pale skin and long black hair and slender white arms draped about her daughter’s shoulders. Claws digging into Mia’s lungs. Lips brushing Mia’s ears as she leaned in close enough to smell charnel breath and rusting skin. Mia closed her eyes, shook her head, trying not to listen as it hissed inside her mind.
You should have run when you had the chance, little girl.
“No,” she hissed.
Beg my forgiveness.
“Fuck you.”
Plead my mercy.
“Fuck. You.”
It was a weight, pressing on her shoulders. It was a hammer, shattering her like glass. She felt herself sinking in her own undertow, pieces drifting down into the dark. Her love was lost. Her hope was gone. Her song was sung. Nothing of anything remained. She looked for something to cling to, something to save her, something to keep her warm in a world grown so suddenly black and cold. She reached toward her vengeance and found it futile. She reached toward her anger and found it hollow. She reached toward her love and found only tears. She scrabbled in the bitter ash her heart had blossomed in, black grit beneath her fingernails, a black sting in her eyes.
Looking for a reason.
Looking for anything.
Eclipse scoffed. “… YOU HAVE THE HEART OF A LION…”
“A crow, perhaps.” She wiggled her fingers at the wolf. “Black and shriveled.”
“… YOU WILL KNOW THE LIE OF THAT BEFORE THE END OF THIS, MIA. I PROMISE…”
And there, on her knees, the darkest night of her soul closing in around her, Mia finally saw it. A tiny spark, flickering in the black. She seized hold of it like she was freezing, like she was drowning. A strange shape, altogether unfamiliar—not the vengeance that had driven her or the rage that had sustained her or even the love that she’d set her back against. It was a simple thing, almost impossible to grasp. A tiny thing, almost impossible to see the breadth of.
Truth.
“Never flinch,” her mother had told her.
“Never fear.”
But there, alone in Cleo’s dark, Mia finally realized the impossibility of those words. Facing her fear for the first time in as long as she could remember, Mia finally saw it for what it was. Fear was a poison. Fear was a prison. Fear was the bridesmaid of regret, the butcher of ambition, the bleak forever between forward and backward.
Fear was Can’t.
Fear was Won’t.
But fear wasn’t ever a choice.
To never fear was to never hope. Never love. Never live. To never fear the dark was to never smile as the dawn kissed your face. To never fear solitude was to never know the joy of a beauty in your arms.
Part of having is the fear of losing.
Part of creating is the fear of it breaking.
Part of beginning is the fear of your ending.
Fear is never a choice.
Never a choice.
But letting it rule you is.
And so she breathed deep. Dragged its scent into her lungs. Felt herself wanting to fly apart, to curl up and die, to lay down and litter this graveyard with her bones. Feeling it pour over her, allowing it to soak her, letting it wash her clean and knowing it would be all right. Because to be alive was ever in some way to be afraid.
And she looked up into Cleo’s eyes. The press of the dark upon her lips, the press of her fingernails into bloody palms. The shadows raged and seethed, the daemons howled and roared, the dark shivered and yawned all about her. Cleo raised her hand, black claws of living darkness at the tips of her fingers. Wailing in her ears. A hunger deep enough to drown in. Teetering on the brink of the Abyss.
“… LOOK AROUND YOU…!” Mister Kindly cried again.
Mia’s eyes flickered up, up to the pale light shining through the cracked dome above her. The single sun, waiting beyond. And at last, she heard him. She understood what he was telling her. Fingers closing about Mouser’s blacksteel blade at her waist, its edge keen enough to slice gravebone. And shining like blood and diamonds, sharp as broken glass, she hurled the blade upward, into the ceiling above their heads.
The blade struck the cracks, pierced the ancient bone. Pale blue light streamed in through the hole, the last gasp of a falling sun, still shockingly bright in the almost-dark. A spear of brilliance, gleaming down from the dying sky, striking Cleo where she stood. The woman staggered in the sudden radiance, the shadows bending, one hand held up against the light.