Origin of Magic (Dragon's Gift: The Protector #3)(36)

“Up ahead.” Ares pointed to a ghostly blur ahead of us. It lay along the ground, almost like a puddle.

I hurried toward it, dread in the pit of my stomach. As we neared, I realized that the ghost was a flattened person. And it wasn’t cartoonish. I swallowed down bile. “He looks like he’s been crushed by a steamroller.”

Run. The ghost didn’t say it—he couldn’t say it—but I heard it in my head all the same.

I took off, sprinting down the corridor with Ares at my side. What the heck could flatten a man like that? Ideas flashed through my mind, each more horrible than the last.

When the mountain began to groan around us, stone scraping against stone, I realized.

The walls had begun to close in on us from either side, an inch every second. Dread chilled my skin. Immediately, I conjured a heavy iron bar on the ground in front of me, hoping that it would slow the mountain from closing in on us.

I leapt over the bar and left it behind, praying it would work. We sprinted as the walls ground toward us. Then they stopped. I glanced behind. The iron bar was straining as it held the walls apart.

“Faster,” Ares said.

I sprinted, breath tearing through my lungs. “Leave me.”

He was so much faster that he should just race ahead.

A loud snap rent the air. The walls rushed in on us. The iron bar had broken. My heart thudded as I conjured another, then another, leaving them on the ground behind us.

The walls stopped their deadly movement. I pushed myself until my lungs burned.

Snap. Snap!

The walls began to close in once more. They were only a foot from us on either side, the corridor now only three feet wide. Ares cut behind me so that I could race ahead, making me want to scream my rage. He’d never save himself if it meant leaving me behind.

It drove me insane.

I conjured more iron bars, but they wouldn’t hold the walls forever.

“We’re near the end!” Ares shouted.

Up ahead, the corridor widened. I gave it my all, sprinting as the metal bars snapped behind me. The walls closed in.

They were nearly brushing my shoulders by the time I spilled out into the main hall, where the walls didn’t move, thank fates.

Ares squeezed out behind me, his broader shoulders scraping against the enclosing stone.

I bent over, panting and sweating. My lungs were on fire.

Ares hadn’t even broken a sweat—not since he’d spent the run behind me.

“You really just need to leave me behind sometimes,” I gasped.

“You totally had that.” He sounded slightly winded, at least. “Good work with the iron bars.”

I stood up and scowled at him. He grinned, then leaned forward and kissed me, his lips pressed hard to mine.

I enjoyed it for a half second before pushing him back. “You need to take me seriously, you know. You should try to save yourself. Don’t risk your life like that.”

His gaze turned somber. “It’s my life to risk. You can’t make that decision for me.”

My heart stuttered. He was right. I couldn’t make those decisions for him, nor should I. But damn it, I didn’t want him dying for me. Which he seemed willing to do. It was crazy.

“I knew we’d get through that,” he said. “I believed in you.”

“Uh huh.” I nodded, my heart and brain flopping around like fish out of water. He sure did say the right things. And it really sounded like he meant them. This was all too much for me. So I avoided it and turned. “Let’s go.”

We started down the path, jogging slowly alongside the railroad tracks. The farther we went into the mountain, the staler the air became. Then it got fresher.

“Air’s weird,” I muttered.

“We’re coming up to something.”

In the distance, the walls of the corridor glowed golden and bright. My dragon sense roared, covetousness welling within me. Though my trove was full of plants, cars, and weapons, the dragon side of me was a huge fan of gold. Huge.

It liked gold like a cat liked tuna.

The gold tugged at my dragon soul, pulling me down the corridor toward the glowing golden lights. I ran faster. As we neared, a white glow coalesced to form a ghost. Again, he was dressed like a miner. But this time, he was covered in deep cuts that dripped pearly white blood.

I shivered.

The ghostly miner just shook his head at us and whispered, “Go back.”

“Not really an option, friend,” Ares said.

“I gotta agree with you,” I said to Ares. “But given how the last two challenges have gone…” The smart part of me wanted to listen to Mr. Bled-To-Death.

Of course we wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

Ares reached for my hand and I took it, then walked by the messenger. Sadness tugged at me for all the people who’d lost their lives down here. I shoved it aside and we continued on.

It didn’t take long for the golden lights that glowed in the walls to coalesce into slender figures. They were made entirely of gold, with gleaming eyes and six-inch claws on each hand. The way they stepped out of the stone wall was eerie enough to make me shiver.

And to make my dragon sense go wild with joy. It was an idiot sometimes.

“Any idea what these are?” I asked as I warily watched their claws and called upon my conjuring gift.

“Bad news.”