stand up.
Nimh gives a little laugh, her face shadowed before she turns back out toward the sunset, the colors lending her dark hair a fiery hue. “Which is worth more?” she murmurs aloud, though the words sound more like a question she’s asking herself. “My divinity, or my life?”
All her life, people have been telling her that the divinity she carries is the most precious thing about her—that of all her other qualities, even the breath in her body, her destiny is what matters.
And, bit by bit, it’s all been torn away from her. I wish I knew how to show her the worth of what she has left.
“Your life,” I tell her, before the silence can stretch. “That’s an easy question, and a stupid one. Come away from there—the top of the cliff is just up ahead. It’s getting dark, and we must have come far enough. We’ll stop and we’ll have something to eat and I promise you, you’ll feel better.”
She says nothing, looking down at the edge of the cliff—where I notice, with a tingle of horror that twitches between my shoulder blades, the toes of her boots are hanging off into empty space.
“Nimh!” I take a step toward her. “It’s your life, that’s more important.”
Nimh glances over her shoulder at me. “So you’d catch me,” she murmurs, “if I fell?”
I’m about to snap a reply when the look in her eyes stops me cold.
I thought I’d seen hopelessness in the eyes of that child who begged for food as we passed on the way to the village. I thought I’d seen pain on Quenti’s face as he clung to my hand.
But there’s an emptiness to Nimh’s face now that makes my heart drop down so violently I feel sick.
“You told me you believed you and I were destined to meet.” I take another step toward her, keeping my eyes on hers, though the unhappiness there is painful to see. “You know all this talk of prophecy and fate freaks me out, and mostly just makes me wish I’d never even heard of my glider. I don’t know what it means that Jezara didn’t lose her divinity when she was touched, and I don’t know what it means that her daughter might be the Lightbringer.”
Nimh’s face tightens, and I hurry to keep speaking while she’s still listening at all.
“I don’t know anything,” I tell her, spreading my hands helplessly. “Except that I’m glad I fell, Nimh.” My eyes burn as I say the words, not least because I’ve never said them even to myself—not least because to say them means turning my back on my family. It means surrendering hope that I’ll ever see my friends again. “I’m glad,” I repeat. “Because I met you.”
Nimh’s eyelashes dip, then lift as she focuses on my face, her own drawn and weary. The sunset behind her is glorious, but I can scarcely see it, I’m so focused on scanning every flicker and shift in her expression.
I swallow, hunting for my voice. “What do you call that, except destiny?”
Nimh’s lips twist, then press together, eyes brimming. “Oh, North—I don’t know what to do.” Her shoulders quake, and then she’s spilling over with tears.
I’m about to step back, to clear the way for her to come back from the edge, when I see her weight shift. She’d been holding herself stiff and straight, and now she sags with the weight of breaking emotion—and she takes one tiny, tiny step back.
Our eyes meet, horrified, in that single instant before she begins to fall.
I lunge, grabbing at her, fighting for balance for one terrifying moment as my muscles scream and my heart tries to push its way up my throat. I’m sure we’re both about to go tumbling down the cliff, but as I dig in and grit my teeth, she steadies. Her wide eyes are fixed on my face, her breath coming quickly. Then her gaze drops, and mine follows, and I realize I’ve caught the blade of the spearstaff, and she’s clinging to its handle.
With that realization comes a line of searing pain across my palm, and I quickly shift my grip until I’m holding the spear’s haft instead.
Even with her life on the line, I instinctively grabbed at the staff, rather than her arm or her hand. When did I learn to think like that?
“Are you all right?” I pant, carefully backing up, still holding the spearstaff.
“Yes,” she says, shaky, holding on to it as well, following me away from