Page 132 of A Land So Wide
Finn considered the cavern, taking in the ancient bridge, the thick, rocky walls, the entire weight of the mountain pressing down upon them. “It doesn’t have to be like this. If we lead them north, out of the mines and into the wilds, we could—”
Greer shook her head, silencing him. “They’d still be cruel. They’d still be calculating and crave human blood. They don’t listen to Elowen; what makes you think that would change with me?”
“But with Ailie’s—”
“It’s nearly gone!” Her head throbbed with the force of the outburst. “They drank almost all of it.”
Finn looked horrified. His jaw clenched, and she could practically hear his grinding thoughts. “Then we finish them,” he finally said, his words surprising in their simplicity, ringing as hollow as a bird’s bones. “All of them.”
Greer stared up at him, wishing her head was clear so that she could say everything she wanted to. But it wasn’t, so she only nodded, her throat tight.
“But first…”
“Blood,” she agreed.
“You take the lead,” he said, gesturing to the bridge.
It was too narrow for them to walk across together, but as Finn nudged her forward, Greer’s hand slipped into his. It was an act of solidarity, a promise of commitment. They would do this terrible thing together, as a team. And after…
Greer didn’t know.
Though she couldn’t guess at what her future now looked like, she felt certain Finn would have a place within it. Not as consort, not as husband or lover, but as a partner all the same. What they’d done, what they would do, would forever bond them. They were sealing their fates in blood.
Every step forward hurt.
Greer felt the iron like a wall of fire. Its sharpness singed at her, sizzling little dots of red blisters along any exposed skin. Her throat and nasal passages were raw and stinging. Her fingers swelled and hurt to move.
“Why do they live here?” she gasped, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. “Why would Mama have ever chosen this place?”
“The other tunnels aren’t bad,” he began, his words strained and tight. “They’re warm and offer protection against the worst of the winter storms.”
“Isn’t there any other way out?”
“Not without doubling back to Elowen.”
Greer groaned and pressed forward. To distract herself from the pain, she darted her eyes around the massive cavern. The rocky crevices had been smoothed to a polished luster by millennia’s worth of rainwater and snowmelt. Spiky stalactites dripped overhead, looking like a colony of roosting bats.
They hung across the ceiling, each one unique, a sculpture made not by the chiseling of man, but from the steady drip of water. Some were simple fangs, blunted points of minerals, but others had formed into fantastical masterpieces. Greer’s overwrought imagination turned them into undulating curtains, upside-down castle turrets, creatures with gills and fins, tails and feathers, folded wings…
“Finn?” she asked slowly as her gaze landed on the shape directly above him. It was large and dark and shifting with the smallest of movements, the slightest of tremors. It wasbreathing.
The attack began before she could finish her warning.
The cavern erupted, a messy swirl of noise and chaos as all around them, stalactites unfurled, revealing themselves as hidden Bright-Eyeds.
This was not the five monsters Greer had thought remained, nor even the twelve Finn had guessed at. This court was dozens strong, a hundred, maybe more. It was an army, a horde, a legion.
Greer took in the magnitude of the flying bodies with grim realization.
They would not survive this.
She would not survive.
But Ellis would.
Ellis would, and Mistaken, too, and all of the other outposts and villages, the land’s first people, and all the others who came after, the mountains to the west, the plains to the south, the whole world over.
With one bold action, she could save them all.
