Osrik and Rissa get on one bird, Lu and Digby on the other, and me on the third. I grip Argo’s feathers, my leather gloves creaking with how stiff my grip is. Probably because I’m trying to keep hold of this false hope in a way that feels a lot like trying to strangle flowing water.
But I try anyway.
We lift into the sky, and my gaze drops as soon as we start flying over the broken land. The triangle-shaped break grows wider the longer we fly over it, though the fog still hugs the crevices.
I direct Argo to keep straight, following the path of the new wound in the ground until we reach the spot where the bridge once existed.
Now, there’s nothing but this icy, white and blue fog. No pillars, no gray path. No land that once led to it.
No piece of bridge still left.
Tears burn my eyes as we all pull up, timberwings hovering at the edge of the world where the fog rises up like a wall.
Frustration and grief crack open my chest as I stare at it. As reality hammers into me.
I’m never going to see them again.
A surge of anger comes over me, because how could this be it? How could this be the culmination of everything that’s happened? We won. Orea won. But I lost anyway.
Anger and denial hack into me. I tap my heel and jerk forward, and Argo jolts ahead at my wordless command, his wings flapping.
“Wait!” Osrik shouts, his gruff voice scraping toward me.
“Ryatt, no!” Lu yells.
I ignore them as Argo and I push into the fog, and we immediately get swallowed in its dense depths. My nerves drench me in cold sweat as soon as I’m surrounded by the cloying vapor, and Argo screeches, but I push him to keep going.
Every Orean knows better than to go into this void. There are many old stories about Seventh Kingdom doing trials when their kingdom still existed.
Three things were always made clear from those histories: if someone walked the bridge to nowhere, they wouldn’t come back. If someone fell down over the edge of the world, they’d just keep falling. And no one should ever fly into the fog, or they wouldn’t be able to fly back out.
Except maybe there’s a part of the bridge that still exists in all this murk. And if there’s a part, then there’s a chance.
A chance is all I need.
But my last false hope is kicked aside, because there is no bridge still suspended in the air. No piece left. No chance.
There’s nothing here, exceptnothing.
Only a thick haze of white and blue and an empty void that seems to stretch forever.
Just like that, my false hope breaks apart, pieces of it scraping at the backs of my eyes and making them sting.
I’ll never see my family again.
As if sensing my change in mood, Argo slows, hovering as my throat clogs with grief.
Grief for my mother and brother.
For Judd.
For Kitt and all my soldiers—for Finley and Maston.
For every innocent who died.
I feel the losses press against me even more than this suffocating fog.
But then I hear whispers.
