Chapters (42)
- Title Page
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Acknowledgements
- Also by Kim Harrison
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
- Cover
“Rachel, breathe. Oh God. I’m sorry,” Trent said. “Just breathe. Please breathe!”
And then even my ears quit working. Starved for air, I passed out.
Ten
Ten
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were starving for air, burning, but I couldn’t make them expand. Stuck halfway between the memory and now, I hung, able to think, but not to do.
“Rachel!” Ivy shouted, and I felt a stinging smack across my cheek. “Wake up!”
Jenks’s pixy wings clattered close, and his draft cooled my burning cheek. “Knock it off!” he exclaimed. “Hitting her isn’t doing any good!”
Panic iced through me, but I couldn’t move, paralyzed and running out of air.
“You let her invoke a deadly charm?” I heard Pierce say, his voice close.
“It wasn’t supposed to be deadly!” Ivy snarled back. “It had already passed the lethal-amulet test. Something went wrong!”
“Kalamack crafted it? I opine that’s what’s wrong. He’s just like his father. Sloppy.”
“Look!” Jenks said. “It’s still in her hands. Right there!”
My heart thudded, hurting for air; I felt shaking hands turn me over. Fingers wedged among mine, and pain shot through me. A moan I couldn’t afford slipped past me.
“You’re hurting her!” Nick exclaimed, completing the travesty.
“Better that than she suffocates,” Ivy said. Then softer, she said, “I’m sorry, Rachel.”
I clenched into myself, my head bursting in pain. Oh God. I was dying. I was going to die from a frigging elf charm. Break my fingers. Anything! The sharp tug on my fingers was a stab of agony, but I didn’t think she broke anything as the smooth horsehair slipped from me.
Nick’s voice was close and worried. “She’s still not breathing.”
“Tell us something we don’t know, crap-for-brains!” Jenks exclaimed.
“Smack her again!” the thief said.
My hearing was going fuzzy, and the pain of the curse’s imbalance was lost in the agony of suffocation. I couldn’t think, but I felt the bed dip, and arms smelling of coal dust wrapped around me as my head thumped into a masculine chest. “Forgive me, mistress witch,” I heard, and then a line burned through me.
I gasped, the involuntary reaction bringing a slip of air into me. It smelled like a meadow in the sun. Nausea rose and my heart gave a weak pound, but I still couldn’t breathe. Somehow I managed to open my eyes. Pierce was holding me, Ivy standing helplessly, her eyes black and beautiful. “Do something!” Jenks shouted as he hovered close, and my eyes slipped shut.
“I am doing something,” Pierce panted. “She took a breath.”
Smooth fingers turned my chin, and I heard Ivy say, “Trent cursed her?”
“I’m going to kill him. I’m gonna kill the son of a fairy’s slug,” Jenks vowed.