Despair filled her as she lay on her back in the boat, a sob caught in her throat. She could feel the crushing sadness pressing her down and knocking the breath right out of her lungs. She gasped as memories assailed her.
Teagan was in her workshop when a knock sounded on the front door. She set her tools aside and wiped her hands down her apron before she headed down the hall toward the door. She opened it. “Maradin, what a pleasant surprise!”
Maradin didn’t smile, though. Her face was serious and intense. There was a queasy feeling in Teagan’s stomach as she waited for the town healer to speak.
“Your mother collapsed outside Tora’s house. I’m so sorry, Teagan. Her heart is giving out on her. There’s nothing I can do.” When Teagan didn’t respond, Maradin’s eyes and mouth softened. “She’s resting at my place, if you’d like see her.”
There was a rock in her throat, and words wouldn’t come. She let Maradin lead her into town. Maradin’s shop was shut, quiet, as Maradin led her to the back of the building where she lived. She’d never been in here before, and Teagan paused in the doorway to Maradin’s guest room where her mother lay in an unfamiliar bed.
Her mother smiled at her, but Teagan couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Teagan didn’t like the look of her mother, frail and exhausted, trying to force cheerfulness. “Come here, my love.”
Teagan let loose a sob and crawled into the bed. Her mother wrapped her arms around her and held her while Teagan tried to come to terms with the impossible.
The memories of her mother kept coming, forcing the grief back up as if no time had passed. Her birth parents had died when she was a child; she had been too young to grieve them. But Drisila was the reason Teagan was who she was, the most important person in her life. Teagan remembered getting ready for festival dances and her mother doing her hair for her; she remembered her mother coaxing her with a cup of tea and a story from her workshop after she’d spent too many hours trying to piece together an invention. Memories, both good and bad, flashed through her mind. The ones when she was a young woman with her mother walking alongside her in the forest, telling her to care for the creatures within so they would become her friend and care for her in return.
But not all of them had cared for her. A creature was the reason she was in the Shadow Realm in the first place, and the memories of her mother disappeared, replaced with that day in the forest when she had chosen Cress’s survival over her own.
Teagan had left Cress behind as she walked further into Asoria Forest. Cress wanted to collect more ingredients for spells, but Teagan only wanted to enjoy the feeling of nature surrounding her. The roar of the waterfall ahead, hidden by the trees, always made her feel at home. She smiled as she strolled through the last of the trees to get to the waterfall, brushing away a low-hanging branch, eager to face the familiar sight of the foamy waters rushing over the rocks. She stopped. A monstrous creature stood in front of the water, sniffing the air. It was massive, as big as the bears that roamed the northern forests of Wystira, and light gray fur covered every inch of it. It snorted and pawed at the ground, as if looking for food. She’d never seen anything like it. It had a horn in the middle of its head, and long, sharp teeth. Teagan began to back away, retreat into the forest, when her foot stepped on a twig. The snap echoed in the clearing. The creature turned to her and let loose a roar. It dug its claws into the ground, ready to give chase. Teagan’s instincts took over, and she ran. She tore through the woods as fast as she could, but she could almost feel the hot breath of the monster at her back. She grabbed a low-hanging branch and began to climb up a tree. The creature tried to scramble up after her.
“Teagan! Where are you?” The animal paused and turned as Cress emerged from the trees.
“Cress!” Teagan shouted as the monster took off after her wife. Cress screamed, and Teagan scrambled back down the tree and found Cress trying to fend it off with a stick and her dagger.
Teagan had always had an affinity for creatures, and while this one looked like it wanted to eat them both, she couldn’t stand there and do nothing. She had her ritual dagger, but she called out to it all the same, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. “Don’t hurt her!”
The creature turned, and Teagan continued to talk to it in a soothing voice. Many animals only attacked when they felt threatened. If she could calm it down, it might leave them alone. For a moment, she thought she might have broken through its rage. Then, its eyes narrowed, and it sank into a crouch, ready to pounce. Teagan watched Cress lift her own dagger.
“No, Cress, don’t!” Teagan yelled, but it was too late. It plunged into the creature’s side. The creature ignored Cress’s attack, and charged Teagan instead. Teagan lifted her weapon just in time. It sank underneath the monster’s chin. The creature howled, enraged with pain, and bit into Teagan’s arm, latching on tight. Teagan screamed in agony, the fangs tearing through her skin and muscles, grinding into her bones. It didn’t let go until the life left its body.
“No, no, no, stop!” She clasped her hands to her head and screamed. She felt, again, the weight of killing a creature, even one from this dead kingdom. She hadn’t wanted to, and she’d tried not to. But she’d sacrificed it for herself, and after she said prayers to the Goddess and lit a pyre for the body, she returned home to find out she’d been poisoned. She’d forced her sadness over Maradin’s diagnosis down deep so she wouldn’t have to think about it. The river wouldn’t let her do that now.
Every week, Maradin cleaned the bite while Cress held Teagan’s hand. It was a fiery kind of hurt, but it didn’t seem to do much to improve the wound. It was still an angry red, still unhealed and infected. Maradin sighed after she finished and put away the medical paste she’d concocted. She re-wrapped Teagan’s arm with more care than usual. When she looked up, Teagan saw tears in Maradin’s eyes. “I’m not sure how much more time you have, love.”
“We’re so close to the Shadow Princess,” Cress said, letting go of Teagan. Teagan wanted to grab her hand back, but she was numb.
“She’s not the answer you’re looking for.”
“You don’t know that,” Cress snapped. “She’s the only choice we have.”
Teagan felt distant from the conversation as they argued, didn’t want to let the truth of it sink in because it would overwhelm her. So she stuffed her despair and the dwindled hope and the pain in a box in her mind and locked it.
Teagan was keening in the bottom of the boat, curled on her side. A weight pressed on her chest, a darkness that enveloped her heart and soul. The box sprung open, spilling everything she felt. Anger rose in its wake, grief that she should have so few years on this world while others got to live until they were old and gray and wrinkly. She’d survived her mother’s death and fallen in love, only to die before her life truly began. She wasn’t okay with it. She wasn’t alright. She’d tried so hard to pretend so Cressidae would feel better. She’d tried so hard to push her truest feelings away so she wouldn’t have to examine them because she knew if she did, they would overwhelm her to the point she’d never be able to breathe easy. But now she screamed. She screamed for herself, for Cress, for the person she could have been if only she’d gotten the chance to live longer. She knew she didn’t have much time left. She didn’t need Maradin to tell her that, though she had, just two days before she stepped into the realm. It was why Cress had forced the timeline up, had left without waiting for Teagan to come with her.
Teagan hadn’t wanted Cress to die with her. She wished her wife had just listened to her so she wouldn’t be here now feeling all of her pain.
When she finished screaming, she began to sob. Huge, gulping breaths. Salt tracks trailed down her cheeks and slipped into her heaving mouth. She hadn’t let herself feel her diagnosis, truly feel the negative emotions because she’d wanted to be strong for Cress. For herself. But she couldn’t pretend any longer. She didn’t want to die. There was so much she wanted to do, so much she had to live for.
The River of Sorrow claimed her so surely that Teagan was unaware of the boat steadily moving along the water. She was lost to the sorrow.
But thinking about finding Cress, about being with the love of her life again, brought that awareness back. She needed to be out of the river’s powerful grasp. Yet nothing could quell the sadness, and Teagan drew the words to her mind and mouth before she lost the nerve, and spat a spell. Release me from your thrall, you wicked being. The memories stopped suddenly, the darkness receding until it was only the pinprick it’d been before she’d tasted the water.
Then she felt a tug on her soul. She wasn’t supposed to do magic in the realm; every little bit of it stole her light. The price you had to pay if you wanted to cheat, if you wanted this to be easy and simple. Cress had made sure to account for all the possibilities, had filled their packs with things to help in the event they would need them. She’d told Teagan that they couldn’t be witches here. It would be a death sentence.
And Teagan had done it anyway, because she couldn’t stand the weight of it all. No human could. They weren’t meant to withstand so much sorrow and pain, and this realm tested that over and over again. Made a sparkling, clear river a temptation after the journey through the desert. Made humans look into themselves; all their desires and hopes and dreams. Just so that they would be crushed cruelly and irrevocably.
While she tried to clear her mind as best she could, she almost didn’t see the opening in the shore ahead. A rocky hole that looked out of place when there’d been nothing but forest surrounding her for ages. Teagan quickly dove for the oar and pushed it into the water, steering toward the cave. It was the Desolate Mountain! If she kept going along the river, she’d fall to her death: the drop at the end was so sharp and sudden it couldn’t be seen until it was too late. This was where she had to be, and she rowed as fast as possible toward the opening. She breathed with relief when she made it through the tunnel and kept rowing until her boat bumped up against a stone ledge. The river ended in this small cavern carved out of the mountain. Barely any light penetrated the darkness of the cave, so all Teagan could see was dark ground and jagged points of rock that hung from the ceiling.
Teagan grabbed her pack and climbed out of the boat. A couple of lit candles stood on a table against the wall to her right. The piece of furniture was out of place here, as if it belonged in someone’s kitchen. Near the table a trickle of water flowed down the rock face into a well carved into the ground. When she peered at it more closely, she saw there was writing on the wall in the same old language inscribed on the arches. She was sure she remembered this from Cress’s research. It was called the Well of Fulfillment, and it was safe. It was meant for the weary traveler who’d gotten this far, a reward for not dying. As if this was supposed to make up for the dangers of the Shadow Realm. As if the Shadow Princess wanted to give people hope, before she took it all away. The Shadow Princess was nothing if not mischievous.
Cress believed the Shadow Princess would honor a deal with them, but Teagan wasn’t so sure. Still, it was her only hope, and she would die back in Wystira anyway.
Teagan’s thirst roared back to life, and she drank greedily until she was sated. Afterward, she refilled her flask and dug into her pack for the food she’d brought; cheese wrapped in flat bread, veggies, and some fruit she’d picked from the tree in their yard. She was famished—she hadn’t eaten much in the desert because she hadn’t wanted to make herself thirstier. While she leaned against the table and chewed, she pondered over the doorway on the other side of the cavern.
This was the next path. The last path.