“Diya smelled it,” I realized. The dogs fanned into a semicircle around me. I hadn’t thought much of it, reducing her comment to another dig against Lukubis. “You doused yourself in an odor before we entered the tunnels. It’s keeping them away from you.”
I ripped my gaze from the dogs long enough to snarl at Timur. “Follow me, Timur. Guarantee your mission is done, because if I survive, I will see your sister dead before any illness can.”
The dogs howled, leaping. I tore into the trees. The lake’s eddies extended into the forest. If I could find a branch of the lake deep enough to drown three dogs, I would be safe.
Timur crashed through the bushes behind me. The sun kissed the sky goodbye, the last fingers of light vanishing in the rush of evening.
The instincts I honed from the blindfolded runs in Essam sharpened with my spite. Arin prepared me to succeed when every condition demanded otherwise. I would not be ended by a pack of dogs in Orban.
My muscles became lethargic as I drew in gulps of air. The dogs nipped at my heels, their shrill barking grating against my ears.
“Essiya, come down from there! You’ll hurt yourself!”
I barely kept from tripping over an overgrown root. “Dawoud?” I cried out.
The voices echoed around me. Ayume or my magic? Why do you do that? Always pull away? the wind asked in Fairel’s voice.
Every limb in my body burned. I wanted to collapse, to rest for just one moment in the soft soil. I hooked to the right. Behind a cluster of abandoned nests, a leg of the lake appeared.
A few moments more and I would have reached it. But in my eagerness, I ventured too close to an emaciated bush. A branch wrapped around my ankle, nearly sending me to the ground. I yanked, and the branch tightened. I tried to climb the tree behind the bush and cut my palm open against the spiked bark. I was caught fast.
The dogs burst from the right, Timur close behind. Their muzzles opened in a macabre grin, and Timur turned his head. “Goodbye, Sylvia.”
My cuffs heated. “If you are going to kill me,” I seethed, “have the decency to look me in the eye.”
I snapped my fingers.
The dogs froze mid-leap, their hateful indigo eyes leveled on mine. My magic ripped the branch from my ankle, but my body’s suffering affected my magic, too. I stumbled with the release and caught myself on the tree.
“Y-you,” Timur panted. He collapsed to his knees, the effect of chasing me apparent in his drooping features. The air would put him to sleep long before he could reach the cliffside, let alone climb it. “Jasadi.”
Part of me insisted I leave Timur to sleep. The scent repelling the dogs could not last long, and they would eat him alive. The same grisly fate he reserved for me. With my magic warm inside my failing body, I forced the images of Sefa and Marek to replace the dogs. I ignored the evil roiling in this forest and surrounded myself with the meticulous jars of Rory’s shop and the warmth of Raya’s keep. These were the exceptions to my grief, rage, fear rule, but their effect on my magic was the same.
“I will grant you a kinder end than the one you planned for me.”
I snapped my fingers. A boulder cracked against the side of Timur’s head, and his wide eyes went blank. One of the dogs’ paws quivered. I would not be able to hold my magic for long.
Skirting the dogs, I groped for a pulse at Timur’s throat and groaned when one fluttered against my fingers. A dog’s forked tail swished.
I stripped Timur’s coat from his shoulders and put it on. There should have been enough of the scent left to keep the dogs from following me. I summoned the last traces of my receding magic and pushed my palm outward.
Timur’s unconscious form floated, drifting past the dogs and over the bush. My arm shook with the effort of holding my magic. He needed to be lowered at the correct angle, or this endeavor was a wasted mercy.
The heat left my cuffs, and Timur’s body dropped like a stone. He did not splash on impact. The water crept over him hungrily, inch by inch. The lake swallowed the Lukub Champion with a sigh. The rippling surface went smooth. Another life digested in the belly of Ayume.
Stumbling in the direction of the cliff, the world tilted and spun. I clenched my fists and whimpered at the resulting stab of pain from my right palm. A sticky wetness ran down my sleeve. I lifted my arm, narrowly avoiding another snaking branch.
Amber-colored sludge was stuck to the center of my palm, trickling over my cuff. The skin beneath bubbled with pink drops of blood.
Arin’s warning. In the future, avoid touching the trees while you run. Even the sap in Ayume can kill you.