Page 92 of A Land So Wide
“Training?” Disbelief colored her echo. “As though I’m a soldier! Training for what?”
Finn let out a laugh of genuine surprise. “To kill her.”
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The skewer fellfrom Greer’s hands, dropping into the fire, but she didn’t notice until Finn was beside her, swiping up the meat.
“Kill her?” she echoed with horror. “Kill…” She gulped.
Finn tapped at the hare. “A little undercooked, but I think you’ll find that better now.”
“Why would I kill my mother?” Greer demanded, every word falling like thunder.
“Because she was the sovereign.”
Greer could only stare blankly.
“Because she was dying,” he tried again.
Now she laughed. “She wasn’t.”
“I promise you, she was.”
“Was she sick? Father said there’d been an accident, but—”
Finn stopped her. “Ailie was very, very old. It’s a wonder she was able to have you at all. Remember.” He paused. “Our kind can take on any form we need to.” In a flash, Finn’s face shifted into a dozen iterations of himself, going middle-aged before allowing his cheeks to round into the soft fullness of childhood, then turning into an old man. He transformed from man to woman, girl to boy, even becomingsomething that almost looked like her mother, but a terribly, terribly wrong version of her, a wizened crone, ancient and exhausted.
Greer grabbed his arm to stop him from making the old woman turn younger. She couldn’t bear to have any form of her mother with her now. “Finn, stop!”
He let out a little shudder and returned to himself once more. “Do you see?”
Greer nodded unhappily. “So…she was older than she looked. But why would she need someone to kill her? If she was so old…couldn’t she just…wait?”
Finn looked pained. “Yes, but…no. It doesn’t work that way. Not for a queen. She has powers that we just…don’t. The only way a successor can inherit the full power of a sovereign is to kill for it. The fights are brutal. Ailie knew the next leader—her challenger—would need to be strong. Strong enough to defeat her and hold so much power, strong enough to lead the Gathered. She knew a child strengthened with mortal blood would be up to such a task.”
“Me,” Greer said, summarizing everything with one small word.
“You,” he agreed. “But…when Ailie left, the woman you saw last night—Elowen—declared herself sovereign and no one has dared to challenge it.”
Greer shrugged. “Then you have a queen.”
Finn sighed. “Elowen may say she’s sovereign, but that doesn’t mean she has the power for it. Not truly.”
Greer considered this. “When Mama died, it was an accident. No one killed her, so her powers wouldn’t have transferred…Where did they go?”
“She cast them off when she went to live with the mortals. They’d be in her skin, her cloak,” he added. “Ailie’s velvet cloak.”
Her face fell. “I haven’t seen that in years. Father said…” Greer trailed off. WhathadHessel said? “It doesn’t matter anyway. The cloak is gone. You have a sovereign. So…” Her fingers twisted together.
Finn regarded the fire for a long moment, so deep in reflection she could practically hear his thoughts grind. “What do you know about bees?” Greer shrugged helplessly. “When a hive is in danger oflosing their queen, nursery bees will favor some of the eggs in their care, feeding them a special kind of jelly to make sure those bees are born queens. But a hive cannot have more than one sovereign. When the new queens are born, the old will seek them out and exterminate them.”
Greer’s blood ran cold with understanding. “Elowen is going to try to kill me?”
Finn nodded, his expression grim.
“But…I don’t want to killher. I don’t want her place.”
“You might someday. And she won’t wait till you change your mind. That’s why she took the boy. She’s drawing you out, forcing you to fight on her ground.”
