I screamed, my hands and arms and back burning, while what was left of my leather jacket melted to my flesh. This wasn’t a normal fire; this wasn’t a normal anything. And then I coughed, retching and hacking, dizzy from the lack of air. Hassani said and did nothing, still lost in his dreams—
And, suddenly, I understood. They were his dreams. The fluttering bits of memory or whatever they were coming off the dead demigod weren’t the problem. The first two, yes, but these last—they had both been through Hassani’s eyes. I couldn’t shake them off because I was touching him, but I couldn’t get us out unless I did!
But my jeans were full of black edged holes, with burnt red flesh peeking through. And I had nothing else to use, unless I stripped my flesh off with my jacket! Hassani was no better, in tattered rags half burnt away, and weakened to the point that they ripped as soon as I touched them. There was nothing—
Well, almost nothing.
I grabbed a piece of the dead demigod, no longer caring when it crinkled under my hands, and used it like an oven mitt to keep from touching the consul. I still saw images: the mad dash through the desert, the furtive days of hiding that followed, the creak of a ship sailing God knew where. But they were distant, transparent, a glaze on the burning, smoke filled hell we were crawling through, nothing more.
And we started to make headway.
I doubted we’d have made it if not for the little rain clouds. They kept dashing us with water every few seconds, less than before, as whatever resources they had found dried up. But enough to keep going.
Only where I was going, I wasn’t sure.
I couldn’t see anything anymore. Smoke billowed everywhere, coating my throat, stopping my nose, obscuring my vision. The world had been reduced to heat and ash and the sharp reek of the fiend behind us, who was trying to kill us even in death.
But, once again, he failed.
A sliver of cool air from outside reached out like the hand of an angel, guiding me forward. I followed it until warm stones replaced the burning ones under my hands, the first indication I’d had that we’d found the elusive doorway.
I would have laughed if I’d had enough breath, or cried if I could have spared the moisture. As it was, I just increased my speed, dragging the consul because he was too tall for me to easily carry. And that was assuming I could have managed it with so little air in my lungs.
Make that none at all, I thought, as my airway closed up completely. I’d been coughing and hacking, feeling like I was going to bring up my lungs with every breath, but this was worse. This was endgame.
The lack of oxygen made me weak, and made the simple matter of traversing a few, smallish rooms feel like a marathon. But the temperature continued to drop, becoming cooler and cooler as we moved ahead, giving me hope. Until my torn and burnt hands were freezing, the coldness of the outer rooms coming as a blessed relief.
We reached the prisoners again before I could see anything, their bodies appearing out of the smoke, still stacked like wood against the cold stone walls—and probably flammable as hell. But I couldn’t help them. I could barely help myself.
My strength was almost gone, and without Dorina, I had no reserves to draw on. But I could see the damned throne room now, glimmering ahead like a mirage. Could feel the cold air on my face. Could hear the echoes of running feet and shouted voices—was it another vision?
I couldn’t tell; didn’t know. I didn’t even remember what I was doing anymore. The burning in my lungs eclipsed my world, and nothing else mattered, nothing else was real.
“Dory!”
I thought I heard Louis-Cesare calling my name, but it couldn’t be him. He wasn’t here. He’d left me and he wasn’t here.
And then neither was I, as darkness finally overwhelmed me.
Chapter Twelve
Dory, Cairo
Yells, screams and curses hit my ears, quickly followed by the clash of blade on blade. But fast, inhumanely so, as if someone was playing the castanets. With a rapier . . .
The thought jerked me awake, and it was no gentle return to consciousness. Alarm bells were going off all over my body. My lungs were struggling to drag in enough oxygen while also hacking up