We watch, helpless, as the desperate vines find Gry, pulling her down hard. “No!” she shouts. “I am the way!” But the sky is raining stone. And then the great castle falls in on itself completely, entombing Gry deep within its broken walls, silencing her forever.
Fetry, Kin, and I barely escape. We are left panting in the grass as the castle sinks back into the earth—the land reclaiming its own, and Gry along with it. Bessie and Mae have escaped, as have some of the others. Mercy has been buried along with Gry.
The girls stare at the spot where Gry was standing.
Mae smiles through her tears. “She meant it to be this way,” she says in utter rapture. “Don’t you see? She sacrificed ’erself. For us.”
Bessie shakes her head. “No.”
Mae grabs her skirts. “We have to keep doin’ what she told
