It was a bear, massive and white, with monstrous paws. It pounced upon her, mauling and mashing, and Greer didn’t know what to do. It was so much larger than she was, filling the width of the tunnel, a vast and immovable force.
Over the grunts and growls of the monster, Greer heard laughter and caught sight of Elowen farther down the tunnel. The starlings were gone, and she’d returned to her batlike form, all tendons and wings and malice. She watched the battle with rapt interest, her eyes shining in the darkness.
One of the bear’s front paws slammed into Greer’s face and began to press down, scraping her cheek roughly into chiseled stone. A terrible burst of crackling white noise filled her head, and her vision began to dim.
It’s going to crush my skull,she thought, panicked.
She squirmed and flexed, using every bit of her strength to wriggle from the bear’s hold. But it was too big. It weighed too much. This wasn’t an even fight.
It isn’t a fight at all.
Ailie’s voice filled her mind, and Greer wanted to sob. Even now, knowing what she’d been and the things she’d done, Greer longed tofall into her arms. She wanted to disappear into the protective power of her mother’s embrace, losing herself in Ailie’s comfort and strength.
Let me do this,her mother insisted.Stop fighting against the mantle, and let me help.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered, and she must have said it aloud, because, somewhere down the tunnel, Elowen cackled.
Greer,Ailie pressed, and it was the only encouragement she needed.
Greer let go. She felt the moment Ailie’s blood took hold. Her limbs thrummed with muscles she did not possess, lengthening and shifting, and hefting the bear from her. Her back arched as her spine grew longer, suddenly crowded with too many vertebrae. Inside her chest, she felt her sternum expand, growing into a wide, protective shield. Joints popped as her fingers extended, and wickedly curved talons pushed from her flesh.
She waited for the pain, waited to be struck dumb and dizzy as her body shifted into new shapes and angles.
It did not come.
Greer knew she’d changed, knew she no longer resembled herself, knew she was now one of them. But it did not feel wrong, only different.
She pushed herself up, feeling all the ways gravity tugged at her new frame, changing her sense of balance and equilibrium. Her back hulked, bowed against the weight of longer sinews and muscles and wings.
The white bear let out a deafening roar but did not attack.
Greer waited for it to change, matching her form with one of its own, but it remained low, its ears flattened, snorting and smacking at the ground. Its claws raked across one of the veins of iron ore, but it did not flinch. It didn’t even register it.
It’s not a Bright-Eyed,she realized.It’s just a bear.
It growled again, bellowing its anger first at Greer, then at Elowen.
She brought it here,Ailie whispered in her daughter’s mind.She controlled it. Our blood is wilder than even the most barbarous of creatures. They submit to us, not the other way around.
Greer remembered the night of Reaping. The moths. The bats. They hadn’t been a swarm, concentrating together to migrate or hunt.They’d not been an omen from the Benevolence. They’d been possessed, their blood seized by Elowen. They’d been a diversion, a way for her to leave a note stabbed on Hessel’s door. The note that started this whole bloody affair.
How?she asked, and felt something in her mind shift, reaching out for the white bear.
Before she could seize hold, a terrible commotion came from above. With a shuddering rumble, the tunnel’s ceiling broke apart, falling away in a shattering of slate and granite. Rocks rained down, striking at all three of them. The bear thundered in terror and charged down the shaft, knocking Greer over as it fled, running as fast as its lumbering gait would allow.
Greer tried to call it back but stopped short as a Bright-Eyed, far larger than any of the others and camouflaged as the very mountain itself, slammed to the ground behind her. He towered over both her and Elowen, a veritable gargoyle come to life, with murderous intent shining in his eyes. He swiped at Greer, catching her arms and wrenching them back with such force that her spine cracked.
Elowen pounced, covering Greer’s mouth to stop her rising scream. Greer bit into the fleshy palm as hard as she could, tearing flesh and drawing blood, but the Bright-Eyed didn’t so much as flinch. She rammed the heel of her hand upward instead, and Greer’s vision exploded in dark stars. Still Elowen wouldn’t release her, and Greer gagged, sputtering and choking on the Bright-Eyed’s blood.
She flailed, lashing out with her feet, but could not find purchase. The stony Bright-Eyed tightened his grip, digging bruises into her skin. She felt a rib crack. Then another. Greer’s sight fell in and out of focus, and she heaved, unable to draw breath.
“Since you won’t give me the cloak, I’ll take it myself,” Elowen snarled, and in a flash, her mouth was pressed to the crook of Greer’s neck. Rows of serrated teeth sank deep.
Greer choked on her own scream as her captor sank his teeth into the curve of her shoulder blade, feasting from behind. Their mouths roved across her skin, licking at the punctures, massaging the wounds with their lips to draw out more blood, to draw out all of Ailie’s magic.
Greer wanted to shut her eyes and roll into the dark,welcoming void of oblivion, but the sounds would not let her escape. Lips smacked, tongues laved. More mouths joined in, snapping at her wrists, grabbing hold of a thigh. The Bright-Eyeds made grotesque noises of pleasure, murmuring and groaning as they fed. She could hear their heartbeats—three, four, five of them now, maybe more, maybe an entire court—quicken with bloodlust. She could hear her own heart, slowing to a sluggish pulse.
I’m dying,she thought, and was distressed to realize it didn’t bother her as it should. She idly wondered if there was something in the Bright-Eyeds’ saliva that sank victims into a state of hazy apathy, allowing the predators to feed at their leisure.
