The Rain (Part III of the Runner Series)

Chapter 42

The darkness is absolute, unending. I feel it closing in around me, it's cold embrace drawing me further and further away from the light. Fear paralyzes and chokes as I continue to plummet.

Please.

A familiar voice floats through the haze. I strain to grasp onto the sound but my pathetic attempts only awaken sharp stabs of pain.

Please.

I want to keep fighting...I do but exhaustion has seeped it's way into my very bones. I am so tired and the urge to leave these troubles behind is becoming too tempting to ignore.

Please, Kay.

The voice refuses to let me go. Defiance flares and I redouble my efforts, tracking him across the divide. The darkness morphs into sharpened hooks, their ends scraping and tearing and threatening to pull me back under. I move sluggishly but steadily against them, keeping my sights trained on the point of light beyond and the voice attached.

When a hand brushes against my cheek I instinctively reach up to grab it. The last of the fog clears as I blink myself to focus and find him.

"Luca," Blackness turns to blue and I feel his hold on me tighten. "Are you hurt?"

He emits a strange sound, something between a laugh and a sob, "No. Are you?"

"No."

His slow smile sends a flutter through my chest. I search his dark features, pushing his hair away from his eyes.

"You came back." I marvel.

"So did you."

I open my mouth to reply when the memory of how I came to be lying on the soaked ground comes flooding back.

"Meg," Shooting upright, I forget myself and double over as a thousand fires burn. "Where is she?" I gasp.

"I'm here." The Queen appears beside me and I could cry from relief. Wrapping her in a hug I murmur a slew of apologies: everything from putting her in danger to abandoning the City.

"It's alright, it's alright." She shushes me. "I'm sorry too."

My bruised skin prickles beneath a fine mist and dimly I realize that the storm has quieted and that weak rays of sunlight are creeping across the ruined courtyard.

"Did they get out?" I blurt, drawing back. "Marc, Gus and the others? Do you know where Frye is? Was anyone hurt in the storm?"

"Slow down." Meg cups my face in her cool hands. "They're fine. Everyone's fine. The rain is over."

The rain is over.

A great weight lifts from my shoulders as a wave of exhaustion causes the scene to blur. I shake my head to clear it, frowning when I recall a final detail.

"And what of the Madam?" I ask, looking from Meg to Luca before scanning the sea of faces surrounding us.

The crowd parts and a gargantuan shadow materializes. Jaron stoops before me, his feathered robe soaked and shining sharp as daggers. When he unfurls his fist it takes me a moment to recognize the object laid flat in his palm.

A mechanical hook.

"It is finished." The menacing Waster chieftain is bloodied and splattered with the remnants of war but the unmistakable spark of victory turns him radiant. "The Madam is no more."

Gingerly, I take up the sharpened hook and study it. Confusion and a lingering fog make it difficult to sort my thoughts but eventually the truth hammers it's way home.