off and kept coming.
Abbe tried to fly but it was nothing for Glenn to thicken the air and pull the witch back down. Abbe plummeted face-first into the mud.
Her hands were splayed out on the ground beside her.
“We don’t have to do this,” Glenn said as she approached the girl.
“We should be working together.”
Abbe squeezed the earth in her fist, and there was a deep rumble.
A rip in the ground appeared at Abbe’s fingertips, widening as it shot out across the space between them. Glenn went to escape it, but she was too heavy, too slow. By the time the tear in the ground reached her, it was a chasm several feet across. Glenn tried to dodge away, too late.
The ground disappeared beneath her and she tumbled helplessly into the dark.
Glenn tried to grab on to something, or pull in a gust of wind to lift her up, but she was moving too fast and was too depleted. It was deadly quiet as she fell, careening through the dark, and then it all came to an end in one body-shaking crash. Glenn slammed into an
outcropping of rock, her right side first, ribs taking the impact. There was a snap and a firecracker burst of pain in her midsection.
When Glenn tried to sit up the pain exploded again and she fell back, her body buzzing with shock. Glenn moved her hands along her side, looking for wounds. There was a deep gash in her arm that was slick with blood, and what felt like a snapped rib. She nearly screamed when her fingers found it.
She must have fallen a hundred feet. To her left was the edge of the gorge, falling hundreds of feet into the darkness. To her right was an opening in the rock wall, the mouth of a cave.
Above her the darkness she had fallen through began to lighten.
Had morning come already? No. It wasn’t the sun. It was a single light, hazy at first, illuminating the lip of the gorge. Glenn stared up at it, transfixed, as it moved along the edge. She thought she heard a voice calling down to her. She wanted to cry out, “I’m here!” and even managed to open her mouth, but no sound came out, just a strained whisper.
The light left the edge of the gap, floated there for a moment, and then began to fall toward her, slow at first, and then with increasing speed.
“We’re not finished, Glennora!”
Abbe Daniel was coming for her, her way illuminated by a yellow orb of light centered around her right hand. At the rate Abbe was falling, Glenn didn’t have much time. She nearly screamed with pain as she forced herself up and stumbled into the dark cave beside her.
She took a couple steps then crashed into rock.
Glenn took a deep breath and concentrated, imagining the earth’s fiery core flowing to one spot in the center of her hand. The air above her palm wavered and a single small flame appeared, illuminating the walls of the cave. Glenn ran, hunched over and wincing in pain, down a narrow stone corridor.
“Glennora!”
Abbe had made it to the ledge and was following close behind.
The path wound through the rock until finally Glenn ran straight into a large cavern. In front of her was a pond and columns of rock that rose nearly a hundred feet above her head. The air was cooler here and felt fresh for the first time. Glenn raised her hand and urged the flame higher. There! At the top of the far wall was a hole in the rock. Glenn could feel fresh air pouring down into the cavern from its mouth. It was easily big enough for her to squeeze through and escape. All she had to do was get to it.
Glenn ran into the water and then jumped up toward the hole, summoning every scrap of will she had in her and hoping it was enough to lift her to freedom. Glenn’s fingers brushed the wet stone and she scrambled upward. There was a splash behind her.
“Glenn!”
Glenn grabbed hold of the ledge and started to pull herself up but watched in horror as the rock surrounding the hole grew until it closed off completely. She was ripped away from the wall, and sent flying across the room and into the icy water of the pool. The cold lanced into her, every scrap of energy she had drained out of her. Glenn went limp, sinking down into the murk, but then a hand seized the back of her shirt and pulled her toward the surface.
Glenn sucked in a desperate breath. Her feet kicked at the rock as she tried to stand, but Abbe yanked her forward, dragging her out of the water and tossing her like an empty sack onto the stone shore. Glenn barely even felt the pain anymore. Her body was like a lump of clay.
Useless. Lifeless. If there was any Affinity left in her now, it was too far away and too small to touch.
Abbe towered over her, one hand lit up like a lantern. Her face was twisted into a horrible mix of hatred and glee. With the other hand she reached into her robe and pulled out a silver-bladed dagger. The way the light from her hand reflected off the mirrorlike edge was almost blinding.
“You don’t have to do this,” Glenn said.
“Sorry. Killing you is the price of admission into the good graces of the Colloquium.”
“How can you just switch sides?”
Abbe laughed, making a sick echo off the damp stone walls. “I thought you would have learned more by now, Glennora.” Abbe leaned in to whisper in Glenn’s ear. “There are no sides. The Magisterium.
The Colloquium. They’re the same — words on banners that people wave around to get others to do what they want. It’s a game. Pity you had to learn that too late.”
Abbe pulled back the dagger and in that second, Glenn dug inside herself and prayed for strength, but when she prayed, she didn’t see 813
or three distant stars, she saw the faces of Kevin and Aamon, her mother and her father. She saw them all and reached for one last bit of Affinity, her fingers scrambling toward it. Glenn strained and pushed, but in the end it was too far. Time slowed. The tip of Abbe’s dagger rose. She remembered Kevin’s lips on hers. His hand on her back. The look in his eyes. The swirling snow. A night she could have seized that was now lost.
There was a scream and Abbe flew away from her, her body bent nearly in two. Time rushed forward again. Across the cavern, Abbe was rising from the water, her black hair plastered against her face. The dagger was gone and her eyes were blazing as she looked past Glenn to the mouth of the cave.
Glenn turned and caught a flurry of movement. There was a dark blur and then a sound like thunder as the cave lit up with a flash of light.
When Glenn’s eyes adjusted, she saw Abbe slumped and unconscious on the shore across from her and a figure standing between them.
Her back was to Glenn, but it was clear that this was not the wasted woman she had left lying on Opal’s bed. She was impossibly tall, with hair the color of coal. The bracelet was gone from her wrist, and her entire body glowed, illuminating the cave with a murderous green light. She stalked across the shallow end of the water toward Abbe’s limp body, pulsing with violence.
Glenn forced herself up and staggered through the freezing water.
She made it only a few steps before her legs gave out and she collapsed, falling into the water and against her mother’s legs. Glenn reached up and grabbed hold of her dress.
She turned and Glenn saw those eyes, perfectly black, without thought or feeling or recognition, just as they had been that night past the border when Glenn was six. Whatever impulse had sent her mother down into the caves had already been wiped away and replaced with blind hate. Glenn marshaled her fear and grabbed her mother’s wrist, turning her away from Abbe.
“Stop,” Glenn breathed as she forced herself to stand.
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For a moment the two of them stood inches apart, the Magistra glowering down at her. “What do you care if she dies?” she asked in an awful, distorted echo.
