Standing below her, I tried to call out to her, to urge her to jump into my arms. But my lack of speech made that a bit difficult.
In the end, it wasn’t clear if she dropped into my arms because she trusted me, or because she had lost her grip and had no other choice. Either way, I exhaled with relief as I caught her. Dropping her to the ground, I curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight to me.
With my free arm, I swept the reverend’s burning femur through the air. The flames were an arc of light, keeping the dead at bay.
Holding her close, I turned to face the draugr. The beasts had surrounded us, watching my torch with dead eyes. They were afraid of the fire—the only thing that could destroy them. And yet their desire for flesh and blood might be stronger than their fear of burning.
We didn’t have much time.
I swung my torch, keeping the monsters at bay. I had the key on me, which meant that all I needed to do was to say the magic word: Finnask.
Except—the curse, of course, robbed me of speech.
The draugr moved closer, and I swung the torch to keep them at bay. The Night Elf clung to my side, warm against me. Sunlight flickered in my mind, another memory of rowan trees against a blue sky. A room of stones and vines…
Clutching my mate, I backed against the brick wall of Sanders Theatre.
My instinct was to hold her to me, but she slid away, out of my embrace. I stepped in front of her.
“What’s the plan?” she asked in a breathy whisper.
All I needed was for her to speak the magic word for me, to say it out loud, and we’d be free. I glanced behind me, looking for something I could use to write. I didn’t have much time, and I couldn’t leave her. If the draugr reached her, they’d rip her to pieces and gorge themselves on her flesh. But I had nothing with which to write with…
The draugr must have sensed me hesitating, because one charged, leaping for her throat. I slammed the flaming torch into it so hard that I took off its head. Another draugr lunged, grabbing for my torch, but it missed. If this flame went out, we were fucked.
The Night Elf stayed behind me, pressed tight against the wall. I could feel my own soul radiating from her body. “Marroc!” she shouted.
A draugr’s fingers raked along the burning femur, but I was faster. I grabbed the creature by the neck, then threw it into the air. To my surprise, as it arced through the night sky, sparks trailed behind it like the tail of comet.
The draugr landed in a mass of his kind nearly a hundred feet away. For a moment, the dead stilled.
Then the body detonated, like I’d just thrown a bomb.
There it was again—that unfamiliar fear sliding along my bones as the flames spread through the crowd of corpses. All around us, the draugr bodies were igniting. Seemed they were extremely flammable, and the fire was raging closer, putting her in danger.
The Night Elf screamed again, the sound like glass shards in my heart. A strange thought bloomed in my head, a desire to turn into a powerful oak tree that could protect her.
What to write with? How to speak to her?
Fire stained the air with light.
That could be used to write in the air. All I needed was for her to say the word out loud, just once. The pressure to get out of this situation was like a thousand rocks on my chest.
I turned to the Night Elf and pressed my key into her hand. She frowned at it, but wrapped her fingers around it.
I touched her cheek lightly to get her attention. Meeting my gaze, her silver eyes gleamed in the darkness. Her breath was coming in fast bursts. While her gaze was locked on me, I pointed to the torch, trying to signal that she needed to watch it closely.
In the air, I spelled FINNASK with the blazing end of the femur.
“Finnask?” she asked.
And that was all we needed to disappear.
Chapter 15
Ali
Light flashed, and the grotesque world around me faded away. No longer surrounded by hungry draugr, I was now standing in the center of a beautiful hall. I blinked, hardly daring to believe what I was seeing.