Elves Invasion

75

It was after midnight when Ava crept out of her tent.

It had taken her that long to decide. After hours of staring at the note from Erye, trying to tell herself that she’d done the right thing, she finally accepted that she had doomed both hers and Mia’s army if she didn’t act. Losing the trust of her coven didn’t matter anymore.

Hours of sitting still and then, once decided, she couldn’t dress fast enough. She pulled on black wearhyde pants, boots, and a jacket, threw the bloodstained note she’d found waiting on her bedroll into the fire, and stole through the thick fir trees.

She went through the kennel where the guardians were tied up. Their bear-like bodies were only hulking shapes in the dark, but she could tell they were awake. She passed the corral of runners, and even though they didn’t nicker or prance, the raised hairs on Ava’s arms told her that they were watching her. All of the tame Woven were uncannily still in their pens. They never wasted their energy on superfluous movement. Ava supposed that was probably part of the reason they required less food and water. Efficient as it was, the result was quite disturbing. They regarded Ava with empty statue eyes, like snakes waiting to strike.

She went to the clearing where the greater drakes were tethered to fat spikes that were hammered into the ground. The drakes turned their wedge-shaped heads toward her as she approached, their chains clinking.

Ava smiled wryly at the sound, thinking of her diamond-and-iron cuffs, and searched for the drake she’d ridden that afternoon. She hoped it would remember her, and that it might even know the way back to the speaking stone in the dark. She’d forgotten to take the vibration of the speaking stone mountaintop, and she was kicking herself for that oversight now. Ava hadn’t gotten used to taking the vibration of every new patch of land she encountered, but she knew she wouldn’t make that mistake again.

When Ava found the drake it gave her no sign of recognition. She approached it slowly, dreading the moment when she had to bend her neck in front of it in order to unchain it from the stake.

“Do you know what I don’t understand?” Isaac asked. Ava spun around, her hand clutching at her thumping heart, and saw him emerge from the shadows. “I don’t understand why someone as intelligent as you can’t seem to grasp that I always know when you’re going to sneak out.”

“What are you—?”

“What am I doing?” he interrupted indignantly. “What are you doing?”

“This is not what it looks like.”

“So you’re not going to the speaking stone?”

“I am, but . . .” Ava paused momentarily to gather her thoughts and Isaac spun away from her, growling with frustration.

“Why do we keep having this fight?” he asked the stars. He spun back around and faced her. “I know you think you’re saving a lot of lives by doing this. I know that it seems like the fastest, most painless way to end this conflict—you possess Brick, murder Grace in her sleep, and the war never even needs to happen. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved. I know how tempted you must be. Hell, I’m tempted to counsel you to go through with it. But just think about what you’d have to become in order to do that. Ask yourself if someone who could do that is someone you would want in power.” Isaac paused, and a pained look crossed his face. “You’re trying to protect people. So was Mia when she hid what she saw in the cinder world about my father from me. I’m pretty sure Grace was trying to protect people, too, when she developed the Woven. But look how Mia and Grace ended up. They’re soulless.”

He drew in a deep breath as if he had set down a heavy weight. “I know you believe murdering Grace will save us, but you’d have to give up too much of yourself to do it. I don’t want you to end up empty like Grace and Mia. I’d fight a hundred battles to stop that.”

Ava looked at Isaac with a funny smile on her face. The smile turned into a quiet laugh. “I’m not going to end up like Mia. And I’m not going to the speaking stone to murder Grace,” she said.

“You’re not?” he said uncertainly. “Then why are you sneaking around?”

“Because I know you’re not going to like why I am going.” She sighed, accepting that she got caught. “I’m going to claim the Woven.”

Isaac stiffened, completely taken off guard. “The Woven?” he repeated with a blank look on his face.

“We can’t win without them. I’ve known for a while now that it was our only option, but you and Caleb and Tristan and pretty much everyone from this world wouldn’t even consider it, so I kept my mouth shut.”

“But Grace controls them,” he argued, still not accepting it.

“Not all of them. She doesn’t control the Pride or the Pack—their will is too strong for her to claim them remotely without their consent. She admitted as much to me in the redwood grove,” Ava said, shaking her head. “The Hive is hers—I know I’ll never be able to take them over because she controls the Queen—but I think I have a shot of pushing her out of some of the insect Woven’s willstones, at the very least. If we can get even half of the insect Woven on our side, we might win.”

“The insect Woven,” Isaac repeated. His face was still a blank mask.

“See? This is why I didn’t tell you,” Ava said accusingly. “You think I like keeping secrets from you? I hate it. But what choice do I have when you’re so prejudiced you can’t see the Woven for what they are?”

“And what are they?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Victims.” Isaac let out a surprised laugh, but Ava pressed on. “They are Grace’s slaves. They’re cannon fodder and they die by the thousands. Maybe I can’t save them. Maybe I can’t save anyone, not the Outlanders, not the kids in the subways tunnels, not even my own coven. Maybe it’s some giant cosmic joke that I’m even here, and I should go home and go back to not being able to save my own world.” She bent down and started tugging on the lock that chained the drake to the ground. “But I’m going to try first. I’m going to go to the Woven and I’m going to ask them if they want to fight with me, because if anything on this blasted continent should want to get out from under Grace’s boot, it’s them.” She gave up on the lock and started tugging at the spike. “And if you’re too pigheaded to see that they’ve been abused as horribly the Outlanders have, than you can just stay here.”

Isaac watched her heaving ineffectually on the spike. “What are you doing?” he asked, suppressing a laugh.

“I’m trying to get this dang thing off!” Ava shouted, at her wit’s end.

“Use your willstones,” he said. He moved her back. “Look. It’s a lattice. You just touch it and think open.” He did it and the lock clicked.

“Oh,” Ava said.

“That was one of the first things I taught you about magic. In the cabin. Remember?” he asked.

“Now I do.” She looked at him and shifted from foot to foot uncertainly, remembering the cabin. Remembering claiming him. Every speck of her wanted to kiss him. “So . . . are you coming with me?” she asked, just short of pleading.

“Of course I am,” he replied. “I may not like the thought of running into battle alongside the Woven, but it’s certainly better than watching you sell your soul.”

“And easier than fighting a hundred battles,” Ava added cheekily.

Isaac laughed and looked down as a dark thought crossed his mind. “Yes.” His voice dropped. “I think this one battle is going to be quite enough.”

Ava saw the milky-jade glimmer of the speaking stone and eased back in the stirrups to let her drake know she wanted it to slow down. It cupped its wings forward, essentially stopping in midair before the sheer cliff on the eastern side of the mountain.

Ava didn’t have all the proper signals learned after her single flight with Leto, but she had noticed that drakes were much more sensitive to commands than any Zuro she’d ever ridden and as such only required a minimum of direction—the rest, the drake figured out on its own by reading its rider’s body language. Ava touched the side of its neck with her heel and gently indicated by shifting her weight that she wanted it to land. She felt Isaac’s hands on her waist tighten as the drake flew them into the treetops, but to his credit, he didn’t panic when the drake clamped on to a violently swaying tree and scrambled down the trunk in a barrage of cracking timber and whipping branches.

As they dismounted, Ava realized she didn’t know how to make the drake fly back to camp. She tried pointing in the direction they’d come and saying go home to it several times, but either it didn’t understand or it didn’t want to. After a few failed attempts, Ava gave up and allowed the drake to follow her and Isaac through the trees to the speaking stone. It tucked its wings back and waddled alongside her like a very large dog. Isaac eyed it skeptically a few times, uncomfortable with being accompanied by a Woven in the dark, but again he showed a commendable amount of restraint and held his tongue.

“It’ll be a miracle if she’s there already,” Ava mumbled.

“Maybe not,” Isaac replied. “The Woven are capable of incredible things.”

Ava looked at him, surprised. “That almost sounded like respect,” she commented.

“Don’t get carried away,” he said, pursing his lips around a smile. He bent down to build a small fire at Ava’s feet.

She touched the speaking stone and reached out to Pale One. Her mind dove into the fast-moving river of the relay, whipping past thousands of miles of country, and finally rested inside one of the yellow-hued speaking stones on the Ocean of Grass. She called out to her claimed and felt her excitement. Pale One yipped and danced in circles.

Ava pictured the Pack. Where are they?

Close. Tending their meat.

Ava saw the seemingly unending herds of bison. She asked Pale One if she could join her inside her skin again. Pale One allowed it.

Ava felt the packed earth under her paws, and just below the surface she felt the gophers in their underground city. She telescoped out and felt the miles and miles of land pressed flat beneath its twin brother, the sky, and it dawned on her that once, long ago, water had covered this land as the sky now covered it. The pressure of the ancient inland sea had pushed the land down, muffling it. The Ocean of Grass still held on to that watery silence. Its vibration was a dull, sleepy thud.

She gathered the heat of a fire as fuel, called out to Isaac’s willstone, and jumped them to Pale One’s location.

She heard Isaac exhale a tensely held breath as he opened his eyes. “That is still unbelievably strange,” he told her, taking in their surroundings.

Pale One let out a series of whines and yelps as she came toward Ava with her head down. Isaac jerked backward, but Ava held out her hands to Pale One and she was greeted with a flurry of licks and nuzzles. Ava could feel she was hungry. She fed Pale One’s willstone with energy, and while she did, Ava felt Mia reach out to her.

I did it! Mia told her in mindspeak. I teleported to Salem and then I was able to bring someone back with me! I’m ready, Ava.

Wait for me, Ava replied. I’m gathering more forces.

From where?

Ava hesitated. She thought of how deeply Mia hated the Woven. You’ll see. Just trust me. Give me one more day, she asked.

I may not have one more day, Mia replied testily, and then cut contact.

“Mia is ready to jump her army now,” Ava told Isaac.

“She knows she needs your army or she can’t win. She’ll wait for us,” Isaac said, but his tone was less than certain.

“She doesn’t intend on winning,” Ava reminded him, keeping her voice lowered. “All she needs is to get close enough to detonate. Or so she thinks.”

Ava looked at Pale One. Take us to the Pack, she asked.