Deadlines & Dryads by Rebecca Chastain

Author:Rebecca Chastain [Chastain, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-9992385-4-7
Publisher: Rebecca Chastain
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

Arms and legs windmilling uselessly, I stretched a solidified plane of air below us, hoping to slow our plunge. I might as well have spread a handkerchief beneath us and expected it to halt our free fall.

Grant thrust a balance of the elements at me, and I instinctively grabbed hold, drawing on his electrifying power. The moment the link stabilized, Grant seized control. Pain seared my mental pathways as he ripped every particle of magic I could hold through the link—and then more.

The sheet beneath us thickened, strengthened, and grew fire-laced turbines on the underside, pushing upward. We slowed, but not enough. The cleared, sunbaked soil rushed toward us. We wouldn’t hit the rocks; Zipporah had launched us far enough that we would splatter against the flat ground instead.

Thick veins bulged in Grant’s beet-red neck as he strained to extend the sheet of air, curling it down around the edges like a huge umbrella, and I screamed as the elements tore through me.

I don’t want to die!

I yearned to squeeze my eyes shut, but terror pried them wide. We’d drifted over the forest, and the blanket of green canopy crystallized into clumps of individual trees, then into a sieve of thick branches, the details of my final resting place clarifying with terrifying speed. Grant altered the magic sheet, thickening it on my side as he loosened his white-knuckle grip on my bicep.

He was going to try to save me at the expense of his own life.

Blindly, I clutched his wrist, my agonized scream morphing into a denial. I opened myself wider to the elements, my vision tunneling as I shoved magic into the link.

Beyond Grant’s shoulder, Quinn rocketed around the harpy’s mountain, wings blurred as he strained to reach us. The first branches whipped past. He wouldn’t make it in time—

Quinn’s enhancement burst through me like a thunderclap. Elements exploded from Grant—air and earth encasing us, fire and air fortifying the sheet beneath us, air and water layering into thick cushions on the ground—his weaves so fast they seemed to spring into existence fully formed.

A millisecond later, we smashed into the elemental cushion, fell through it, and crashed into concrete-hard dirt. Stunned, I lay facedown, unsure if I could move, unsure if I was even breathing. Grant had slowed our descent to half our original velocity, but hitting the cushion of air and water had still felt like landing atop a pillow from a two-story drop.

I sucked in a breath, choking on dust. The movement broke through my shock, awakening a cascade of pain down my body. Coughing, I tested my fingers and toes, surprised they all worked. My knee throbbed, protesting the shift of my tendons. My ribs chimed in with pulses of dull twinges.

I reached for my link with Grant, bolting upright when I didn’t find it. He lay on his back, eyes wide open, several feet from me.

Oh no.

What had he been thinking with that fatalistic heroism? I tried to recall the shape of the landing cushion, but it had happened too fast.

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