The Marked Girl Read Free

sturdy, unmoving cement structure.
    â€œAre you guys okay?” Liv asked the strangers, who were starting to get to their feet. “I wouldn’t do that yet—” she started, but just as the second boy was dusting off his white pants, the earth started to move once again. Softer this time, but still with enough force to keep Liv low to the ground.
    The blond boy—once again scowling—turned to his companions. “I told you! I told you we should not have come to this hell. We are all going to die!”
    He took off running in the other direction, his feet slapping against the concrete as he struggled to stay upright through the shaking.
    â€œNo!” Liv screamed after him. “Wait till the aftershock stops!”
    But he was running too fast and too hard to hear. The blue-eyed boy and the girl exchanged a glance and took off running after him, not even sparing a look back to Liv. The blue-eyed boy scooped up the sword that he must have dropped when he’d fallen to the ground. Liv no longer cared enough to yell out after him. Now that the light had fallen into the river, her deposit was long gone anyway.
    After a few moments, the aftershock subsided. Liv pulled herself up to a sitting position and looked back to Shannon and the others.
    â€œAre you okay?” Shannon yelled out across the thirty feet ofcement that separated them.
    â€œYep! You?”
    â€œWe’re fine,” Shannon replied. “But I think Jeremy wet himself!”
    â€œShe lies!” Jeremy screamed back, voice breaking.
    Liv heard sirens in the distance, which was par for the course after any earthquake. She stood up and reached for her fallen prop sword. But something was off. It didn’t feel like the lightweight wood-and-plastic model she’d been holding earlier; the boy must have taken that one as he ran off. But his sword—the one she held now—was different.
    It was too heavy, for one. And its hilt felt smooth and hard, like polished stone. Liv held the blade up to the weak light coming from the streetlights on top of the bridge, and she gasped.
    The edges of the sword were beveled down to fine points, and they shone in the light. She ran a finger against one of them, lightly, and pulled it back fast when it broke her skin.
    This wasn’t any prop sword. It was real. It was dangerous.
    Liv’s head snapped up in the direction that the white-clad strangers had run off. But they were long gone.

THE HOLE IN THE SKY
Earlier That Night and Far, Far Away . . .
    T hey came for him in the middle of the night, the way that cowards do.
    Cedric West was deep in a dreamless sleep, the kind he sometimes brought on by drinking one too many glasses of mead with dinner. That night, he’d had yet another argument with his father, which had prompted him to drink not one, but three too many glasses.
    So when rough hands wrapped around his arms and shoulders, jerking him out of his bed, Cedric did not wake immediately. He remained in a state of oblivion until hoarse words carried on foul-smelling breath reached his ears and nose, respectively.
    â€œMorning, Your Highness.”
    Cedric opened his eyes only to find himself in a waking nightmare. The creature holding him had two blunt horns that curled up from its forehead, making it seem impossibly tall as it hovered over the bedside. Its jet-black eyes were set deep into a boulder-shaped head covered with grayish skin.
    Only the pain in Cedric’s arms was able to convince him that the hideous vision was real. And not only real, but familiar. A wrath.
    â€œBefore you think of screaming, look left,” the wrath growled in a voice that sounded like rocks falling over steel.
    Cedric struggled against the creature and looked to his left, where another bulky wrath blocked the entire frame of the doorway. The creature held tightly to a slight figure. She stood still, her white nightgown the only bright thing in the dim