He turned away, his figure as still as a statue. The silence between them was just as stony.
The snow continued to fall, dusting their shoulders in a limn of white.
Greer looked to the road, picturing it rising higher and higher until it reached the mines. “I know that you probably don’t want to help me now.”
After a long moment, Finn glanced back. His face was tight and unreadable. “I don’t…but I will. I’m not leaving you alone against the Gathered.”
The thought of him on her side cheered her more than it had any right to. She offered him a smile, small and tenuous. “What do we do now?”
“We could set up camp here tonight. If you need the rest.”
“No,” Greer decided, her refusal sounding every bit as flat as she felt. “I’m tired of camps and fires. I just want this to be over.”
He grimaced. “I wish we’d never learned of Ailie’s cloak. It would be the thing that would change it all. But it’s in Mistaken. Somewhere.”
There was no good answer, no right choice. Every bit of confidence she’d gained after slaying Salix had been stripped away. Elowen had moved so fast, killed with such ruthless efficiency. Greer couldn’t imagine matching that. They needed the cloak. But there wasn’t time.
She looked around the clearing, wondering if there was anything she might use as a weapon. Her eyes landed on a dark shape partially obscured in a snowdrift. “Father’s pack!”
She trudged over and pulled it free, surprised by its heft. Unbuckling the clasp, she removed wrapped smoked meats, a wedge of hard cheese, a flask with contents so strong it made her eyes water. There was a canteen, a map, extra gloves, extra socks. She kept unpacking, pulling out item after item.
Greer thrust her whole arm in, searching for a pistol, a knife,anything,but stopped when she brushed over something impossibly soft. She frowned, wondering that Hessel had thought to bring something so insubstantial with him.
She pulled, and a ball of velvet embroidered with sparkling threads as bright as the cosmos tumbled free. It spread open across the snow, shimmering with an otherworldly luster.
“Is that…” Finn stepped in to examine Greer’s find.
Hesselhadpacked a weapon. The best one in his arsenal.
“Mama’s cape.”
“You should putit on now,” Finn said, repeating the refrain as they readied for their final ascent.
Greer had transferred anything useful from Hessel’s bag to hers, and now sat on a fallen log, tightening the makeshift straps of Hessel’s broken snowshoes.
Ailie’s cloak was folded over her arm. She couldn’t yet bring herself to put it on, but also couldn’t bear to release it. Ailie had warned her never to play with it, and now, as it brushed against her, warming her side, Greer knew why.
The velvet radiated a power strange and difficult to understand until it was held. It was like looking into a pond choked with brackish water and spindly weeds. You couldn’t see through its depths, but you could sense things moving below the surface, things with keen eyes and powerful tails, things with jagged fins and pointed teeth.
Greer didn’t really believe the cloth would spring to life and harm her, but she had the irrational thought that it might try. She wondered if the cloak recognized her, if it could feel Ailie’s blood in her veins. When she put it on, would it rebel, chafing against a foolish girl who was decidedly not its owner?
But if itdidtake to her…
Greer shuddered as she imagined being wrapped in the dark energy she felt. Finn’s blood had already changed her in so many ways—what would a concentrated dose of Ailie do?
Would she be able to shift her form?
Would she be able to fly?
Both seemed beneficial against Elowen, but uncertainty kept Greer from pulling the cloak on and finding out.
“Maybe you should wear it.” She turned to Finn, ready to foist it upon him, but froze at the last moment, holding it close to her chest instead with a possessiveness she wasn’t entirely sure she felt.
Finn looked up in alarm. “It’s not mine to take.”
“But it could be, couldn’t it? You could wear it, and then you’d be king,” she reasoned.
“That’s not how it works. The queen is sovereign. The king is only her—”
