Liva laughs. “You should hear yourself. You don’t believe that.”
I don’t. I do. “Lay off. Let us help you.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. Not much at least. I didn’t want to harm any of you. But you brought this on yourself. You’ve pushed me, and I have nowhere else to go.”
“What is the matter with you?” I lean in, try to force her down from the rocks. We need to get her to the ground. We need to disarm her, push the cloak over her, and tie her up.
Liva’s mouth splits open in a toothy grin. Her free hand twitches. “I am making things right.”
The tension of the night flows between us, and with it, it seems time slows down and speeds up at intermittent intervals. She jumps down, slashes her knife at me. I’m too slow to step back, but she hasn’t got the reach to wound me.
“I don’t know what happened with Carter, but we want to be here for you,” I shout. “Lay down your dagger, and we’ll figure out where to go from here.”
She may be right that I don’t believe we’re friends, but I do want to help her. It’s the only way Finn, Maddy, and I have come so far.
The words seem to pass by Liva. If she hears them, she doesn’t acknowledge them. Instead, she keeps glancing between Finn and me. An angry girl of my own age, who has the world and thinks it is against her.
Every time she looks at me, Finn takes a step down—and away—while to his side, Maddy takes a step closer. Her face is a mask of pain.
“I know it must’ve been an accident. But it doesn’t have to be like this,” I try again. When Liva looks at Finn, I glance past him at Maddy, who nods. Ready.
Five.
Four.
“An accident? I would’ve made it look like an accident. Victims of a haunted mountain,” Liva says, with a singsong quality to her voice. She takes a step toward the boulders again, elegantly, like a danse macabre. “The night is dangerous terrain after all.”
Three.
Two.
Then she smiles, and she shoves at the boulders, making the entire path into the deathtrap Finn so feared. And while Liva keeps her balance, Finn starts to slip.
“No!”
I dash forward, my steps loud and fragile, and everything around me happens in slow motion. The crackling of the path sounds like gunshots. Liva turns, her knife out.
One step behind me, Maddy leaps at her and throws her cloak.
It doesn’t cover her, but it wraps itself around her face. And from then on, we both pounce.
Maddy dives in to try to wrestle the knife away, while I reach for Finn, who reaches for me. So close, so close.
I’ve found that even when you’re falling, there are always hands that help you. People who understand and who make sure you can stand up straight before you have to walk again.
I grab onto Finn’s hand. Or at least, I think I do. I miss, the first time. Thin air.
I try again. This time, I feel the comforting touch of Finn’s fingers wrapped around me. He’s trembling.
I am too, and I brace myself. “Hold on. Please, hold on.”
I pull against the tumbling boulders.
Finn claws at my hand, and it’s hard to keep the balance. But I am strong. Years of holding the world together and tensing myself against the judgment of others means I have quite a bit of upper body strength.
I pull Finn to a safe spot, while the boulders around us keep falling.
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Shut up, brain.
To our left, Maddy is struggling to keep Liva down. She’s stronger than she looks. Shaken but not defeated. They roll over and over, and the cloak that’s halfway wrapped itself around Liva’s head loosens. It still obscures her vision a little, but there are gaps enough that her eyes find mine.
She is nothing like the smiling, caring girl I once knew.
Finn scrambles to his feet, and without any of his early misgivings, though with trembling hands, he takes a crutch and slams it into the inside of her knee.
At the same moment the crutch lands against Liva’s knee, she turns to Maddy, her dagger out. The blade runs down Maddy’s forearm, leaving an angry red cut. But because Liva crumples, she cannot push through, and the blade slips from her grasp. It tumbles to the ground in the same slow manner that she does.
When her knees hit the rock, she cries out.
Maddy leaps to straighten the cloak. It arcs through the air, the sides of it billowing. It covers Liva, ever so slowly.
Immediately, I step in with the belt and try to wrap it around her shoulders, as tight as humanly possible.
Finn kicks the dagger away.
Both Maddy and I lie half on top of Liva, trying to keep her down until we can restrain her. But the belt struggles to cooperate—I wish we had a length of rope instead—and Liva keeps struggling. She tears at the fabric, tries to break through.
I brace myself.
One knee on her back, the other on the rocky ground. I lean over to secure the belt. And maybe my balance shifts. Maybe Maddy’s grip isn’t as steady as we thought it was either. But the moment I reach over, Liva twists and turns.
She lashes out at me—
And everything goes white.
* * *
When the world blinks into existence again, the first thing I’m aware of is searing hot pain.
I’m lying on the ground, and around me, people are screaming.
A second hunting knife sticks in my hand, almost straight through it.
I’m going to faint again.
Without thinking, I reach out and pull it—and realize a second too late it’s the absolute worst thing I could do, because blood immediately gushes out. I’m not as savvy as any of the characters I play.
Just desperate.
I take a piece of tunic and push it into my hand, to stop
