Fingernails digging into the fleshy meat of her palms, she waited.
She waited until she could bear it no longer.
Too much time had passed.
One peek couldn’t hurt. Maybe she could feign a birdcall, something to snag his attention and set him on the right path.
Greer pulled herself up and squinted over the edge once more.
Ellis was…
She scanned the darkening meadow.
Ellis was gone.
Greer fought to stand up, feet scrabbling for purchase along the smoothed hull of the tree. She twisted about in the tight space, checking the meadow behind her.
No Ellis.
She turned north, where a pair of Warding Stones dotted the farthest edge. A flash of light caught her attention, but it didn’t come from the Stones. It came from something just before them…
Greer blinked, unsure of what she was seeing.
Ellis had gone past Ailie’s tree. He’d gone right by it, heading for Mistaken’s border. He was over two hundred paces from her.
What was he doing?
“Ellis!” she dared to shout, heedless of any Hunters who might be nearby. “Ellis, I’m back here!”
She could hardly feel her feet as she climbed out, all but falling from the tree. When she pushed herself up, struggling to stand on legs as shaky as a newborn foal’s, she saw Ellis had looked back and spotted her.
She waved as a wide smile broke across her face.
Ellis returned her wave, but not her smile.
It was a strange gesture, one that looked far more like a farewell than a greeting.
Greer frowned and started to make her way to him. He shook his head and held his hand out, now a warning, an order to stay put, to stay back, to stay away from him.
Ellis’s lips moved, but, for the first time in her life, Greer could not hear him.
“What?” she shouted, confused and trembling.
He repeated himself, and though she still could not hear his words, she could read his lips.Don’t follow me.
For one dreadful moment, the heavy clouds parted, revealing the last sliver of sun as it slipped under the mountains to the west. Greer watched in horror as the sun sank, winking out like a candle blown. She heard the three rolls of the final Bellows. And somehow, impossibly, she watched as her beloved stepped over Mistaken’s border, breaking through the Warding Stone’s hold, and headed into the unknown wild, completely unscathed.
“Ellis!” she screamed, and charged across the clearing.
A giant gust of wind picked up as she approached the border. Greer tried pushing her way through it but could gain no purchase. It howled all around her, throwing grit into her teeth and eyes, and she felt as if the world was coming apart, but when she stumbled back toward the meadow, all was quiet. All was still.
“Ellis!”
She shouted for him over and over. She tried again to fight the wind, desperate to find the spot where Ellis had somehow slipped through. Tears fell, clogging her throat and blurring her vision, making it impossible to see. When her legs gave way, because she was too spentto hold her grief upright any longer, she sank, striking the ground with her misery and rage.
What had he done? Andhow? And—
Greer’s chest felt torn open, as if a wild animal had ripped her ribs apart before devouring her heart in one callous gulp.
