There was no arch this time, just a dark tunnel that seemed keen to swallow her. Teagan didn’t want to see where it led, knowing there would be a monster somewhere in its depths waiting for her. It was the guardian of the Desolate Mountain, the final obstacle between her and the Deathly Palace and the Princess—between her and Cress. The monster was a legendary fire-breather; if it was not satisfied with your food offering, it would burn you to ash. Cress had theorized it might be pacified with sweet foods, so Teagan carried fresh wikada berries from the orchards in the south of Wystira in her pack. It was the sweetest fruit available in all of Wystira. If Cress was right, it would allow her to pass. If not… Teagan didn’t want to consider the possibility.
It’d taken Cress weeks to procure them because the smooth, juicy fruit only grew in the sunniest regions of Wystira. Teagan had asked why she’d gotten so many, and she’d said it was just in case. As if she’d known this was how it was all going to go down, that they’d be taking separate journeys into the realm because one of them was just more stubborn than the other. Cress knew herself and Teagan far too well.
Teagan finally forced herself to move on, to leave the River of Sorrow and the candlelit cavern behind her. Exhaustion weighed down her every limb, but she didn’t want to linger. Her soul’s light was thinning; she felt it, even more so after she’d used her magic. The mountain was cold, and Teagan was grateful she had her cloak. There was some light from torches set at intervals along the walls, but it was mostly dark. And rank. It smelled of wet fur and mud.
As she walked through the tunnels, the ground continually sloping upwards, she wished she had her wife’s company. It’d been the two of them for so long. Cress had changed everything about Teagan’s life. Her mother had told her love would do that, and Teagan said she wasn’t looking for love, wasn’t sure she ever would be. She thought she hadn’t wanted it, that it wouldn’t be worth giving up on her dreams of being a great inventor for someone else. A relationship would only be a distraction. But Cress wasn’t a distraction, and she’d pushed Teagan to go after her heart’s truest desires. She’d given Teagan the space to find out what she wanted in her life. Before the attack, Teagan had started the process into switching her focus at the Academy.
Teagan had received a response on whether they’d accept her in a new program just after she’d been bitten. She hadn’t opened the letter; she’d placed it in the chest in her bedroom and hadn’t looked at it again.
Cress hadn’t crushed those dreams. Dying had crushed them.
Teagan stopped when she came to a fork in the road. Teagan looked at the left-hand path, and then the other, uncertain. She’d read something about this, but every time she tried to recall the specifics, she couldn’t. There were symbols and letters on the rock wall; carvings she could barely make out. She remembered there was a symbol she was supposed to follow, but again, her memory was slippery. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, tried to focus only on the paths. She thought she might get an instinct in her gut, telling her which tunnel to take.
She chose the left one, but when she turned the corner, she faced a smooth wall. A dead end. Undeterred, she doubled back and took the second path, but soon reached another fork. She tried the left again. She hadn’t walked more than ten paces before her foot stepped on air. Teagan screamed as she tipped forward, perilously close to falling into the black hole in front of her. She spun quickly, painfully slamming into the wall at her side. She drew in a few deep breaths before she felt centered enough to peek over the ledge. The sight of the darkness descending into nothing was dizzying. Of course. The path through the mountain was filled with dangerous obstacles meant to kill her before she reached the palace, and it had almost succeeded.
Teagan once again retraced her steps and took the other path. Another fork, another wrong turn, and Teagan could feel panic rising within her. What if she never made it out of this place? What if she’d come so close and she’d ruined any chance she had at finding Cress? Teagan stopped at the next intersection and sat down with her back against the wall and her arms around her knees. She tried to even her breathing, tried to find a calmness within herself, but it was so hard when the air was thin and panic was clawing up her throat. She tried to focus on Cress, on their first meeting. It’d been so right with them from the beginning, and her memories of Cress brought happiness and contentment. Even their fight and Cress’s reckless journey into the Shadow Realm hadn’t dimmed her love for her. She held onto that feeling now, and let it warm her insides and cradle her with stillness. Her breathing slowed, the tightness in her chest loosened, and she stood on shaky legs.
Her instincts weren’t taking her the right way, so she looked for clues in the carvings above the doorways instead. She recognized some of the images from Cress’s drawings, the creatures that roamed the Shadow Realm, characters from the stories about the Princess she’d heard as a child. The virampi and grisleck in one corner, the beloved queen and the handsome prince in another, dozens of people whose names were forever lost. She thought she saw a small, stemmed fruit that looked like the wikada berry she had in her bag. Maybe Cress had been right in choosing the fruit; maybe it was specific to the Shadow Realm in a way they hadn’t discovered in their research.
When she reached another intersection, this time with three different tunnels branching off of it, she chose the one with the berry on it. A little way in, she could hear clicking sounds, dozens of them all at different intervals. “Oh no, no, no,” Teagan whispered, peering into the dark. In the small light cast by one of the wall’s torches, she could see hundreds of dark green beetles with sharp pincers. Hundreds of small, carnivorous insects moving in the shadows. She imagined those hairy legs crawling up her skin and biting into her. Teagan stifled a scream when she realized they were feasting on a dead body, tearing the flesh right off of it. She turned and ran back the way she came. Scenting fresh prey, the little scurrying feet raced after her.
When she got back to the intersection, she dove into a different tunnel, hoping the shadowy interior would hide her. She flattened herself against the rough wall, ready to sprint if the beetles found her. The clicking reached a crescendo, and Teagan’s muscles tensed. The beetles poured into the intersection and proceeded the way Teagan had come without any hesitation.
She stayed in that alcove long after the insects’ clicking could no longer be heard, until her heart stopped racing. So that wasn’t a wikada berry; she should have known. But she’d wanted it to be right so badly. Teagan hissed one of the curse words Cress had taught her and smacked her head softly against the rock in frustration. And as she glanced at the images carved above the tunnel she’d hid in, she noticed something she couldn’t believe she’d missed this whole time.
Teagan reached her fingers up and traced the star. It wasn’t just a star, though. A crescent moon was underneath it, and hidden in the space where the two overlapped was an A. This was the symbol of the Shadow Princess, the one they’d searched dusty old books for, the one that would lead her out of this horrible mountain. It was the first letter of the princess’s long-forgotten name. She was sure of it.
As she walked on, Teagan let her thoughts wander toward the Shadow Princess and her story. Teagan didn’t understand what it took to make someone descend into darkness and create this realm, to give up everything she was and everything she could have been, just to feel the pulse of the whole world at her fingertips. The Shadow Princess was a cautionary tale. She’d had it all; the prince, the kingdom, the magic. She’d been loved and admired and she could have ruled with a kind heart. But she hadn’t; she had destroyed it from the inside out and she had laughed while doing so. She’d become the monster she’d defeated in the forest when she was a young woman.
The pieces she and Cress had collected about the princess’s story couldn’t give them the why of it. They weren’t privy to the emotions behind the princess’s decisions. No amount of dusty manuscripts and speculation could truly answer these questions.
But maybe when she completed this journey, when she met the princess, Teagan would be able to ask her.
If she ever got through this mountain.
What if she lost her way in this place again? She’d found the right image to follow—so she thought. She hadn’t encountered any more obstacles; no black holes in the ground or creatures chasing her through the tunnels. Being alone like this, stuck deep inside this rocky terrain, made her feel hollow. Made her tremble with longing for companionship, any companionship. Humans weren’t used to the oppressive dark like this; they weren’t meant for it. That was probably the point.
There wasn’t a clear path here, and she hated that. But it couldn’t be too easy. The princess would make deals with only the bravest and strongest, the ones who passed all her tests and defied the Shadow Realm she’d created.
Teagan had spent so long in the tunnels that when she turned a corner and saw the arch, she almost couldn’t believe it. There, blocking the last magical stone arch, was a monster. It was huge, almost as tall as the cavern ceiling, its spiky fur a midnight blue that appeared black in the little light from the torches on either side of it. Its nostrils were flared, and it had a long tail that curved around its body. It blew out a hot breath, and Teagan flinched, fearful of its fire. But it stayed there, unblinking and almost docile. When she moved forward, it bared sharp fangs and breathed another warm and sickeningly-sweet breath. She pulled the fruit from her bag and stepped toward it as fear beat a steady rhythm in her chest. She had to approach it slowly, let it sniff her so it would know she wasn’t a threat. As she got closer, it prowled around on its paws. She watched its almost square face and the spiky fur that covered it from head to toe. It was a little like the bears that roamed the forests of Wystira, and she felt calmer when she stopped just in front of it and held her palm out.
It was simply a creature of the mountain, and it deserved her respect. As long as it didn’t try to kill her.
The monster snorted out a breath and then opened its mouth, swallowing the fruit whole. She grimaced at the roughness of its tongue and her hand was slimy when she pulled it away. She wiped it off on her cloak and took a step back. Wikada berries were small— what if they were too small, and the monster wasn’t satisfied? Teagan had nothing else to offer, and it didn’t seem to be moving from the arch. Would she have to fight it? Then it sighed and moved, curling into a corner of the tunnel, satiated and sleepy, closing its eyes in contentment. Teagan almost shouted in relief, but she wisely didn’t and ran through the arch before it could change its mind and decide that she had not offered enough.
In a moment, Teagan stood on a high cliff not unlike the one she’d started this journey on. But instead of the sea before her, it was a sight she’d never expected to see in the Shadow Realm.