Page 31

T he ground beneath Aisling’s palms was no longer the warm, rain-soaked soil of the Brook Isle forest. Her fingers weren’t digging into smoldering moss, but scraping against hard stone.

A frigid wind whipped past and tore at her hair as she raised her head.

At first, she could only make out shapes and lines.

Images of the dancing blue flames were still burned into her retinas, their ghosts now superimposed over everything.

Granite, flat and unyielding. A sharp horizon ahead.

She blinked hard, willing her eyes to adjust to the sudden pale brightness.

There was a moon here—it hung oversized and swollen in a dusky violet sky.

It was smooth, without the craters and pockmarked shadows she always thought looked so much like a hidden face.

This moon seemed more like a simplistic artist’s rendering than the one she recognized.

Another gust of wind drew Aisling’s attention down from the sky, back to the horizon line.

It was so defined, so close. Like if she could just reach out far enough, she could touch the edge of the world.

But as she pushed herself up onto her feet, wincing, the higher vantage point brought her surroundings into stark relief.

She wasn’t at the edge of the world—she was at the edge of a cliff, a place she remembered from the pages of a travel magazine.

She’d tacked it up on a corkboard once that she’d filled with destinations she dreamed of visiting someday.

Aisling took a cautious step forward, then another.

Inch by inch, creeping closer to the edge until she could peer over.

It was a sheer, unforgiving drop. Below, a canyon stretched as far as she could see in either direction.

The cliff’s face was as smooth as the moon, without crags or roots or handholds.

There would be no descending. The rising escarpment on the other side of the canyon was just the same: even, unmarred.

As unnatural as her cookie-cutter, candle-scented forest and the azure wildfire that had devoured it.

Three suspension bridges hung across the expanse, anchored into the rock with posts that hardly looked sturdy enough to support the guide ropes, let alone any additional weight.

They were identical, down to the knots in the wooden slats and the sections of frayed rope and the point where each dipped in the center.

Despite the rushing updraft coming from below, they didn’t swing or sway. Just hung steady and still.

Enjoying the view? Yalde’s voice whispered in Aisling’s head. She drew back from the edge swiftly, half-expecting him to be standing there behind her with all three arms outstretched and ready to push. But she was still alone on the precipice. He chuckled at her reaction.

On the far side of the chasm, three figures appeared before each of the bridges. They paused for the briefest moment before stepping forward and beginning to cross towards her. And with the same sudden certainty as she’d recognized her forest, Aisling recognized her friends.

Seb on the far left. Lida in the middle. Jackson on the right.

The wooden slats didn’t creak or bob or shift under their weight.

They stopped in the center of their respective bridges, each standing at the lowest point.

Their arms hung relaxed at their sides, not held out for balance or grasping at the guard ropes.

Even their expressions were unconcerned—practically serene.

Artificial smiles were frozen on each of their faces and their eyes were unfocused. Blank.

You can spend all the time you’d like here. There are no threats, no danger but your own decision-making. Choose wisely, Red Woman. Perhaps your friends will aid you.

Just as she could feel when the dark god slipped into her mind, she could feel when he’d left it.

The loss of him there made Aisling blow out a long sigh of relief.

He was watching, surely, but at least he wasn’t so enmeshed in her thoughts.

That Kael had once taken comfort in that feeling was as disturbing as it was sad.

She hoped it had been quick: his possession.

Hoped that his shadows had overtaken him so swiftly and completely that he never made the connection between Yalde and the Low One and Aethar.

It would have been more merciful that way.

With some effort, she pushed Kael’s blank face and blackened eyes out of her head. That heartache needed to wait. For the time being, Aisling had bigger problems.

She looked again at her friends, at the bridges, and at the expanse below them.

It might have been the highest place she’d ever stood, and she counted herself lucky that she’d never had a fear of heights.

Rodney would have been beside himself standing there.

She wished he were, anyway. She could have used a bit of his humor just then.

Aisling called out to her friends. She yelled each of their names once, then again even louder so her words wouldn’t be taken by the gusting wind. They didn’t react.

She knew they wouldn’t.

They weren’t here, just as she hadn’t been on Brook Isle. Though Yalde’s tricks were convincing, Aisling was at the very least confident he couldn’t transport her or her friends between realms. It was a cruel trick; he was mocking her. But she wouldn’t be deceived so easily.

The outcropping she stood on was deep, but it wasn’t wide—maybe only twenty yards from end to end before it tapered off.

At her back, the cliffside continued to soar smooth as glass, just as it appeared below the bridges.

There would be no escaping to the sides, and no way to climb up or down.

If she wanted to reach the far side, where the cliff plateaued rather than rose at the bridges’ anchor point, she’d have to cross.

She’d have to choose which bridge to cross.

Aisling paused for a beat to take stock of her too-big feelings and scattered thoughts.

Nervous energy thrummed through her like an electric current.

It was overwhelming—and distracting. She moved back towards the bridges and gingerly eased herself down onto the stone.

The wind that blew up from the depths of the canyon was soothing on her blistered skin and she sat as close to the edge as she dared, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the cool air draw the heat out of her burns. She had time. She had time.

She found the refrain of Yalde’s riddle buried beneath anxiety and pain and frustration. Once she managed to peel those things back, the words were waiting there for her:

I belong to all things—I am many; I am one.

Discarnate yet corporeal; neither flesh nor phantom.

I may be hidden, but never outrun.

And alongside those words, determination welled.

She tried hard to let it bloom, despite the discomforting knowledge that she’d never been much good at riddles or word games.

That was Rodney’s domain—he was the one who’d puzzled out the bulk of her prophecy, right or wrong as his conclusions may have been.

More than likely, he’d have already figured this one out.

It was three lines—it couldn’t be that difficult.

But Aisling’s brain was better suited to numbers.

Statistics, probabilities. Things with certain, reliable answers. Not Fae games.

She scratched her nails against the stone, grounding herself there.

Kael had said to her once that she was beginning to sound like one of them, when she very first told him about her plan to raise the Silver Saints.

She’d taken it as a compliment. Now, she had to prove him right. She had to think like one of them, too.

I belong to all things—I am many; I am one.

Something omnipresent, something universal.

She thought of natural forces, like gravity.

Or time—time was something that belonged just as much to the collective as it did to the individual.

The time Aisling had was different from the time Kael had, or Rodney, or any one of her friends on Brook Isle, and yet it was something that belonged to each of them.

Time fit the rest of the lines, too—at least partly.

Time was discarnate; time couldn’t be outrun.

But time wasn’t corporeal, nor could it be hidden. This wasn’t quite a square peg into a round hole; more like a round peg that was just slightly too large for the round hole. Just slightly off from perfect.

“I may be hidden, but never outrun.” Aisling said the line aloud and let the wind carry the words away.

This part of the riddle seemed the simplest to answer and sparked a hundred new ideas.

She considered the most obvious: secrets.

Everyone had secrets—she’d racked up a fair few of her own in just the last handful of months.

Many of them—most of them, really—she wished desperately she could outrun.

Before those secrets could get too loud and drown out the riddle, she stood and began to pace the length of the ledge.

She examined each static bridge as she passed, ignoring her leering friends and instead pausing to touch all six anchor posts.

They felt tangible, made of real wood. Real rope.

They didn’t budge when she pressed on them.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been so easy.

The illusion, if there was one, wouldn’t be apparent until the middle of the bridge.

Once she’d gone too far to turn back. Far enough that she’d be confident she’d chosen correctly, sufficiently comfortable that she’d stop paying attention, until her foot broke through a false board and she plunged down into the—

“Stop,” Aisling scolded herself before her anxiety could spike. That line of thinking wouldn’t get her anywhere.