For myself and, more importantly, for my parents.
I’m here in Alaska because Lia wanted me here.
My parents are dead because Lia decided they needed to die.
She’s played god with too many people’s lives to just get away with it. I’m weak and exhausted and broken and human, but even I know that much. Just as I know she can’t be allowed to continue with whatever insanity she has planned. All of which means I’m going to have to do whatever I can to take her with me when I die.
I just wish I had a clue how I’m supposed to do that.
My brain makes and discards half a dozen feverish plans as we walk for what seems like forever. Eventually, though, we must get to where we are going, because Lia jerks me to a stop. She presses her hand against the wall, and seconds later, it opens just like the wall at the beginning of this passage.
All but cackling with delight, she shoves me through the open doorway and into the room where I was tied up what seems like forever ago. It seems strange to think that it’s probably only been an hour or so since I woke up spread-eagled on that cold slab of rock.
Then again, it seems even stranger to think that after all the pain and frustration I’ve been through in the last hour, I’m about to be tied up there again.
FML. And Lia’s, too.
“Move it!” she snarls, pushing me through the hundreds of lit candles to the raised altar in the center of the room. “It’s almost time.”
“Almost time?” I ask, figuring that getting her talking might buy me some time to think of something. Or buy me enough time for Jaxon and Flint to find me…though I’m not sure how much help either of them will be in this situation.
Flint’s answer to Lia’s insanity is to kill me before Lia has a chance to do whatever crazy thing she has planned, whereas Jaxon might actually be a part of her crazy plan. Not exactly a typical selection of heroes, but my mom used to say that beggars can’t be choosers, and right now I’m definitely willing to beg if it means I don’t become Katmere Academy’s first human sacrifice.
“The stars align at twelve seventeen.”
I have no idea what that means, but as Lia and I get closer and closer to the altar, I know that I’ve got very little time to do whatever I’m going to do to stop this madness. Because once she gets me tied down this time, it’s game over for sure.
With no other ideas and no other options, I make my legs go weak.
“Walk!” she screeches, but I ignore her as I let my head loll back and my entire body sag. Then, using every ounce of willpower I have left, I close my eyes and make the gamble that she won’t kill me right here, right now. And then I drop to the ground, ignoring the searing pain in my scalp as I rip out what I’m sure is a whole handful of hair in the process.
Lia howls in outrage as she loses her grip on me.
The sound bounces off the ceiling and echoes around the room in a macabre warning that has everything inside me urging me to run, to crawl, to put as much distance between her and me as I can possibly manage. Even the voice inside me is screaming to get up, to get moving.
But even on my best day, Lia’s ten times faster than I am and twenty times stronger. Outrunning her isn’t an option even if I could move faster than the sad, pathetic crawl I’m currently limited to.
So instead of running, I play possum. Not running, not moving, not even breathing as she screams at me to get up. When screaming doesn’t work, she tries slapping my face a few times. And when that doesn’t work, she hauls me up herself, throws me over her shoulder and starts stumbling toward the altar with my head hanging halfway down her back.
That alone tells me she’s in a lot worse shape than she let on. Flint obviously did more damage than I gave him credit for. Good for him.
My injured shoulder is screaming at me in this position, but I ignore it even as I give myself permission to open my eyes for a second.
Everything looks exactly as it did when I ran from this place, including the jar of blood that’s still knocked over on its side. Lia steps around the glass containers and carries me past a stone lectern that has a book spread wide open on it. I have just enough time to wonder if it’s the same book she was reading from in the library all those days ago, when I have to close my eyes again and play dead—or at least unconscious—as she dumps me on the altar.
This is the best—the only—chance I’m going to have to get myself free, so I wait until she turns her back on me and starts trying to untie the knot on one of the hand restraints. Then I grab her hair and throw every ounce of my weight behind it as I push her forward and slam her head against the edge of the altar as hard as I can.