Ro cocks her head and considers me, and the longer the moment stretches, the tighter she grips, until I cry out in pain.
“No, Indira,” she leans in close and whispers, “I would have let you fall.”
Before my limp, wrung-out body can react, Ro throws herself forward and turns, using her momentum to whip me around. So our positions are reversed, and the crumbling ledge is atmyback.
“What are you doing?” I yell.
“What’s best for Tashir,” Rowenna says.
“No!”
The scream is so loud and sharp, it must be coming from me. This is the sound I make when I die. Except my lips are closed, and Rowenna has turned to look back over her shoulder.
The scream rends the air again, followed by a splintering crack—different from the deep groan of the crumbling cliff edge. This is more like the sound Soren’s head made when he tripped and fell from this very same cliff.
Rowenna’s golden eyes widen, and she almost looks like she’s going to laugh. Then she collapses on top of me, and I see the sickening dentin the back of her skull, feel the warm trickle of blood running over my hands, and, finally, notice Lady Elodie Tomasko, standing there in her glittering gown, holding a large, bloodied rock.
I have just enough time to sputter Elodie’s name before the momentum of Rowenna’s body carries us both over the edge.
Forty-Eight
Elodie drops the stone and stumbles forward, reaching for me the same way I reached to save Rowenna.
I don’t know how she found her way up here, or where she found the courage to strike Rowenna, but I do know one thing: She did it forme.To saveme. My most unlikely and truest friend.
Her fingers lock around my wrist, and she gasps as the added weight drags her forward. Her braids fall from their intricate knot, and her skirt tears as she’s dragged through the rocks, but she notices none of it.
“I’ve got you,” Elodie promises, but she’s wearing silky gloves adorned with pearls, and I already feel them slipping off her delicate fingers. Her face contorts with effort. She struggles and strains forbidding me to fall, but every second the glove slips a little lower until it eventually rips free.
Elodie screams my name as I plummet. I can see the panic in her eyes, her mind frantically searching for another solution, but she’s already done far more than expected. More than my own sister did. So instead of screaming with terror, I muster a small smile. So she knows how grateful I am, how much her efforts mean, and how comforting it is to die, knowing I wasn’t alone. I had a few true friends on this mountaintop.
“Help Alaric!” I scream into the wind, but I don’t know if she heard before her face is replaced by the gray blur of the cliff.
Then it’s just me and the sky. And Rowenna, too, I realize—falling with me. Leading the way, even in death.
It’s tragic but also, inexplicably,rightthat we should die together. She was there from the very beginning—my oldest friend, pulling me into her arms as I drew my first breath and, now, falling into oblivion with our last.
I wonder if she felt a twinge of remorse in her final moments. If she regretted trying to shove me over the ledge. I don’t regret saving her, but Idoregret living so much of my life in her shadow. I regret that she never got to know this stronger, braver version of me. This girl who has always had so much more to offer our people and country beyond the planting beds. But in my desperation to be exactly like Rowenna, I didn’t leave space for my own roots to grow. I loved my sister so much,I forgot to love and nurture myself, and she never tried to correct me. She was more than happy to soak up all of the sunshine for herself.
This should probably infuriate me, but even now I can’t bring myself to hate her. Just as I don’t fault myself for loving her—for always seeing the best in her, even when it was no longer true. There’s beauty in loving someone for their potential, for treating them as if there was never any doubt they’d grow into the most glorious version of themselves.
I can’t hate the bagrava for the same reason. And I don’t regret sowing and tending it, despite knowing it could be stolen by the Marauders or taken by the Vanzadorians. The plant isn’t to blame when wicked people misuse it. Just as I’m not to blame for how Rowenna used me. We can’t control how our love is received or what others choose to do with it. We can only sow the best of ourselves into the soil of each relationship and hope our hearts are tended well.
And if not, there’s still hope. Just like plants can be propagated and replanted, there’s always an opportunity to start over and try again. A way for a piece of us to continue on, even if the original roots have rotted.
That’s all I can hope for now—that some piece of me will live on to see the future I attempted to cultivate with Alaric. A world where Tashir and Vanzador will flourish together. I want so badly to see it. To till the ground of the new world we sacrificed so much to create. But even knowing the seed has been planted is enough.
It has to be.
The bottom must be close now. I wish it would come faster. I’m ready to escape this place between worlds and sprint into the Great Fields Beyond—wherever, and whatever, that may be.
I used to try to picture it when I was young, but I could never conjure anything other than light, even brighter than the sun. Now that I’m so close to crossing that threshold, I feel strangely certain the Great Fields Beyond are different for each of us—like millions of individualized planting beds we can cultivate as we see fit, each of us pruning, planting, and tending our own eternity. And in mine, there will always be a sea of purple bagrava.
Surprisingly, I see Alaric there, too, sprawled out on his back, hands clasped behind his head. His bare, pale chest a stark contrast to the deep violet petals.
Even in my fantasies, he refuses to wear a shirt.
My heart judders as I realize this might not be a fantasy. Alaric could be joining me there soon. He could be there already, dead from a woundIinflicted. I can only pray he’ll eventually forgive me. That he’ll be waiting for me with his smoldering smile and beautiful eyes.
