Amélie Zhao - Blood Heir

Quicktongue gave the rope another tug. “Hold tight,” he shouted, and despite herself, Ana wrapped both arms around his filthy tunic, keeping her face as far from his chest as possible without straining her neck.

He swung them off the ledge.

Whatever revulsion she’d felt toward Quicktongue dissolved, and she found herself clinging tightly to him as though her life depended on it.

It did.

They dangled right beneath the ledge of Ghost Falls, spiraling gently. The waterfall roared in her ears, so close that she could reach out and touch it. The length of rope connecting them to the pillar tumbled beneath them in a long loop, disappearing into the white mist.

Slowly, Quicktongue began to lower them. His muscles were taut, veins popping from his neck as he placed one hand below the other.

Ana dared a look down. The sight had her gripping Quicktongue more tightly, swallowing her panic. She might have sent a thousand prayers to her Deities, but none would have mattered. In this instant, there was only her and the con man.

Ana looked up. The mist was so thick that she could barely make out the ledge of the prison anymore. That was a good thing. “How much longer?” she screamed, barely hearing her own voice over the waterfall.

“Almost!” He was shouting, but his words were hardly audible. “We need to get to the end of this rope, or the fall will kill us.”

Ana squinted up. Something—a movement in the mist—had her instinctively grasping for her Affinity. There it was: the faintest wisp, an echo of her powers, still struggling beneath the Deys’voshk.

She frowned as she sensed something through her bonds, so faint that it almost slipped past her.

A gust of wind slammed into them and Ana closed her eyes, trying to block out the dizzying swinging sensation. When she opened them again, the wind had cleared some of the mist. At the top, over the ledge of Ghost Falls, was the outline of an archer, his bow and arrow angled toward them.

“Look out!” she cried, and the first arrow whizzed over their heads.

The second struck Quicktongue.

He grunted in pain as it grazed his shoulder, slicing open his sleeve and drawing blood. Ana bit back a scream as Quicktongue’s grip slipped against the slick rope. They lurched, spinning wildly, a hand’s breadth from being battered to death by the waterfall. Above, the archer nocked another arrow.

Below, she saw the end of the length of rope, looping up to connect to Quicktongue’s waist. The end of the rope. They had to get to the end of the rope, or they would die.

Ana reached into herself, digging until she was nothing but blood and bone. And she found it, the last remnants of her Affinity, as faint as a dying candle, still fighting against the Deys’voshk.

Ana stretched out her hand and latched on to the blood of the archer. And pushed.

The archer tensed and swayed for a second, as though a sudden gust of wind had hit him. Ana let her hand fall. Warmth trickled down her lip and she tasted her own blood.

That was it. The Deys’voshk had won; she had no more to give.

But it had been enough to distract the archer and get them to the end of the rope.

Quicktongue let go and reached to his hip. His dagger glinted dull silver. He leaned toward Ana, his eyes narrowed, his expression sharpened to dead, lethal calm. “Don’t struggle, don’t move. Just hold on to me. Feetfirst, toes pointed.”

She had barely processed his words, barely let a taste of fear reach the tip of her tongue.

Quicktongue raised his arm. “First step to becoming a ruffian,” he said, “is learning to fall.”

His blade flashed. He brought his arm down with ruthless force.

And then they were falling.

The river claimed them as soon as they hit it, pulling them under with vengeance in its white-furled fluxes and battering them like leaves in a gale. Ramson let the tides take him. He knew the waters, knew when to let himself go and when to push against it. The river did not yield. It was all about learning to swim with the current.

These waters were different from the wide-open seas of Ramson’s childhood. In Bregon, the waters were cobalt blue, the caps flecked with sunlight. He had swum for hours, diving beneath the surface and looking up at the faraway sky in a muted blue world of his own.

In Cyrilia, the rivers were white and frothing and cold. Ramson struggled to keep his eyes open as the current flung him to and fro. The pressure in his chest grew. Water surged at his nose and mouth.

The Affinite girl was still bound to his chest by the rope. He could feel her thrashing against him, kicking and struggling as the current pummeled her.

Ramson severed the cord. The odds of survival were greater without someone weighing you down. He had been thinking only of himself when he did it, but as he watched the current drag the witch away, he supposed it might have been true for her, too.

Stay still, he wanted to tell her. The more you struggle, the faster you drown.

But his own lungs were aching, and that familiar sensation of weakness was creeping into his limbs. He needed to breathe, or risk becoming a part of the current forever.

Ramson kicked out. No sooner had he righted himself than the current pushed him over again. Panic bubbled in his chest.

His head felt light. Water pressed at his nose and his lips, yet part of him remembered that he could not open his mouth. His limbs were becoming heavier. His vision was a whirl of white. It was cold.

Swim, came a voice. He knew instantly whose voice it was—that calm, thin voice that had defined his childhood and haunted him every day thereafter. Here, in the roaring chaos, it sounded so close. Swim, or we both die.

Ramson thrust his legs behind him, arching his back. He felt the current give a little. Somewhere above him, somewhere near, there was light.

Swim.

The light grew brighter. He broke through the surface, coughing and gulping in lungful after lungful of fresh, wintry Cyrilian air, feeling the power return to his limbs.

He hauled himself onto the bank, digging his nails into the half-frozen dirt and dragging his feet across snow-covered grass. He was shivering uncontrollably, moving in starts and stops, his arms and legs jerking in awkward movements as he tried to stimulate his blood flow.

The river had borne them quite a distance; Ghost Falls was a faraway speck, barely larger than the size of his palm. His stomach flipped as he took in the height of the cliffs, the waterfall that was no more than a misty stretch ending in the river. No matter his calculations and the meticulous planning he’d done in the darkness of his cell; it had taken a miracle and a hand from the gods for them to have survived.

Not that Ramson believed in the gods anyway.

He turned his back to the prison. A snow-tipped forest stretched before him, illuminated in a haze of dusty gold beneath the late-afternoon sun. And in the distance, ice-capped mountains rose and fell as far as the eye could see.

But Ramson felt only the cold in his bones and saw only the shadows that stretched long and dark beneath the pine trees. This was Cyrilia, the Empire of the North, where autumn nights were colder than any winter day in the other kingdoms. And if he didn’t find shelter before the sun set, he would die.

A cough behind him made him spin around, dagger in hand. He felt a faint twinge of surprise as he caught sight of the Affinite struggling up the bank like a dying animal. She was on her hands and knees, her head drooping, her dark locks plastered to her face and dripping water. She would not stand again. Not without his help.