set of gold doors, that when they opened, slid into the wall. We stepped through. White buttons lined the wall. He hit the top one that had PTH written next to it.
After he fished in his pockets, he pulled out a small white rectangle. He laid it against the black shimmering square above the PTH button. A red light came out and slid over the card.
“What isth thisth?” I asked him.
“Called an elevator. Makes it so you don’t have to take the stairs. Forty floors of stairs is quite the feat.”
I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. We didn’t have stairs in Alder Valley. At least that I knew of. But yay me, keeping my mouth shut and not spilling my ignorance at his feet.
The room started moving.
My eyes widened. Right before I jumped in his arms. “What the stharsth isth happening!?”
He laughed as he adjusted me in his arms. “Elevator. It’s a small car that moves on cables. It’s very safe.”
I glared at him. “You’re laughing at me again, aren’t you?” I wiggled, tried to get down.
“Maybe a little. But not at you, at you. More at the things that seem new to you.” He moved his hands as I lowered my feet back to the floor.
His hand brushed the skin of my calf.
That’s when the world exploded.
Chapter 4 – Thane
I clamped my free hand against my temple. My brain. Something opened in my head. It was as big as a galaxy and as small as a molecule. It lit me up from the inside out. Flashing colors strobed under my clenched eyelids like I’d rubbed my eyes too hard.
My knees buckled, and we both crashed to the ground. Groans punched through my gritted teeth as I tried to breathe. My lungs felt like they were on fire.
“Thane. Make it sthop. Pleasth, make it sthop,” Hollyn whispered, pain feasted at the edge of her voice.
I sucked air greedily into my lungs as the pain vanished as quickly as it had descended. I popped my eyelids wide and stared up at the ceiling of the elevator. I could count the motes of dust in the air. See the individual grains in the wood paneling.
I rolled to my side, every bone aching. Muscles felt like they were tearing from tendons. Tendons from bone. Separate nerves fired and I could trace them from body part to brain in a single sweep of neuron transmission.
“Hollyn,” I whispered. Everything was turned up to full power. My hearing. My taste. My touch. The hardwood floor of the elevator car felt like mountains and valleys of smooth pressure against my legs and back.
I reached out when I didn’t hear her reply. “Hollyn?” I called again. My hand landed on her lower leg.
She jerked at the contact. “It hurts, Thane. Why does it hurt?” She whimpered as I followed the line of her leg to her upper thigh.
I grabbed the edge of her hip bone and tugged her flat to the floor. Shaking my head to try and adjust my too-clear vision, I rolled up on an elbow and looked down at her.
Her upper teeth were sunken into her completely healed lip. Her brows pinched together over her nose as it wrinkled in obvious discomfort. The rest of her lower face was still covered in smeared blood, but the skin underneath it was luminous. The golden tan of a sunworshipper.
Under the brilliant artificial light in the elevator, her hair shone a purple so dark it was almost black. I ran a hand over it, tugged its knotted and tangled lengths from the sticky blood on her throat and chin.
“Hollyn, open your eyes,” I said softly. If her hearing and other senses were as heightened as mine, I didn’t want to cause her more pain.
She shook her head slightly from side to side. Honestly, it was more an energy shift from right to left than any actual movement.
“Come on, Stretch. You can do it.” I petted a hand over her hair.
She grimaced at me, eyes still closed. “That’s funny coming from a giant.” She wrinkled her nose.
Then her eyes popped open, and she sat up in one motion.
Our foreheads cracked together.
My brain swirled around in my skull in sickly waves that reminded me of the ocean. “Damnit, Hollyn.”
“You were the one leaning over me. How are my teeth fixed?”
I peeked through my lashes to see her running her dirty fingers over her new two front teeth. “I don’t know. But what did