“Let me go!” I kick at her stomach.
She moans, her words a distorted mess ofSorryandPleaseandDon’t let me dieandI’ll be better, I swear it.I grimace, trying to focus on maintaining my grip. Water slicks the rock. Its corners catch against my palms as they begin to slide.
Suddenly, two tendrils of air loop tightly around my wrists. My heart somersaults with hope as the wind tugs me upward, but then shadow lashes down, severing the bond.
My weight returns, heavy as stone. With Lady Clarisse hanging from my legs, I haven’t the strength to haul myself to safety. My arms tremble with weakness. I slip lower down the rock.
“Please, Min. Please don’t let me die.” Her pleas reach me in muted waves. “Don’t let your mother die.”
I bite back a yelp of disbelief. “Oh,nowyou claim to be my mother? Where were you when I was young? When all I wanted was to be close to you? To lo—” I bite the inside of my cheek. I cannot, will not, say it.
“Everything I did was for you, Min, don’t you see? Only through suffering would you become strong.”
“You tried to drown me!” I scream, kicking at her. She breaks into another round of garbled weeping, arms wrapped around my knees as we swing, two leaves in the wind.
“And I was w-w-wrong,” she blubbers. “I see th-that now.”
My lips curl. “Stop stuttering.”
She falls quiet.
I dig my fingers harder into the stone, teeth gritted. The East Wind will come. I just need to hold on a little longer. “You’re not my mother,” I spit. “You never were.”
Only then do I look down at Lady Clarisse, the woman who gave me life but little else. I see nothing of Nan in her countenance, nothing of me. Grief warped her heart, and greed pieced it into something cold and unfeeling.
As her tear-filled eyes meet mine, I understand it is for the last time. “Goodbye, Lady Clarisse.”
With a final kick, her hands fall away. She drops, her body breaking on the rocks.
I tilt back my head, blinking away tears. Today was not meant for death. Today was meant for life and living. What hurts is not whatwas. It is whatcould have been. For I have often wondered if there might be a life in which I knew my mother, and was loved by her, and known. And now that will never be.
With her ladyship’s weight gone, I thought I’d have the strength to claw my way up the ledge, but the pain in my shoulders is unbearable. I hang there, a dead weight twisting in the wind. “Eurus!”
The soles of my water-logged loafers skate downward, losing contact with the rock. I dig deep,deepinside myself, dragging up whatever strength remains. But I am tired. My body has reached the threshold of what it can sustain.
I tried, I think. With everything that I am, I tried.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and let go.
32
ACHILL WIND WHIPS PASTme as I fall, and I fall, and I fall.
The jagged rocks rise up, the dark sea seething below. A wave reaches for me. It curls, collapses into white foam. All this time, it has awaited my return, and yet, fear cannot touch me. I have come far. I have fought and risen and broken the chains that bound me. If this is where I end, so be it.
Something wraps my upper arm, and the abrupt cessation of downward motion nearly wrenches my shoulder from its socket.
An agonized scream peals out of me. Amidst the gusting storm, I swing wildly, rain pelting my face and bare arms. Somehow, I manage to tilt back my head. My throat locks tight around a gasp. “Eurus?”
The East Wind pitches sideways, and a great bellow of pain leaves him.
His wings.The right one is most definitely broken. The left has been stripped down to gray skin, its scales torn away.
A crash of thunder sets my ears to ringing. “We need to land!” I cry, pointing to an overhang below.
A powerful gust blows us toward the cliff face, but Eurus manages to guide us safely onto the ledge. As soon as we touch down, he collapses with a muffled curse.
“Eurus.” Crawling to his side, I kneel, taking his face into my palms. “I’m here.”
