Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

And yes, I was going to hell, because we’d shoved the patch down his throat first. But I’d been to hell, and it beat the shit out of faerie. So that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the patch that was supposed to work, that had just been working, damn it, wasn’t working now.

Because the only thing that caught us as we spun into the void was gravity.

For a moment, everything stopped. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes because I couldn’t see much of anything. Just the spray crashing into the rocks behind us, bursting into the air above us, and then leaping out into the vast void ahead. And then we were following the droplets, arcing and dipping and falling and screaming—

And hitting something and spinning and tumbling and catching.

And then juddering and plunging and shooting ahead, like on a flume ride at the world’s most sadistic fair. Somebody was still screaming, but I didn’t think it was me this time since I couldn’t even seem to breathe. Or to think, except to wonder where all the water had suddenly gone.

Because it had, like the world’s biggest faucet had just been turned off.

Only no, I realized, shoving a mass of soaked hair out of my face and gasping for air.

Not turned off.

Just out of reach. Because the enormous fall of water—and God, it was freaking enormous—was still boiling away near enough to

keep on soaking us, but too far away to keep on killing us, because we were watching it from a vantage point out in the void. A vantage point made up of a tiny island of smoking wood and screaming trolls, because the patch, the goddamned wonderful patch, had worked!

The boat turned lazily, wafted about by the air gusts coming off all that spray, and I realized that I was about to snap Pritkin in two, girly arms or not. But he didn’t seem to mind; he didn’t even seem to notice, maybe because he was busy noticing something else. And then so was I. And oh. My. God.

I twisted around to get a better view. And then just sat there, wide-eyed and shaking. And staring at something that would have cost half a blockbuster’s budget to fake.

But it wasn’t fake; it was just fantastic.

The waterfall made up one side of a cavern that the term “humongous” might have been coined for. The other sides were dark rock spotted with patches of crystals and more waterfalls, small only in comparison to the mammoth we’d just fallen over. Some tumbled across rocky ledges fifteen, maybe twenty stories above our heads, so tall that they evaporated into the mist that was spawning rainbows in the air all around us before they could hope to hit down. Others started far below, spilling their water into something I couldn’t see, because there was some light leaking in from far above, but the bottom of the cavern disappeared into darkness.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful.

And breathtaking, not that I had any left. But I’d get it back. I’d get it back because we were alive—alive, alive, alive, and everything was beautiful!

I looked up at Pritkin, who was standing just behind me in the prow of the ship. He looked pretty beat up, but a second ago, it hadn’t mattered. He’d been staring around with the same awe I felt, like a man who’d just stared death in the face and seen it shrug. But now the light had drained out of his face, and he wasn’t even looking at the cave anymore.

He was looking at the waterfall.

And the gleaming warrior that had just appeared on top of it.

The fey was standing on one of the largest boulders, spray shooting up all around him, his long, too-white hair whipping wildly around his face. I didn’t know how he got there, because the rock was almost smack in the middle of the waterfall, not near any convenient stepping-stones. But I knew what he was doing.

Because of course he was. Of course he was. Anybody else would have assumed that the fall would have killed us, but not the fey. No, they’d had to see what happened for themselves.

And they were.

Because our little flotilla was nowhere in sight.

I craned my head around, but there wasn’t a single other beat-up boat anywhere. Damage, I suddenly remembered. The illusions Pritkin used didn’t hold up to damage. That must have been what the firestorm was for.

And I guess falling over Niagara hadn’t helped.

“I’m sorry,” Pritkin said, his hand clenching on my shoulder.

“Don’t apologize,” I said, my voice shaking. “Don’t you dare.”

“I involved you in this. They were chasing me, not you. I didn’t think, and I didn’t protect—”

“I got myself into this. And I don’t need protection.”