Somehow.
I take a seat at the base of the tree, surveying the burbling yellow marsh, coughing each time the wind delivers another cloud of stinging vapor into my face.
A hopeless laugh bubbles up from my depths, devoid of mirth.
“Well.” I reach for my pendant. “I guess you and I are overdue for a chat, anyway.”
The metal doesn’t warm, doesn’t respond, but why would it? Ishanna hasn’t answered me in days. Or…weeks? I can’t remember the last time true heat graced my fingertips. Maybe last night in the shadow wood, but maybe I only imagined that. Maybe I talkedmyselfout of doing something that both tantalizes and terrifies me in equal measure.
I swipe at my burning eyes, my gaze turning briefly skyward. “Goddess,” I croak, fumes swarming my throat and roughening my voice. I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore, who I’m invoking, whether I’m simply begging the universe at large. “Can you hear me? Are you there? Because I could really use your help right now.”
Nothing answers except the belch of the swamp below. Tears rush up my throat, and I swear they’re trying to fill an absence. Not only of Ishanna, but of my certainty. Because someone has cut it out of me at some point, so skillfully I didn’t even notice. Now I simply feel its lack, a chasm as deep as the bottomless pit churning in my belly.
“I’ve tried to be good,” I rasp. “All my life, I’ve tried to be good. I’ve listened to you. Honored you, worshipped you. I’ve offered you everything. My obedience, my thoughts, my future.” The words pour from my tongue, welling up from some shadowy place inside me before vanishing into the bilious clouds of vapor. “But I don’t know if you even want that. If you wantme. Because you skipped over me when you gave Carina her Grace. You’ve ignored me all my life, let the fae king Claim me. You let me end up in this horrible maze, and get tied to a wheel, and haven’t bothered to help me. You haven’t saved me from a single thing. But…but…”
My breath shortens, words piling in my throat. Words I shouldn’t say, but what does it matter, here at the edge of nowhere, with no one tohear me, no one to care? “Buttheyhave. They’ve saved me.Hehas, I mean. And he wants me, in a way no one else ever has. In a way I didn’t even know existed. And now…now I don’t know what to do. How to keep believing in you when you haven’t actually given me anything to believein.”
I wait, but the pendant just sits between my fingers, a lifeless chunk of metal. I flick it away and bury my face between my knees. Guilt surges, trying to suck me down into its embrace.
A single, scalding tear traces a path down my cheek. I wipe it away and contemplate the gyre in my hand. Using it would mean surrendering in more ways than one.
But what choice do I have, if Ishanna won’t hear me?
“Goddess,” I whisper. “Please, just get me off this island. I’ll forgive you for everything else—the Claiming, the labyrinth, the wheel, those horrible trolls. I can forget all that, if you’ll just get me off this rock.”
Silence. A faint breeze rises, rustling the strands of dead grass, which swish against the equally dead tree beside me.
I swipe at my eyes again. Consider the grass, then the tree, with its silvery, smooth-worn wood.
An idea flickers, my gaze swinging to the shore. It’s notthatfar off, at least not along this side of the island. Maybe I could topple this tree, bridge the gap. If so, I could shimmy along the trunk, cross safely over the burbling goo before dropping onto solid ground.
Something loosens in my chest. Yes, that could work. And I have my knife to help me—the Shadow tucked it back into its sheath while I was sleeping.
I slide the blade free and go to work sawing at the tree trunk, my muscles flooding with new purpose.
The castle isn’t my only option.Giving upisn’t my only option.
My hands cramp and my shoulder blades burn, but I hack at the tree, carving a wedge from the wood.
When the trunk starts to teeter, I give it a shove. It shakes and shudders and something cracks inside, but it doesn’t topple, so I shove again, this time with even more force.
My shoulder crashes against the trunk, again and again. The tree finally surrenders with a groan, wood splinteringas the trunk crashes down across the marsh. The far end bites into the muddy shore, forming a slanted bridge that will lead me away from this place.
I waste no time. I shove my dagger into its sheath and shimmy onto the tree on my bottom, feet-first, intending to use the trunk as a sort of slide. I can lower myself with my boots, use the snapped-off remnants of old branches to brace myself every few feet.
Still, I keep my gyre gripped tight. If I fall…
Well, I won’t fall. I won’t even look down.
Yellow fumes billow up around me, pulling a wracking cough from my lungs. I squint through my burning vision, lowering myself a foot, then two, then five.
My body wobbles, and I brace myself with a hand propped against the trunk behind me. I keep the other clutched around my gyre, which hampers my efforts, but I need a backup plan.Somethingto save me if this goes wrong.
I descend another three feet. Another.
But the trunk tilts beneath me, its incline growing steeper. As if it’s…sinking?
My heart launches into my mouth. The top of the tree smolders and sizzles, submerging slowly as yellow goo eats away at the wood.
