Page 232 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Wren. You’re not dying today, okay? You have so much left to do. So much left to give the world. You’re just getting started.”

“How are you—” I looked back towards the Rift, and then at Gams’s sweater. “You’re a Nightmare?”

“I am.” Her eyes swam with tears, and her thumbs wiped away the tears on my cheeks. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long. You’ve already done so much, my only regret is that I’m going to miss what comes next.”

“I didn’t mean to make the mountains erupt,” I sobbed, not fully understanding what she was saying. “I’m sorry, Gams. I tried—”

“I already told you, you’re not dying today.” Gams smiled and her tears finally spilled over. “And Liam, I trust you to make sure that doesn’t happen for a good long while, alright? You take care of each other. That’s an order, Grimguard.”

She bent down to kiss Ciarán’s brow. I’d always been so jealous of how she treated Liam like a grandchild, but now it struck me with worse panic than the oncoming pyroclastic devastation.

“Where are you going?” I demanded. “Why are you saying goodbye?”

“I don’t have a lot of time, Wren. Ferrin got me good.” She placed a hand over her abdomen where my father had shot her. “But it’s a good thing you pulled all that Skal from Keldori through the Rift so I can do one last thing for you.”

“I can heal you! I can—!” But her body was so far across the water.

She silenced me by pressing her lips against my forehead.

“Wren,” she sighed. “You are the most perfect thing to have ever come from anything I’ve done or created. You won’t be alone. You have Liam. You have your mother. And please be kind to yourself. For someone so talented, you’ve always been absolutely terrible at that.”

She stood up and stepped between us and the churning mountains.

The air around her shimmered, and she raised her hands.

Earth roared as the landslide stopped in its charge and sloshed towards the sky, as if slamming into an invisible wall. The sound was deafening and terrible, and our slab of ice lifted and fell on the waves the shaking earth sent through the bay.

And then the land settled, falling back down on itself rather than pushing forward. Ash continued to spew into the air, but the earth stilled, and silence rang in my ears.

Gams turned to face us, her face glistening with sweat and tears.

“I want to save you,” I croaked. “Please.”

She bent down to take me in her arms over Ciarán and wrapped me in an embrace.

“You’ve done one impossible thing already today. Pace yourself. You have the rest of your life. I love you, Wren. My amazing girl. Tell your mother I love her too.”

She stroked the back of my hair, and then her arm dropped, her embrace loosened, and I was left with a pile of dust and used-up magick where my grandmother had been.

“Gams?” A heavy, choked breath forced its way out of my throat. Ash filtered between my fingers. My voice strained through my impossibly tight throat to whisper, “I love you too.”

The ice rocked, and I stumbled back into Ciarán’s arms, where I hid and cried bitter, ragged sobs.

47. Mythmaking

Ash flaked from the sky, turning the world gray. Or maybe all of the color had seeped away when Gams had turned to dust because I knew what that meant was waiting for me at the Rift.

Ciarán leaned against me, and magick flurried at our feet, freezing the bay to forge a path back to the others. The air crackled with Skal, and without the mountains limiting my power, it was easy to form the ice bridge beneath us.

Paleomagnetism studied the flipping of the globe’s magnetic poles. Something similar had happened when I’d siphoned Keldori’s magick into Skalterra to save Ciarán. The magick poles had reversed, and Skal now flowed the opposite direction.

Skalterra was brimming with it, and I was certain when I walked back through the Rift into Keldori, there would be none.

Stanley lay on the ice near the Rift. Twenty yards away, the snow and ice was stained red, but what remained of Ferrin didn’t qualify as a body anymore.

A third shape lay surrounded by my friends. Mom’s head bowed over the gossamer blue dress of the body. Fana and Iseult knelt beside her with Orla supported between them. My father lurked nearby, unmoving. He flinched away as a beast with rippling green fur and a muzzle stained in seal blood crept from the depths of the Rift.

Una gave a low, mournful howl, and then bounded across the ice to meet us. She nosed at Ciarán, trying to push her nose beneath his arm, but the cloak he had wrapped around himself hung in the way. She circled us in an anxious pace, finally landing on my side to try nosing at me this time.