“Yeah, you can navigate when you know what you’re talking about—which you don’t.” She added under her breath, “Jinyu should’ve been the one leading this quest.”
The compass shook and glowed in my hand, brighter than ever.
Ashley was wrong. I’d read Ye Ye’s message in Restorative Potions so many times, I could recall what he’d written with perfect clarity.
When the time comes, you’ll need this compass not only to save your brother but also to restore the axis of the Earth, which the demons and gods alike have greatly disturbed in these troublesome times.
There was no way this compass had just started shuddering for no reason. My brother was in trouble—and soon, the whole world would be, too. I had to stop Ashley before we wasted any more time.
I was no Jinyu, but I’d prove that I deserved to be on this quest as much as he had.
I stood up. The chariot rocked, and I nearly fell over. I managed to keep my balance, but I let out a high-pitched yell.
Ashley whirled around, her eyes widening with confusion when she saw me standing right behind her. “What’re you—?”
The chariot rocked again to the side, even more violently this time. Ashley shrieked and fell over. I reached out to grab her, but not in time.
Ashley knocked her head against the side of the chariot. I watched in horror as she slid down to the floor, out cold.
CHAPTER
11
In hindsight, I probably could’ve worked a teeny bit harder to catch Ashley before she fell. The moment Ashley was out of action, the chariot became driverless, spooking the lions. They roared and plummeted toward the earth at stomach-dropping speed—taking the chariot and us with it.
Faryn, you idiot. I could practically hear Alex scolding me.
“Faryn, you idiot!”
Just kidding. That was Jordan yelling at me in real time.
My feet slipped under me. My hands tumbled through the air, grasping for something—anything—solid to hold on to.
“Ashley! No!” Jordan bellowed.
In the chaos, I dimly registered the sight of Ashley’s limp body tumbling over the side. A scream wrenched its way from my throat. My eyes darted toward our backpacks. I knew Xiong had said to use the prayer notes only as a last resort, but this was a matter of life or death.
I couldn’t reach the prayer notes anyway. It was all I could do to keep myself from falling off.
A blinding flash of light burst from the front of the chariot. I slammed forward onto it, my knees colliding painfully with the floor. I gasped, my heart thudding in my chest. Somehow, miraculously, the chariot steadied.
“Um … this is weird …”
I looked up at the sound of Jordan’s tremulous voice. I cried out, “You’re—glowing!”
“I am aware of that!” Jordan didn’t look like Jordan anymore. A white light had burst forth from his chest and spread all around the chariot, surrounding it in a glow that was almost angelic. Jordan cradled Ashley’s limp form in his arms.
It took me a moment to understand. Whatever strange power Jordan had channeled was keeping us in the air. The white light grew brighter and hotter until I was forced to shut my eyes against the glow, and the heat shimmered around us at a near-unbearable level. If Jordan didn’t cut it out soon, we were going to burn into shrimp crisps.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Make it stop!”
“I can’t control it!” Jordan bellowed. At that moment, the white light vanished. The chariot remained suspended in the air. Jordan and I stared at each other in a mixture of terror and confusion. “Oh. I can control it.”
“Wh … what kind of power is that?” I squeaked. “You—you—you saved us from turning into a giant grease spot on Earth. And then you almost turned us into a giant shrimp crisp in midair. How? How’d you do it?”
“I … I don’t know. But … this—this isn’t the first time we’ve done something like this. Ashley and me, I mean.”
“You’re talking about what Ashley did at the Duels, right?” My mind flashed back to the way Ashley had unleashed that strange power and taken out her opponent, and pretty much everyone else, during the Ninety-Sixth Duels. “Demon,” the other warriors had accused.
Did Ashley really have demon blood? Did Jordan, too?
“Yeah,” said Jordan. “But even before that, there were a couple of times—when we were really little, so we only heard about this from the Elders—that Ashley and I did … strange things.”
“What kind of strange things?”
“Oh, you know, developed some weird powers, scared off a couple of kids, and, uh, blew-out-a-wall-in-the-New-Order,” Jordan mumbled, averting his gaze. “Just your average puberty stuff.”
“You what? Blew out a wall in the New Order?”
“That was Ashley, not me! And she was two years old, okay? Being a toddler is, like, a free pass to do anything!”
“Not to blow up walls,” I protested.
Instead of answering, Jordan slowly lowered Ashley from his arms to the floor of the chariot. He cleared his throat and dusted off his shirt, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Anyway,” Jordan said in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. “That was fun. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. Where were we?” His gaze dropped toward the unconscious form of his sister. “Oh. Right. You let Ashley fall and get knocked out.”
“Sorry,” I blurted out sheepishly. “I—I panicked!”
“Ah … it’s okay,” Jordan said, although he sounded like he was convincing himself as much as he was me. “You might want to … stay far away when Ashley wakes up, though. She won’t be happy.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I mean, like, book a one-way ticket to Fiji or something. Seriously.”
“Ashley doesn’t scare me that much.” As long as she wasn’t yelling at everything that stood still long enough. Or blasting us with demon-like powers.
Jordan heaved a sigh. “Great. All you had to do on this whole quest was keep Ashley out of trouble. You had one job, Jordan. One job! How’d you mess it
