Shadows and Light

a loop.
    She saw Aiden slip a little more.
    Getting as close as she could, fearing that any moment more of the edge would crumble, she held out the lead rope, dangling it next to his left hand.
    “Grab the rope, Aiden. Grab the rope.” When he hesitated, she screamed at him, “If you go over the edge, I’ll leap with you!”
    He grabbed the rope with his left hand.
    “Hold on,” Lyrra panted. “Hold on.” She forced herself to move quietly toward the nervous horses, her own nerves shrieking to move move move.
    She grabbed the mare’s reins. Tied them to the rope. Closed her hands over the knot. “Back up now.
    Back!”
    Aiden’s face was contorted with pain, fear, and the effort to hold the rope as the horses slowly pulled him out of the mist.
    His left hand started to slip. Letting go of his tenuous hold of the ground, he grabbed the rope with his right hand. The move turned him on his side.
    More of the edge crumbled beneath him.
    “Back!” Lyrra cried, pulling with the horses. “Back! Back !”
    His chest now rested on solid ground. His hips. His knees.
    Lyrra pulled with the horses. Pulled and pulled until Aiden’s feet were an arm’s length from the edge.
    He let go of the rope. Rolled onto his belly and crawled a bit farther before he collapsed.
    It took her a moment to open her hands and let go of the reins and the rope. Once she did, she ran to him, tears streaming down her face.
    “Aiden. Aiden.” She touched his shoulder.
    With a moan that was almost a sob, he rolled over.

    A hawk screamed.
    Looking up, Lyrra saw it dive toward them, then back-wing until it landed on the ground and changed shape.
    Falco ran over to them, dropped to his knees beside Aiden.
    “What happened?” he said. “Are you hurt, Lyrra? Aiden, can you speak? How bad is it?”
    “The— The bridge collapsed,” Lyrra said.
    Falco frowned, looked over at the place where the archway had been. “Why were you attempting to use the long bridge when you knew it was unstable?”
    Fear changed to anger in a heartbeat. “How could we know it was unstable?” Lyrra snapped.
    “We were told,” Falco said, staring at her in confusion. “Something started weakening the bridge about a fortnight ago, and the Clan has been warning guests not to use it to travel to the other Clan territories.
    The Clan matriarchs mentioned it when I arrived.”
    “They didn’t tell us,” Lyrra said. “They didn’t mention it when we arrived yesterday. They didn’t mention it this morning when they came into the common room where Aiden and I were having something to eat.”
    “They didn’t—” Falco paled. “Why would they do that?”
    “Because they’re Fae,” Aiden said softly, bitterly. He raised one arm to cover his closed eyes—but not before Lyrra saw the single tear escape. “If the Bard disappeared in the mist while using a bridge they’d warned him not to take, who would be inconvenienced? Another with the gift would ascend to become the Lord of Song, and perhaps the next one wouldn’t be so insistent about playing the same wearisome tune about protecting the witches.”
    “But they didn‘t tell you,” Falco said. “Lyrra just said they didn’t.”
    “If we were both lost in the mist, they could claim they’d told us—and there would be no one who could call them liars,” Lyrra whispered.
    “But...” Falco sat back on his heels. “But that seems like such a ... human ... thing to do.”
    “Is it? If that’s the case, perhaps we’ve become more human than we want to believe.”
    Falco winced. Lyrra didn’t blame him. The Fae had held the conceit of being superior to every other living thing for so long, it wasn’t easy to consider that the worst flaws in their nature might be something they had in common with humans.
    Aiden tried to sit up. When he started to fall back, groaning, Lyrra and Falco supported his shoulders to help him.
    “We have to keep going,” Aiden said.
    Red streaks on the side of his torn shirt caught Lyrra’s attention. Blood. “You are hurt!”
    “I’m all right. I can travel. We need to travel.”
    “First you need to have the Clan healer take a look at your hands,” Falco said, helping Aiden stand up.

    His hands? Lyrra gasped when she looked at Aiden’s scratched, abraded hands. “Mother’s mercy, Aiden.”
    Aiden looked at Falco. His blue eyes were so filled with bitter despair Lyrra wanted to cry out from the pain of just seeing it.
    “Do you really think I’d