Page 44 of A Land So Wide

T he skewer fell from Greer’s hands, dropping into the fire, but she didn’t notice until Finn was beside her, swiping up the meat.

“Kill her?” she echoed with horror. “Kill…” She gulped.

Finn tapped at the hare. “A little undercooked, but I think you’ll find that better now.”

“Why would I kill my mother?” Greer demanded, every word falling like thunder.

“Because she was the sovereign.”

Greer could only stare blankly.

“Because she was dying,” he tried again.

Now she laughed. “She wasn’t.”

“I promise you, she was.”

“Was she sick? Father said there’d been an accident, but—”

Finn stopped her. “Ailie was very, very old. It’s a wonder she was able to have you at all.

Remember.” He paused. “Our kind can take on any form we need to.” In a flash, Finn’s face shifted into a dozen iterations of himself, going middle-aged before allowing his cheeks to round into the soft fullness of childhood, then turning into an old man.

He transformed from man to woman, girl to boy, even becoming something that almost looked like her mother, but a terribly, terribly wrong version of her, a wizened crone, ancient and exhausted.

Greer grabbed his arm to stop him from making the old woman turn younger. She couldn’t bear to have any form of her mother with her now. “Finn, stop!”

He let out a little shudder and returned to himself once more. “Do you see?”

Greer nodded unhappily. “So…she was older than she looked. But why would she need someone to kill her? If she was so old…couldn’t she just…wait?”

Finn looked pained. “Yes, but…no. It doesn’t work that way.

Not for a queen. She has powers that we just…

don’t. The only way a successor can inherit the full power of a sovereign is to kill for it.

The fights are brutal. Ailie knew the next leader—her challenger—would need to be strong.

Strong enough to defeat her and hold so much power, strong enough to lead the Gathered.

She knew a child strengthened with mortal blood would be up to such a task. ”

“Me,” Greer said, summarizing everything with one small word.

“You,” he agreed. “But…when Ailie left, the woman you saw last night—Elowen—declared herself sovereign and no one has dared to challenge it.”

Greer shrugged. “Then you have a queen.”

Finn sighed. “Elowen may say she’s sovereign, but that doesn’t mean she has the power for it. Not truly.”

Greer considered this. “When Mama died, it was an accident. No one killed her, so her powers wouldn’t have transferred…Where did they go?”

“She cast them off when she went to live with the mortals. They’d be in her skin, her cloak,” he added. “Ailie’s velvet cloak.”

Her face fell. “I haven’t seen that in years. Father said…” Greer trailed off. What had Hessel said? “It doesn’t matter anyway. The cloak is gone. You have a sovereign. So…” Her fingers twisted together.

Finn regarded the fire for a long moment, so deep in reflection she could practically hear his thoughts grind.

“What do you know about bees?” Greer shrugged helplessly.

“When a hive is in danger of losing their queen, nursery bees will favor some of the eggs in their care, feeding them a special kind of jelly to make sure those bees are born queens. But a hive cannot have more than one sovereign. When the new queens are born, the old will seek them out and exterminate them.”

Greer’s blood ran cold with understanding. “Elowen is going to try to kill me?”

Finn nodded, his expression grim.

“But…I don’t want to kill her . I don’t want her place.”

“You might someday. And she won’t wait till you change your mind. That’s why she took the boy. She’s drawing you out, forcing you to fight on her ground.”

Greer froze. “Took the boy? Ellis?”

It didn’t make sense. Hessel had sent Ellis out as a sacrifice for the Benevolence. The Bright-Eyeds had nothing to do with it.

Did they?

Greer recalled the deep slashes carved into the skull she’d found in the woods.

She thought of the Bright-Eyeds’ talons, how they were just the right size, more than capable of inflicting such damage.

She thought of the Bright-Eyed who’d been there, waiting for Ellis to cross the border, ready to follow after him.

The Benevolence were giving the Bright-Eyeds the sacrifices. There was no other explanation. But it was too terrible and too unwieldy a thought to process; Greer slammed it to the back of her mind, to return to later.

“What happens to Ellis once everything is over?”

“I suppose that depends on who wins.” Finn brought the snow hare to his mouth and took a ferocious bite into its side. Though patently not cold, Greer shivered.

“Elowen will kill him,” she guessed. “Feed on him.”

“She could make him her consort,” he offered, talking around a mouthful of meat.

“Against his will?”

“She can be quite beautiful when it suits her.”

“But Ellis loves me.” Though these words were so small and simple, they held everything.

Finn said nothing as he continued to eat, chewing through tendons, snapping and grinding bones, wholly indifferent.

Greer could scarcely believe what she was about to ask, but she saw no other choice. There would be no reasoning with a Bright-Eyed, no way to assure or make promises. “How would I fight her? How do you kill a sovereign?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never seen it myself. Ailie had been queen since before I was made.”

“Made?” she repeated.

“I wasn’t always this way,” Finn admitted. “I was like you, once.” Here, he laughed. “Well. No one has ever been quite like you. But…mortal.”

“You were human?” She was aghast.

He nodded.

“What happened?”

“Elowen.”

She waited for him to explain.

“She turned me. Gifted me her blessing.”

“Blessing—blood,” she clarified. “She fed you her blood?”

Finn nodded.

“How much?”

“I wouldn’t know. No one ever explained it to me. Ailie was very adamant that our numbers must remain small. When Elowen made me…it was an uncomfortable time for the Gathered.”

“Do you remember what you were like…before?”

He chewed thoughtfully, taking his time. “It was many, many years ago.”

Greer sighed, exhaustion settling in. Too much had happened in too short a time. Her mind felt stretched full, unable to hold any more. Wearily, she pulled the rabbit from her skewer and ate, mulling hard.

She so desperately wanted not to believe him, to deny everything he’d told her.

But she’d seen him change before her very eyes.

And, even more, she remembered how her mother had been.

There’d always been something of the uncanny in Ailie Mackenzie. Her sad, wistful smiles, the distant glint in her eyes, the way it sometimes felt as though she was in two places at once.

Her mother was a Bright-Eyed.

Sovereign over them all.

“Did my father know? About what Mama was? About what I…am?”

The revelation didn’t sit right with her, didn’t make her feel good. Greer was uncomfortably aware of the wild blood running in her veins now, of all the differences that set her apart.

“Who,” he corrected again. “Who you are.”

Greer dipped her head, unsure if it was in shame or contempt.

“I would guess not. Eat,” he urged, nodding toward the meat in her hands.

Greer took a bite, then another, relying on rote movements to swallow, then bite again.

“I don’t know how to fight,” she admitted.

“Not against someone like her. Like you,” she added, listening to him crunch apart bones with minimal effort.

“You say I’m like you, but I’m not. I can’t change.

I’m not big or vicious. I can’t fly. I can’t even cross a river without drowning. ”

“You’ll think of something,” he reassured her.

“So you…” She stopped to consider her words. “You want me to win? To kill Elowen?”

“It’s what our queen wanted. Our lives serve her pleasures.”

“But you’re here, helping me now. You saved me. Twice,” she reminded him. “Did Elowen tell you to do that? To help the poor little mortal so that she could rip me to pieces in front of all her court?”

“Not that queen,” Finn said softly.

“You’re still loyal to Mama,” she realized. He bobbed his head. “And me by extension.”

His eyes darted away, as if she’d guessed something he hadn’t wanted known. “Yes.”

“What do you think will happen when we get into the mountains? Truly?”

“I think luck will be on your side. I think you’ll prevail.”

“And then?” Greer removed the second leg from the skewer. She tore into the meat, eager to fill the hole of doubt and fear growing in her. “What happens then?”

“You’ll become queen.”

“Of monsters.” The thought filled Greer with unfathomable dread.

Finn’s eyebrows furrowed, wounded. “Of your people.”

Greer’s gullet lurched. She wasn’t one of them. Not truly.

She still felt like herself. Mostly.

Herself and a little something more.

She pushed aside the notion, even as she felt her blood stir, intrigued and eager to explore that tiny, treacherous word.

Mostly .

What differences lay in who she’d been and who she was now? She amended her thoughts. Who she’d always been.

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said softly, wanting to wipe away his hurt but feeling she was only making a bigger mess of it.

“You’d have me.”

“As an adviser?”

She didn’t know why she asked it. Nothing he could say would make a difference to her. She only wanted to get to the mines, find Ellis, and run. Run from these monsters, run from this alarming legacy she didn’t know how to accept.

I’m still me.

Mostly .

“As your consort.” His admission was soft and hushed. The hope held within it was too painful for her to bear.

They stared at each other, and the seconds between them seemed to stretch, growing into an interminably loud silence with every breath that went by. Abruptly, he pitched his stick into the fire and stalked away from the circle, away from Greer. “I’m going to get more wood.”

Before Greer could stop him, before she could say anything, he was gone in a flicker of shadows and suffering.