around him. I don't see any more rope dangling below him, and so I study the ground. Or I try to. It's still a huge drop away. Thirty feet, maybe. Fifty? Does it matter? I can't do that and survive. "Oh my god. We've got to go back." A sob forms in my throat. I'm not sure I can go back. I press my face against the straining rope knots. This is an utter nightmare.
"We cannot go back," Aron calls up to me. "Look at the troops. They are almost upon us. If they see our rope, they will fling their trebuchet at us, thinking we are with Tadekha and her minions."
I force myself to lift my head and scan the horizon. It's not hard to do, because with Aron and me both at the bottom of the damn thing, we're swinging and swaying in the breeze like a true pendulum, and the rope just keeps twisting and spinning us around. It eventually spins in the direction of the soldiers, and sure enough, what was a faint maybe sort of line before is much, much closer. I can now see lines of troops and big wooden machines that must be the trebuchets.
I hate that he's right. I hate that we have to get out of here, and fast. But there's nowhere to go. Frantically, I look around. "Is there an outcropping nearby? Have we drifted close enough—”
"No time." Aron grabs my ankle again. "Slide down farther and hold onto me."
"What? NO!" Is he insane? He's insane.
"Do as I say," he barks up at me, and I resist the urge to kick his face. His hand tightens on my ankle and then he's pulling on me, the asshole. "Move farther down—”
"What the fuck are you doing?!"
"Let go, Faith—"
"No!" The rope twists, swaying, and Aron tugs harder on my ankle. Oh fuck, now he's climbing up the rope, and his big body is covering mine. "Stop it," I cry out, wanting to slap at him, but I don't have a free hand to do so. "Fuck off! We can't—"
"Let go," he says again, and his voice is in my ear, the heat and electricity of his big body against my back.
I don't let go.
I don't have to, because in the next moment, the rope snaps somewhere above and all the tension disappears from my hands, and then we're falling, and falling…
I smack into the ground with enough force that the air slams out of my lungs. Everything hurts and throbs with pain, and I lie completely still for a moment, stunned.
It takes me a moment to realize that I'm not dead.
It takes a longer moment to realize that I didn't land, belly-down, onto the dirt. I landed on top of Aron.
Gasping, fighting off the blackness that creeps at the edges of my vision, I struggle to sit up. I'm having trouble focusing and the world is a messy blur. My head throbs and there's still no air in my stupid lungs and I can't breathe and that's terrifying enough on its own—
And then I'm able to take a shallow breath. Then another. I cough, desperate and relieved. The blackness fades away and I'm able to focus on my surroundings despite the throb in my head. I realize after a moment that I'm still straddling Aron, my legs thrown over his, my butt resting in the cradle of his hips.
I landed on top of him and it nearly killed me. I don't know how it didn’t kill me, and yet I'm still here. Even so…that must mean Aron's dead. I stare down in horror at the man underneath me, his eyes closed, his dark hair spread out around him like a halo in the dust. That dusky red scar that bisects one half of his face stands out like a bloodstain.
He opens his mismatched eyes and scowls at me.
"Oh my god," I choke out. "You're alive."
"Why would I not be?"
"Because we shouldn't be?" I glance up, looking for the dangling end of the rope. It's swaying in the wind, high above us, barely visible in the shadows of the Citadel. Oh god. "How did we survive that?"
"I believe I am still immortal, despite being trapped on this plane. You are the mortal part of this pairing. As long as I protect you, I suspect I am safe."
That makes a lot of horrifying sense. It explains why I'm eating and why he's not. Why I'm sleeping and why he's not. Why everyone would attack