Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Coughing—and ow, that hurt—I rubbed at my chest. It pained from inhaling the dry and bitterly chilled air.
The wind suddenly picked up, wailing like a banshee, sucking away my every foggy breath; giving the snow more of a kick. The flakes pelted my numb skin, peppered my hair, and drummed on my clothes.
My curse lost in the gust of wind, I upped my pace, my every breath weak and raspy. The visibility here was so bad that I didn’t notice I’d reached a crevice until I was only a few feet away from it.
Not trusting that the wind wouldn’t knock me into it, I didn’t go right to the edge. I remained at a safe distance from it and leaned forward. Below was a sheet of blue ice broken only in one spot.
A spot where a limp body floated on its front. Finian.
My belly rolled. The noise I’d heard earlier had been him falling through the ice, I then knew. Fuck.
Sadness tightened my gut. I hadn’t known him well but I’d liked him. He might have been standoffish toward me in the beginning, but that had gradually changed. And now—
Don’t think about it, be upset later, you have to keep going.
I let out a shuddery breath, swallowing hard. I’m so sorry, Finian, I’m so sorry.
Rubbing at the frost clinging to my eyelashes, I examined my only path across the crevice: a thin iron beam.
No. No, I’d never manage it. Not while my entire body violently trembled. There was no point in even trying.
What’s your alternative? Stand here and allow death to take you?
I bit out a curse. Crossing my arms over my chest, I wondered if it might be better to lie on the beam and edge my way across it. It would be more time-consuming, but it would give me less chance of falling. Maybe.
Shaking off my unease, I crossed to the beam but made no moves to even touch it. Instead, I sprawled on my front near the edge and then grabbed the sides of the beam. Sending up silent prayers to the gods, I used my hold on the strip of iron to heave my body forward. It hurt. Hurt my sore muscles, my wounds, my palms, everything.
Not for the first time today, I called on the ability I’d recently developed in the past forty days to shelve my pain and focus on the matter in front of me. Again and again I pulled myself forward, until eventually my legs were dangling over the edges of the beam.
This was it. There was no going back now.
Keeping my front pressed against the beam, I repeatedly and carefully edged forward. The entire time, I kept my head up; kept my eyes trained on the end of the passage; didn’t once look at what lay beneath me.
I also tried not to think of how hard it would hurt to hit that ice; tried not to imagine just how freezing cold the water would be; tried not to imagine falling on Finian.
And I failed. Dramatically. There was no way not to fret over any of that.
The wind blew through the passage, whipped up more snow, and barreled right into my side. My heart smashed my ribcage. Feeling myself start to slip, I curled my limbs around the beam and held tight.
Once the wind died down, I edged forward again. And again. And again. It was a painfully slow process, but I eventually past the halfway point. Then the three-quarter-way point, which—
The wind slammed into me yet again.
I braced myself for the impact and clung to the beam with every bit of strength I possessed. The gust smacked me, rocked me, caused my face to bash against the iron so hard it was dizzying.
And my body abruptly tilted.
I would have fallen to the ice below if I hadn’t had a death grip on the iron bar. Instead, I ended up clinging to its underneath, my back to the ice, my pulse racing a mile a minute.
I spat a dozen curses, holding on for dear life. Literally.
Keep moving, don’t just hang there.
I wasn’t sure I could make it. My body trembled from the effort of clinging to the bar. I was just so tired and weak right now.
Still, having no choice but to try, I kept my limbs tight around the beam as I tried smoothing my lower arms and inner thighs along it to propel my body forward. It worked, but I only moved half an inch.
I thought about attempting to roll back onto my stomach, but that would be even harder—not to mention be a waste of precious strength, since the wind could again return me to my current position.
As such, I repeated the whole smoothing along the beam thing. I did it over and over and over, the iron beginning to burn my skin with the friction.