“I will when I have something to say!” Greer snapped and when she spoke, her words sliced through the very land around her, shaking trees and rocks in equal measure.
Elowen fell silent, retreating, and Greer watched with fascination as little pebbles skittered down the slope beside her, jarred from their stasis by the residual echo of her voice. Even as her head throbbed, she felt a strange wave of pleasure in having created something so tangible.
Absentmindedly, she rubbed at her chest, feeling where Elowen’s words had sunk in. Though they’d hurt Greer, they didn’t seem to have affected anything else. Another stone, the size of her thumbnail, rolled downhill, leaving behind a squiggling wake.
Finn had said Ailie knew her daughter would be strong, stronger than even a mortal turned Bright-Eyed, but Greer hadn’t believed it. She couldn’t change her appearance, transforming into whatever suited her fancy. She couldn’t leap into the air, knowing wings would catch and hold her. She was not strong, not in the way Finn and Elowen were.
She reached out and traced the rock’s path.
But her voice had done that.
Elowen’s had not.
Greer remembered the moment she’d screamed Elowen out of the sky, the rolling thud as she’d smashed into the earth. She remembered the way the trees swayed and the river shifted.
She’d done that.
Perhaps that was the only weapon she needed.
The clouds were well and truly settled in, low enough that Greer felt she could reach out and touch them. The storm would soon be upon her.
She had no more time to wait.
She had no more time to waste.
Finn would have to find her on his own.
Greer stood and slung the pack over her shoulder.
“I’m coming, Elowen,” she said, not with a scream, not with a shout. Just a whisper she had no doubt the Bright-Eyed heard every syllable of. “I’m coming for you.”
Instead of followingthe miners’ road up the mountain, Greer kept to the forest running alongside it. Though Elowen obviously knew she was on her way, the road felt too open, too exposed for travel.
Snow had begun to fall. The flakes were thick and heavy, quickly dusting a layer of powder over everything and reducing the world to a palette of grays and whites.
The woods were littered with strange piles of debris: large swaths of metal railing curved into impossible shapes, wheels and cogs and levers and so many things she couldn’t identify, all torn apart, useless and rusting.
Iron,Greer realized, passing a giant spool of cable that was nearly as tall as she was.
This was iron machinery from the mines. When the Bright-Eyeds had taken the caverns, they must have ripped apart anything left behind, casting it down the mountain, exiling the cursed metal as far from them as they could.
The forest had begun to reclaim the space, covering the detritus in creeping vines and determined saplings. Greer thought about taking something with her, but even the smallest pieces weighed too much, and grasping the metal for only seconds was enough to make her own palms break into itchy discomfort. She shuddered to think how the creatures had stomached removing so many pieces themselves, and wondered why they simply hadn’t chosen a different spot to roost.
Greer wondered if she might somehow lure Elowen here and use her voice to impale her upon a ragged piece of railroad track. She smiled—picturing how Elowen’s limbs would flail like those of a pinned insect—then stopped short, wanting to cast the horrible idea from herself. Since she drank Finn’s blood, her mind no longer felt entirely her own, too easily prone to thoughts of dark desires and violence.
Greer closed her eyes and tried to wipe it clear of everything but Ellis.
She imagined how good their reunion would be, how she’d feel like herself again, secure and whole, because the other half of her heart would be back.
She drew a deep, centering breath, then opened her eyes and gasped.
There, just up the embankment, as if summoned by her thoughts, was Ellis.
He was holding his side and walking with a strange sort of hitch, favoring his right leg as he hop-walked down the road.
Greer wanted to race to him, wanted to crash into him and throw her arms around his neck. She wanted to pull him to her and cover him with a hundred kisses. A thousand. She never wanted to stop kissing him. But she held herself in check, remaining hidden in the shadows of the trees, certain this was a trap.
The wind shifted, hurling snowflakes into his eyes, and he tucked his arms tightly around his frame.
