave him alive, he’ll escape with it. He’ll win. With a growl I lift my leg and slam him square in the chest, knocking him back against the wall. The vines tangle around him, wrapping around his throat and face. He screams as he rips at the relentless attack.
Taking advantage of the moment, I lunge. Jabbing my hand between his shirt and armor, I grab the scale and pull it out with my bare hands. Pain lances through me, stinging like poison, but I don’t dare to stop and look. I sprint for Sylvain, grabbing her elbow as she stirs and pushing her to run even before her head clears.
“My scale!” she shrieks, trying to pull away from me and run back for it.
“I have it!” I holler, waving it in my hand.
She sucks in a sharp breath, and for the first time, I look at my hand. Poison is winding up my arm, crawling through my veins so fast that they’re turning dark green.
“Do you have another handkerchief?” I ask, trying not to laugh nervously.
We round a corner and Sylvain rips the sleeve off her arm. She takes the scale from me gingerly, her eyes welling with tears. “You saved me again. You saved me and you gave me my scale?”
“Come on, Sylvain. If I let you die now, saving you earlier would have been for nothing.” I kneel, lacing my fingers and ignoring the sting as my infected hand brushes my good hand. “Step on my hands and I’ll launch you up. Run on the top of the maze and get to that portal, do you hear me? You have got to get out of here!”
“What about you?” she pleads, stepping into my hands as I lift her up.
Ignoring the hot knives of pain slashing up my arm, I hoist her high.
“What about you?” Sylvain asks again, her voice a desperate shriek.
“I still have my own scale to find.” I beam up at her, trying to make her think I’m all over this. I’m just trying not to die in here, whether I find a scale or not. But Sylvain found one and she deserves to escape. “Now go, before I change my mind and take the scale for myself!”
She smiles and chokes on a laugh. “I owe you my life!”
“Twice over!” I turn to run again before she can say another word.