Grey Strength 10

“Ladies first,” I said, gesturing for Caera to start the climb.

Her brows turned down as she glared at me, and her eyes flicked from me to the steep descent behind us and back. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was considering pushing me down the mountainside, but in the end she just sighed and started searching for a path up the cliff.

I stayed right below her, hoping to catch her if she fell, but it wasn’t Caera who slipped.

About halfway up the cliff, I missed a handhold and my toe slipped from the crack in which I’d wedged it. My stomach lurched as I grabbed for a protruding piece of rock, but in my haste I crushed the rock in my fist, fell back out of reach of the wall, and tumbled the twenty feet back to the ground, landing with a thud at the base of the cliff.

I watched from below as the highblooded Alacryan woman moved up the wall like a trained mountain climber. Only after she’d heaved herself over the ledge above did I attempt the climb again, this time pushing aether through my legs and leaping as high as I could, then slamming my aether coated hands like wedges into the narrow cracks.

Looking down, I had covered over a quarter of the climb with a single leap.

Getting a good foothold, I repeated the maneuver, throwing myself upward another twenty feet or so, then wedging my hands into a series of cracks, widening them and causing a shower of stone chips and dust.

Caera peeked down from the top of the cliff just as I threw myself upward for the third time. She shook her head. “Why not just grow wings and fly, Grey?”