In a moment, they’d have to dive back toward the sea. But Safire could see the top of the cliffs from here, shrouded in mist. She knew the dragons wouldn’t get her any closer than this.
Letting go of Sorrow, she swung her legs over and slid down the dragon’s scaly hide.
“Saf!” Asha cried out.
Her feet hit the ground, which trembled and shook beneath her as more rock slid out from under her.
“Find somewhere safer to land!” Safire called back, ducking beneath Sorrow’s flapping wings and carefully beginning to scale this crumbling precipice, heading for higher and more solid ground. “I’m going up there!”
She contemplated the gap between this quickly dissolving outcropping and the large solid-looking rock beyond it. As more stones fell to the water below, she didn’t look down. Just threw all her weight into a jump.
Her feet landed firmly. Turning, she saw Sorrow leaping into the rain, while Kozu remained behind, massive wings beating.
“You need a weapon!” Asha called into the rain, unbuckling something at her belt. “Take this!”
The silver sheath of the Skyweaver’s knife winked as Asha tossed it through the air. Safire caught the cold, eerie blade in both hands, then secured it to her belt. When she looked back, Asha glanced over her shoulder as Kozu dived into the mist below.
Safire turned and ran for the summit. As the lightning flashed around her, she carved her way through the trees. When the woods opened up and the ground leveled out, she saw them. Or rather: saw the shining silver blade, gripped in the hands of the empress.
Eris knelt before a stone slab, chained to the rock like some kind of sacrifice.
A whole meadow stood between them. And into that meadow, stepping between Safire and Eris, were a dozen Lumina soldiers, all drawing their weapons.
Her heart beat fast and hard in her lungs. She knew she couldn’t get to Eris in time. Knew she couldn’t get to Eris at all.
“Eris!” Her voice battled the wind and rain as she drew the Skyweaver’s knife. It wasn’t a throwing knife, but that didn’t matter.
Despite the wind and rain, despite the distance across that meadow, Eris looked up.
She saw her.
The empress saw her, too. Safire heard Leandra give a command. Saw the soldiers start toward her. But Safire’s eyes were on Eris. She squeezed the hilt of the Skyweaver’s knife hard in her hand.
And then she threw it.
Forty-Eight
The Skyweaver’s knife landed right next to Eris, the blade stuck halfway into the dirt.
The moment before Safire called her name, she’d already succumbed to despair. No matter what she did, they were going to take her hands. Going to watch her die here, at the top of the scarps. Why bother fighting anymore?
But then Safire called her name. And Eris looked up.
And everything changed.
With the knife in the dirt beside her, Eris now had what she needed to set the Shadow God free.
She just had no way to get to him.
The spindle is unnecessary, her mother had told her.
But even if Eris could manage to cross without it, there was the stardust steel manacle locked around her right wrist, keeping her trapped on this side of the mists.
The empress turned away from the sight of Safire, smiling victoriously. She’d already won.
As the Severer rose, gleaming in the rain, Eris looked to the girl across the meadow. A girl who stood weaponless in the face of the armed and swarming Lumina, staring back at her.
Safire had come for her.
And though it terrified her, Eris suddenly realized there was one way to go Across. But only one.
Which was why, when the Severer came down, whistling through the air, she didn’t scream. Didn’t despair.
Eris watched it happen—let it happen—before she ever felt it: the steel splitting her flesh, then tendons, then bone. She saw it split her right hand from her wrist. The hand she used to steal and spin and weave.
The stardust cuff went with it, falling to the stone. Into the blood that was already pooling.
Eris stared, stunned into paralysis, just for a moment.
And then her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.
Remember who you are.
Eris looked from her severed hand to the knife stuck in the dirt.
My daughter. Day’s hope. Your father’s heir.
Eris wasn’t alone.
She’d never been alone.
Leaning down, she grabbed the knife with her left hand—her free hand—then reached Across with her will alone. To her surprise, the mists rose around her, silver and shining, beckoning her away from the horrors of this place.
Eris walked straight into them.
Forty-Nine
The pain came all at once, bringing with it the full truth of what Eris had done. Of what she’d lost. As she stepped through the mists and into the labyrinth, she stumbled and fell. Crying out at the overwhelming shock of it, dropping the knife to the floor.
Her right hand was gone.
Gone.
It was only when someone grabbed her shoulders that Eris came back to herself. To the pain and the blood and the knife on the ground. And then: to the man standing over her.
“What have you done?” said Crow, his face white as the scrin’s chalky cliffs.
“I brought you the knife.” Eris stared at him, cradling the bleeding stump of her arm in her lap. “It was the only way.”
Crow fell to his knees, his eyes filling with tears. “Oh, my child.” And for the first time, Eris let herself hear those words. My child. She belonged to someone. She was wanted. Crow cupped her face in his hands, staring into her eyes. “This was not your burden to bear.”
I choose to bear it, she thought, remembering her mother staring down the empress with pity in her eyes, in spite of everything that had been taken from her. Remembering Day and all the others who’d borne the burden of something far bigger than themselves.
The labyrinth blurred around her. Eris felt suddenly dizzy. She tried to focus on Crow, tried to find herself in his face the way Skye found him in hers. But he was slipping away from her. Everything was slipping away from her.
She’d lost too much blood. She was going to bleed out here, far away from the world, without a chance to say good-bye. . . .
Crow pulled her against him, holding her gently. And as she slipped a little farther, Eris thought: How nice it is to be held.
“I can’t restore it,” he whispered. “But I can give you this. . . .”
He changed then, back into that shadow she’d first known him as. The darkness engulfed her and as it did, the pain trickled away. She was ready to let go, to walk alone to Death’s gate, when suddenly the shadows turned back into a man, and Eris found herself still on her knees, in her father’s arms.
Eris looked down to find her severed wrist healed into a rounded stump. As if years had passed. She lifted it, staring. And while it was still a grievous shock to find her hand gone, there was no more pain. No more blood.
She was alive.
Crow kissed the crown of her head and let her go. He stood, picking up the knife. For several heartbeats, he stared at it, his eyes bleeding to black. And then, with a deafening cry, he smashed it at his feet.
Fifty
Safire heard the blade come down. Heard the horrifying sound of splitting flesh and bone, and felt her heart split with it.