Rivals and Retribution by Shannon Delany Page A

knew it was bruising beneath her fingers. “But I think this is a lesson we all need to learn,” she said.
    “What?” Gareth asked. “For me, ’Laena, don’t…”
    Marlaena hesitated.
    We were both frozen on top of the mountain, and not because of the crushing cold. Pietr rushed toward us, Gareth’s fingertips nearly at my sleeve as Marlaena’s grip tightened on me and Dmitri lowered his gun and took aim.
    At me.
    If Marlaena wasn’t going to end me, he would.
    Their images blurred and faded into the darkness and I was again in Derek’s head, gasping as my world—the present world—was ripped out from under me.
    “She needs to move. Get inside quickly, push her, and get out.”
    We vaulted into Wanda’s brain, stood inside the hallway that made up the heart of her head, and stared down at the doors. One vibrated in the wall as if it knew our intention. Without a second thought we yanked the door open and stepped inside.
    Before us was a chess board filled with figurines in black and white. The red squares among the army of figures were marked with words; scrawled across each in Wanda’s own handwriting was the name of a city or town in the local region. “There.” We pointed as one, reading Junction. Derek stepped forward to grab a pawn and shift it to the spot, but I recoiled, seeing that each pawn was a figure of Wanda.
    “Move,” he insisted, sliding the pawn forward.
    “More,” Mommy urged. “Shift them all to that position so that the message is understood, so that the need is fierce.” And we did.
    The chessboard beneath our feet slanted, shifting, the ground rumbling below us. “Move,” we shouted as everything tilted and we were thrown from the board. We screamed, racing back toward the open door.
    “Hold on,” Mommy cried, and everything went black, my vision clearing just enough …
    “You can’t save everyone.” Marlaena’s voice broke through the fog fuzzing up my brain.
    … and I took the best advice I’d gotten in the past few hours.
    I moved .
    Marlaena shifted as the gun fired, pulling me back—out of harm’s way?—but not before the ropes binding my wrists came free and I’d grabbed her pant leg, unbalancing her and sending us both tumbling. Damn it—whose side was she on?
    All I heard were screams: hers, mine, Pietr’s, and Gareth’s.
    Then there was the noise—and the sharp and bitter pain—as my body barreled down the mountainside, crashing awkwardly into snow and stone and chunks of trees and mashing the breath and the thoughts out of me, but not the will.
    My arms and legs pinwheeled, flailing, but my hands kept grasping stubbornly for anything that might slow my progress down the steep slope. The snow and ice made grass and vines impossible to find, and when my hand suddenly snagged in something I screamed at the pain burning through my left shoulder as my body suddenly ripped to a stop, my hand caught in the root of a downed tree. “Breathe, just breathe,” I whispered, my right hand trying to find a grip and pull me up to alleviate the weight that pulled on my shoulder and wrist and made me scream and curse.
    I dug into the snow with my right hand, feeling carefully—and quickly as my fingers became numb—for another root or a branch or an oddly shaped rock … anything to help me move up the mountainside instead of continuing down.
    I cried, tears streaking out the only heat on my stinging face. The taste of blood made me guess a split lip was among my many injuries. All of me ached, bursts of sharp pain intersected with throbbing dull pain, and my vision swam with more than tears.
    About five feet below me and to my left I heard Marlaena whimper, clinging awkwardly to something that was protruding from the stubborn snow still clinging to the cliff side.
    I crawled up far enough to take the weight off my left hand and shoulder and, looping my right arm through another sturdy-looking tangle of roots, I pulled my left free with a sob. “Not good,” I