Page 94 of A Land So Wide
She so desperately wanted not to believe him, to deny everything he’d told her.
But she’d seen him change before her very eyes.
And, even more, she remembered how her mother had been.
There’d always been something of the uncanny in Ailie Mackenzie.Her sad, wistful smiles, the distant glint in her eyes, the way it sometimes felt as though she was in two places at once.
Her mother was a Bright-Eyed.
Sovereign over them all.
“Did my father know? About what Mama was? About what I…am?”
The revelation didn’t sit right with her, didn’t make her feel good. Greer was uncomfortably aware of the wild blood running in her veins now, of all the differences that set her apart.
“Who,” he corrected again. “Who you are.”
Greer dipped her head, unsure if it was in shame or contempt.
“I would guess not. Eat,” he urged, nodding toward the meat in her hands.
Greer took a bite, then another, relying on rote movements to swallow, then bite again. “I don’t know how to fight,” she admitted. “Not against someone like her. Like you,” she added, listening to him crunch apart bones with minimal effort. “You say I’m like you, but I’m not. I can’t change. I’m not big or vicious. I can’t fly. I can’t even cross a river without drowning.”
“You’ll think of something,” he reassured her.
“So you…” She stopped to consider her words. “You want me to win? To kill Elowen?”
“It’s what our queen wanted. Our lives serve her pleasures.”
“But you’re here, helping me now. You saved me. Twice,” she reminded him. “Did Elowen tell you to do that? To help the poor little mortal so that she could rip me to pieces in front of all her court?”
“Not that queen,” Finn said softly.
“You’re still loyal to Mama,” she realized. He bobbed his head. “And me by extension.”
His eyes darted away, as if she’d guessed something he hadn’t wanted known. “Yes.”
“What do you think will happen when we get into the mountains? Truly?”
“I think luck will be on your side. I think you’ll prevail.”
“And then?” Greer removed the second leg from the skewer. Shetore into the meat, eager to fill the hole of doubt and fear growing in her. “What happens then?”
“You’ll become queen.”
“Of monsters.” The thought filled Greer with unfathomable dread.
Finn’s eyebrows furrowed, wounded. “Of your people.”
Greer’s gullet lurched. She wasn’t one of them. Not truly.
She still felt like herself. Mostly.
Herself and a little something more.
She pushed aside the notion, even as she felt her blood stir, intrigued and eager to explore that tiny, treacherous word.
Mostly.
