I burned through my lace like wildfire, feeding the sheets to slow our descent. Aytrium loomed over us, too colossal to understand, hideous and misshapen. Updrafts rocked the cage and threatened to smash us into the cliffs. I steered us away, but the extra effort bled my power.
Millie stared at the platform as it shrank above us. “Why?”
My forearms felt bruised where Lariel had shoved me. The situation had fallen apart so quickly, so brutally.
They’re dead. A creeping coldness stole across my body. Lariel, Cyde, neither of them stood a chance against that many Sisters. We had left them to die.
“Is anyone hurt?” Osan looked sick. “El?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
In truth, I felt lightheaded; acutely aware that only my lace prevented us from falling. The cage’s wooden supports creaked in the wind, and the sheets flapped and strained ominously. A heap of bags and crates was piled near the railing. We had no other resources, nothing and no one to help us. I fought off my mounting sense of panic.
“Why would she do that?” asked Millie.
Finn slowly walked across the floor and crouched beside his sister. She shrank away from him.
“She never even said sorry,” she said. “Never apologised for anything.”
Finn spoke to her in a voice I could not make out over the wind, and laid an arm around her shoulders.
The landscape below grew larger; the faraway patches of shadow and light resolved into plains and valleys. Streaks of low-hanging cloud touched the summits of hills. My dizziness increased; the cage seemed a paltry shelter from the sickening drop below us. If I made the smallest of mistakes, if I ran out of lace, if I lost my composure, we were all dead. Osan, his expression grim, made his way over to me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, softer than before. The wind whipped around us. “Their lace hit you pretty hard.”
“Fine,” I said, breathless. “Need to concentrate.”
Thousands of mossy channels scored the sheer face of Aytrium, where rainwater cascaded over the stone and into the open air. We glided downwards, a feather caught on a draft. The cage’s rolling motion made me want to throw up. I swayed, and Osan quickly reached out and steadied me.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.
I bit the inside of my cheek, using the sharp pain to focus my mind. “Unless you can suddenly wield lace, no.”
He squeezed my arm. “I haven’t mastered that yet, I’m afraid.”
“Osan?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if I can get us to the ground.”
The wall of rock drew away as it tapered inwards; the underside of Aytrium rippling with inverted mountain ranges. Until now, I had never been confronted with the island’s full impossible scale, and I could not entirely countenance the horrific enormity of it all. My whole life, I had lived on this mass of earth and soil and stone. And yet standing before Aytrium, I was nothing—a mote drifting in space. Streamers of algae dangled from the cliffs like river weeds, and colonies of bats flew out from hidden crevices in the rocks.
“You can only try,” said Osan.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Didn’t have much of a choice, under the circumstances. Besides, Rhyanon made me promise that I would take care of you.”
My throat hitched.
“Hey, none of that.” He forced a smile. “I’m barely holding it together myself. But I trust you, Just El. I believe that you can do this. You aren’t scared of anything, remember?”
Forget the terror, forget the cost of failure. Lace flowed out of me like water. I nodded.
Then we dropped further and for the first time, I saw the crater. It gaped like a maw in the earth beneath Aytrium, the depths veiled by mist and shadow. The place from which the Eater had first dragged Aytrium into the air. The experience was like staring up at the night sky; from above, the crater appeared bottomless.
“Eater,” Osan whispered.
I pushed us away from the chasm. No matter what happened, I would not risk us drifting down into that awful scar. Rather crash into the ground, rather die where the sun could still reach us.
Finn cried out and clutched his head.
“Finn?” I said in alarm.
He slumped over sideways, and Millie caught him. His back arched as if electricity coursed through his body, and his muscles went rigid. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
“Finn?” said Millie, panicked. “What’s wrong? Finn!”
The vision struck without warning. The world inverted; the sky burned black and the earth melted into a sea of white. I floated in space, suspended and unable to move. In the distance, the mountains shimmered oily and slick with mother-of-pearl iridescence, and from their base a bright red ribbon burst from the ground. It cut across Ventris, unfurling toward us over the hills.
Follow the path of grace, boomed a voice inside my head. Enormous pressure filled my chest. Over the surface of the ribbon, I saw thousands of people walking, and I knew they were dressed with flowers, I knew they were coming for me.
I gasped and staggered, and felt hands close around my arms.
“El!” shouted Osan.
Reality snapped back like a spring released. Osan held me up, his face bloodless.
“Pilgrimage.” I coughed. My ears were ringing. “The pilgrims’ road, the path of grace. She was trying to tell me.”
“What are you saying?”
The cage tilted dangerously; I had lost my grip on the lacework. My stomach lurched, and I threw out ropes to catch the flailing sheets. For a few awful seconds, I fumbled and we were truly falling. Osan’s hands crushed my arms.
I caught the nets. The shock wrenched my lace violently, almost enough to drag the sheets out of my grasp, but I held fast. The fall slowed and the floor levelled.
My breathing was ragged. Too close. Much too close.
We were only a few hundred feet above the ground now. The red ribbon remained seared across my vision, coiled like a snake. Millie helped Finn to sit up.
A sudden crosswind battered us toward the chasm and I stumbled, knocking my knees into the wall of the cage. The darkness loomed and fear surged through me. Come on, come on. My remaining reserves of lace dwindled as I poured power into the nets. It might have been my imagination, but drawing on my lace felt different: less smooth, less clean, denser somehow.
I drove the cage away from the crater. The hillside ahead was barren; I could see the cracked earth and dead grass, a few scattered shrubs with grey leaves. Closer, closer, the ground rushing closer far too quickly.
With one final effort, I yanked the nets upwards. The platform slowed and, with a shudder, we coasted onto the rock-strewn earth.
Silence.
I had done it.
My limbs turned liquid, and I collapsed against Osan. He held me up and began to laugh, his shoulders and chest shaking.
“See? I told you so,” he said. “You had it all under control.”
Bright spots danced across my vision. “I never want to do that again. And I think I’m about to be sick.”
Osan guided me to the railing, and I promptly vomited over the side of the cage. He rubbed my back as I heaved. The taste of meat lingered in my throat. Again, I caught the smell of rot.
“Finn?” I straightened shakily. “Are you okay?”
Blood rolled down his chin; he had bitten his lip during the fit. “I’m fine.”
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.” He wiped his mouth. “But whatever it was, it’s stopped.”
For now. A symptom of the infection? I had never heard of men suffering from seizures during their transformations. And if it had occurred once, was there anything to stop it from happening again? Even now he seemed disoriented, not altogether present—his eyes wandered across the landscape to the crater.
“So long as you’re okay,” I said uncertainly.
He nodded, but I had the sense he wasn’t really listening. Millie was also watching him now, a slight frown on her face. She hugged her arms over her chest.
“So now what?” she asked. “Is this really Ventris?”
I understood her reaction. I hadn’t been sure what to expect either, but this unassuming brown hillside felt curiously underwhelming. As if there should be something revelatory here, but instead there was just … nothing. I turned around. Behind us I could see no end to the crater, only a thin bar of daylight in the distance, curving with the line of the horizon. Aytrium blotted out half the sky.
“It’s so quiet,” said Millie.
None of us moved or spoke. The sheets fluttered in the breeze, and their rustling was the only sound in the empty wilderness.
Osan shook himself and walked over to the pile of bags and crates.
“Reverend Cyde packed provisions,” he said, leaning down. “We’ll have to hope there’s food and water somewhere ahead of us, but this should last for at least a few days.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that they—” Millie stumbled. “That the Reverend and Lariel survived?”
“It’s not impossible,” he said, but by his voice I knew he was trying to be kind. Millie recognised it too, and her face fell.
“Right,” she said. “Of course.”
Osan busied himself with sorting the supplies. I joined him. Leather shoulder bags bulged with provisions; I looked inside one and saw fire-starters, water canteens, preserved meats, and dried beans. Two crossbows and some blankets nestled between the crates.
“Cyde told me that she hadn’t done enough to prepare,” I said. “But she still thought of all this.”
Osan glanced at me, then away. “We’ll only be able to take what we can carry.”
Millie picked up one of the bags, testing its weight. She slung it over her back and rubbed her eyes.
“Celane would have wanted to question the Reverend and Lariel,” I said with false confidence. “And Cyde mentioned Commander Asan was heading to the Moon House, so maybe help was already on the way.”
“Maybe,” said Osan. “At this stage, we have no way of knowing.”
“Finn?” said Millie.
Her voice was strange. I looked around.
Finn stood at the edge of the chasm, staring into its depths. He had been beside us only seconds before, and I had not seen or heard him move. My heart quickened. His stance—on the balls of his feet, every muscle coiled, leaning forward over the emptiness—disturbed me. Like a dog that had heard something in the night, he watched the darkness: alert, unmoving, absolutely still.
“What are you doing?” called Millie.
He was silent. Millie caught my eye. A draft stirred the fabric of his shirt.
“Finn?” I said.
A long pause. I climbed out of the cage and slowly moved toward him.
“No,” he said.
I stopped. “No?”
An infinitesimal shake of his head.
“Finn, you’re scaring me.”
Wind rattled the dried grass and fell still again.
“There’s something coming, and I don’t think I can stop it,” he said, his tone curiously flat. “You need to run.”
A patter of falling stones inside the chasm, out of sight. I took a confused step backwards.
“Go,” said Finn.
“But what—”
The Haunt leapt out of the chasm. It moved like an insect, emaciated limbs bending at all the wrong angles. Huge antlers, stained with age, branched above its gaunt face and its lips peeled back in a grin, revealing rows upon rows of needle-thin teeth. Twice Finn’s height, but hunched and scuttling, it shot toward me in a blur of bone-white limbs.
I recovered from my shock and threw a web of lace into its path. The Haunt tore through my ropes like they were spiderwebs. It closed the distance from the crater before I even had the chance to move.
Finn crashed into it, sending them both to the ground in a furious tangle of limbs and claws and teeth. He held fast to the creature’s shoulders.
“Run, damn it!” he shouted.
I bundled up my lace, coiled it around the Haunt’s neck, and pulled. The creature cried out in surprise—a dry, rasping caw—but its neck did not break. It was as though I was trying to snap a steel rod. I pulled harder.
“El,” Finn gasped. “I can’t—”
The Haunt bucked, trying to dislodge him. Finn had the creature pinned, but it was obvious that he couldn’t hang on much longer. For all his new strength, he was never going to match the Haunt in a fair fight.
A glint of metal flashed in the air. A dagger landed in the dirt beside the creature’s head.
“Stop it from moving!” yelled Osan.
Without hesitation, Finn seized the weapon and drove it down through the Haunt’s shoulder. It shrieked and swiped at him, its long talons raking across his chest. Blood bloomed through Finn’s shirt. He grunted and stabbed the creature again.
“El, don’t just stand there!” he panted. “Get moving, you idiot.”
I could not leave him like this. He was bleeding; he could not fend off the Haunt alone.
“El!” he snarled.
I swore and I forced myself to turn away. My heart thundered in my ears. Run. The hillside sloped upwards beyond the cage. Millie crouched below the railing, fumbling as she loaded one of the crossbows. Osan had the other ready and trained on the Haunt.
“Go,” he said. “Quickly.”
I raced up the hill, and adrenaline pulsed through my blood. Where was I running? I could never hope to flee from the Haunt; as soon as it escaped Finn, it would be on my heels. My lace was spent. I was helpless.
Why was I abandoning my friends?
The landscape shimmered and I cursed. Not a vision, not now. I reached the top of the rise. In the valley ahead, the ruins of an old wall rose from the dead soil, the stones tumbled and scattered across the ground. A reddish track snaked into the distance beyond the wall, before disappearing into a thicket of skeletal trees to the south.
I glanced back to see the Haunt throw off Finn. The creature was gouged with stab wounds to the arms and chest, and its blood coursed black over its paper-white skin. Its head swivelled toward me and it crooned.
Osan fired. His bolt slammed into its right leg, but the creature hardly paused. It zigzagged up the hill after me, eyes fever-bright and ravenous.
I ran. Grit and stones skittered under my feet as I flew down the hillside. Around me, ghostly figures rose up from the earth. They whispered and reached out to grab me, but their touch was like smoke and their voices were indistinguishable from the roaring inside my head. The Haunt was closing in behind me; I could hear the uneven rhythm of its footfalls beating against the ground.
My muscles burned, but I pushed myself to move faster. If I fell now, it was over. Fear raged like an electric current through my veins, and the landscape blurred in my peripheral vision; all I saw was the red stones of the path ahead. I was falling or flying, my feet barely touched the earth.
I leapt over the broken wall and landed hard. All at once the figures fell silent. I whirled around, heart thumping. If I was wrong, if my instincts were flawed—
The Haunt stopped.
I sagged to my knees and gasped for air. The creature stared at me, yellow eyes gleaming, no pupils, just flame-bright circles of gold. Black blood dripped from its fingers.
“Can’t touch me here, huh?” I whispered, clutching my side.
Its lips parted in an ugly sneer, but it came no closer to the path. Without blinking, it grasped the bolt stuck in its thigh and yanked it free. I flinched. This close, I could smell the Haunt, that cold, earthy scent like damp soil.
An ululating howl rose from the hills to the south. The sound chilled me to the bone; it was like multiple voices screaming in unison, both shatteringly high-pitched and low enough to make my diaphragm vibrate. I clasped my hands over my ears, but it seemed to make no difference—the sound sank through my palms. In front of me, the Haunt bent forward—almost prostrating itself—and its antlers dragged furrows through the earth as it shook its head from side to side. It snapped at the air, teeth clicking together. Was it scared? Reverent? I wasn’t sure, but the display unnerved me.
When the sound finally faded, the Haunt’s movements slowed and came to a stop. It remained crouched and staring at the dirt, so still that it might have turned into white stone. I lowered my shaking hands from my head. With its body bowed, I could see each of the creature’s ribs jutting up against the skin of its back, the tracery of veins spreading darkly over its spine.
This was a man once, I thought.
As if hearing my thought, the Haunt lifted its head. I took an involuntary step backwards, but it only glared at me. Then, with a malevolent hiss, it turned and loped off in the direction of the hills. I stared after it, convinced this was some kind of trick, but no, it kept moving, limping slightly. It gave the track a wide berth and slunk away into the grove.
I was alone.
“Millie? Finn?” My voice emerged hoarse. “Osan?”
It was quiet again, and I felt watched. If I left the path, if I let my guard down, the Haunts would be waiting.
“Finn!” I shouted, louder.
“El!”
Millie appeared at the top of the hill, and my heart leapt to my throat. She stumbled down the slope, almost tripping in her haste.
“Where is it?” Her eyes were wide with fear. “It moved so fast, I thought—”
I fought the urge to run to her. “Come here, quickly!”
She rushed the final few feet, and I threw my arms around her neck when she reached the broken wall.
“When I heard that howling, I thought for sure it had caught you,” she said. “It moved so fast, El.”
“I know.”
“It was awful, the way it ran, the way its eyes were shining.” Sweat beaded her hairline. “It never even looked at me.”
“You aren’t hurt, are you? It didn’t come near you?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
I drew back from her. “Finn and Osan?”
“They’re coming. It didn’t touch Osan or me, but Finn’s a mess. Why didn’t it attack you?”
“It’s the path; the Haunt couldn’t approach it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
I looked up and saw Osan supporting Finn’s weight as the two of them staggered over the rise. Osan’s relief was obvious when he caught sight of me, but Finn seemed scarcely conscious. He didn’t even raise his head.
When I started toward them, Millie grabbed my forearm.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said, “but if Haunts can’t reach you on this path, then stay here. I’ll help them.”
I ground my teeth together, but nodded. Millie let go of me and hurried to assist Osan. Finn’s shirt was soaked in gore: his own blood and the Haunt’s splattered over his skin. His steps faltered. Millie supported his other arm, and the three of them awkwardly shuffled down the hill. When they came closer to the path, Finn resisted weakly.
“What is it?” said Osan.
Finn shook his head. His breathing had a rough, wet quality, and I could see the Haunt’s claw marks through the rents in his shirt.
“No further,” he muttered.
I could not help myself, I stepped off the path to join them.
“Put him down,” I said.
Osan lowered Finn to the ground, and I knelt beside him. When I tried to peel back his shirt, he caught my wrist. Despite his injuries, his grip was firm.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t look,” he murmured.
I pulled my hand away. “Don’t be stupid, Finn. I have my faults, but I’m not scared of blood.”
“It’s not the injury.” His eyelids fluttered. “The way that it heals, it’s … unnatural. Not pretty. I don’t want you to see.”
Millie touched my shoulder.
“You’re hurt.” My throat was tight. “And you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
His chest quivered as he breathed, every inhale painful and slow.
“I’ll be fine.” He coughed. “I need a few minutes, that’s all. Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry! I nearly exploded. He was lying in front of me, blood seeping into the dirt and his chest cut open, and he wanted to act like nothing was wrong. Bad enough that he had gotten hurt again, bad enough that it had been my fault, but the fact that he was still trying to protect me? It was more than I could stand.
And yet I could not argue with him now. He was so broken and exhausted, and I could not do anything.
“Take as long as you need,” I said dully.