The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(120)

Lu struggled to her knees.

“No time.” Jin’s face resettled into the one she knew as he lifted her into his arms.

“Wait!” she shouted, struggling against him, but he was already running in retreat. Pain seared from her shoulder, through her ribs every time his feet slammed against the ground. “Wait, wait. Put me down! The others—Nokhai!”

“They’re coming,” Jin panted.

Lu looked over his shoulder and saw Nasan blazing on their heels, her face twisted, straining. Her staff was clenched in her right hand, and in her left, Lu saw the glint of steel. Her sword.

“Retreat!” The cry came from the remaining Hana soldiers. “Retreat! Back to the gate!”

Lu, Nokhai’s voice came urgent in her head. She cast about wildly for him, then saw him standing by Min—near the epicenter of the crumbling ground.

Lu, I don’t think she can walk—

“Nok, don’t be an idiot! Leave her!” Nasan waved at him frantically with her staff.

“Let me go!” Lu pounded on Jin’s back with her good hand. “Let me go! My sister—”

He stopped, but before Lu could free herself from his grasp, a stallion thundered up alongside Nokhai and its rider slid off. A small figure in dun-colored robes. With some effort, he lifted Min into his arms. As he turned to regard Nok, his hood slid off.

Brother.

“Him,” Nasan cried in shock, and it took Lu a moment to understand she was talking about the monk, not Nokhai. “It’s him! That monster . . .”

Nokhai and the monk stared at one another, man and wolf. Two sets of keen, watchful black eyes. As though they had reached some unspoken agreement, the monk threw Min onto his saddle and clambered on after her. A blink, and his stallion was riding away across the fast-disintegrating ground.

“Nokhai, come on!” Lu shouted as Jin began moving again.

The wolf jerked, finally turning from the place where the monk had been, and ran.

They were halfway up the temple steps when the widening split in the ground reached them. Jin stumbled as the stones beneath his feet began to break, to dissolve and fall away. Lu staggered out of his arms, barely kept her balance, ran for her life.

“Faster!” Nasan shouted from somewhere beside her. Pandemonium. Lu could scarcely see anything in the blanketing dust, could scarcely sense anything but the consuming roar of the world breaking around her. Of the made being unmade.

She looked back for Nokhai and saw the dark shape of his wolf leaping its way up the collapsing stairs.

Up ahead, Jin pulled open the heavy doors to the temple. “Get in!” he bellowed. Nasan glanced back, but Lu waved her on.

“Go!” she screamed.

“My brother—”

“I’ve got him!”

Nasan hesitated, then nodded. “You better, Princess.” She raced through the doors as Lu turned back down the stairs.

“Lu, no!” Jin called.

“Nokhai!” Lu ran toward him. The wolf was close now, wending a twisting path over what ground remained. One more leap and he would . . .

The stones beneath his feet caved.

A cry tore itself from Lu’s throat, but as Nokhai jumped through the empty air, his shape changed. The wolf twisted, and all at once the dark fur drew back, the claws retracted, and Nokhai grabbed the bottom remaining stair with two human hands, breaking his fall.

“I’ve got you!” Lu shouted, taking the stairs between them in a single leap, falling to her knees. She extended her good hand to him, felt his fingers catch, tangling hot and urgent against her own.

The stair dissolved.

He didn’t scream. The weight in her hand was there, and then it was too much, and just as fast, it was gone.

“Nokhai!”

She stared into the empty air, disbelieving. Some part of her registered the stone beneath her giving way. In a moment she too would fall. Good. It’s what I deserve. It’s—

“It’s too late!” Strong hands grabbed her.

“No!” She kicked and writhed, but Jin hauled her into his arms and held fast.

“We have to go. It’s too late.”

“No!” she insisted, her voice breaking. But he was running again, toward the temple, racing the disintegration. But that was wrong, she thought—Nokhai had gone the other way.

“We have to go back!” she screamed. “Nokhai!”

“It’s too late, Lu,” Jin whispered into her hair as they passed into the temple. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He laid her on the floor, pulling the door tight behind them. The roar of the breaking pavement dulled. Lu blinked in the darkness, saw the vague shapes of people crowding around her. Stupidly, desperately, she searched for Nokhai, but he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t ever going to be there.

“What should we do, Jin?” Nasan was asking. “How—where . . . where’s my brother? Lu? Lu! Where’s Nok?”

She should stand. She should open her eyes. She needed to face Nasan. Her body wouldn’t move, though. She swallowed hard, unable to hold back the tears streaming from her eyes. “Nokhai. He’s—”

The temple plummeted.





CHAPTER 36


Disintegration

The ground was still moving. Min’s body seized with the expectation, the terror. The earth was breaking apart, and it was all her doing—she had to stop it. Couldn’t. How could she—