“Yes,” I say. “I accept.” All the weight pressing me down seems to lift. The air is thin again. I fill my lungs and feel like I might float away. Golmarr squeezes my hand as one of his brothers unties the lamb from the aspen tree and leads it over to us. I pity the tiny creature, obviously removed from its mother and trembling with fear.
“There is a problem.” The crone’s voice rings out loud and grating, and Golmarr’s hand turns frigid in mine. “The ceremony is already done. This princess has made her choice to be offered to the fire dragon. She has stated it three times, and three times is a number of binding. She has sealed her fate.” The crone looks at me. Her wrinkled mouth twitches up at the corners, and her eyes fill with an emotion I can’t quite put a name to. Need? Hunger? Anticipation? “Take the rope from the lamb and lower the princess down!”
Everyone freezes, staring at me with stricken faces. A moment later, Ingvar and King Marrkul step up beside me and pull me toward the cliff, tearing my hand out of Golmarr’s. I struggle against them and look over my shoulder. The Faodarian nobles look frozen in place. The Antharian women are looking at me as if they are proud of my choice. All three of my sisters are crying, and their husbands are trying to console them. My mother stands still, silent, eternally majestic. My father’s eyes meet mine. His mouth is a thin, hard line. It is how he looked when he whipped me. “So be it,” he says. “You have chosen your fate. And so ends the life of Princess Sorrowlynn of Faodara.”
He turns and walks away, and Diamanta throws herself at his feet. “Please, Father,” she cries. “Don’t let them put her down there!”
“She chose this for herself.” He pulls his legs from her grasp and together my mother and father walk to their ornate carriage and get in, not once looking back. I am not sad to see them go. They have never loved me. They have never known me.
A rope is slipped over my head, and I am too shocked to cry, or fight, or even protest. I look up into King Marrkul’s face. His tan skin has gone white, and unshed tears are glistening in his pale eyes. “I’m sorry, child,” he whispers. “I thought all Faodarian princesses were cowards. I thought we would be putting a lamb down in your place.” He swipes his eyes with the back of his hand and tightens the rope around my chest. The pearl-crusted corset acts as a shield against the rope, and I can barely feel it. I can barely feel anything. “Hold the rope as we lower you to take some of the pressure off your ribs. We’ll get you down as quickly as possible.” He pulls a long, sheathed hunting knife from his belt and hands it to me. Somehow I manage to take it from him. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
Eight of his sons come to help him lower me down. Golmarr is standing apart, staring at me. The Antharian king walks me to the edge of the cliff and helps me wrap the massive layers of white petticoats and skirts around my ankles so they won’t tangle with my feet. And then I am walking backward, and my sisters are wailing, and the sun is shining too brightly, and the ground under my feet is changing from flat to sloped, until I am leaning back and walking down the sheer side of a cliff, and I am still too numb to even feel fear. After five steps, the cliff wall disappears, and I start to plummet.
The rope jerks taut, stealing my breath. It slides up under my armpits, popping pearl buttons off my corset, and I drop King Marrkul’s hunting knife. It clatters on the rock below. I gasp and cling to the rope with both hands and look at the opening in the cliff, and all at once, the numbness is torn from me and I start to scream. I am staring into a great, round mouth, filled with darkness and damp breath. I scream and scream, and squeeze my eyes shut. The more I scream, the more I begin to feel.
The rope stops being lowered and is yanked and shaken, making me swing back and forth. I suck in a breath of air and stop screaming, and crack my eyes open. Before me is a massive cave opening into the cliff face. Not a mouth.
Above, I hear raised voices. Men shouting. Arguing. Growling. The shouting increases, and the movement of the rope becomes jerky, pulsing to a tempo despite the fact that it still isn’t being lowered. Dirt and pebbles rain down on my head, so I look up. Someone is inching down the rope, his booted feet wrapped around it. It is the motion of him lowering himself, hand over hand, that is making the rope pulse. When he gets just above me, he stops and yells, “All right! Get us down quick!”
The rope is being lowered again, faster this time, until at last a small outcropping of rock touches my feet and I stand at the entrance of a cave. I peer over the side of the cliff, and my heart misses a beat. Far, far below, so far it looks like a piece of white embroidery floss, is the Glacier River flowing between jagged rocks. It springs from a glacier-fed lake cradled in the center of the mountains. Across from us is another sheer cliff face that rises up and turns into a snow-capped mountain peak.