Chapter 20: Across in the Dark

Lacey's POV

Dee shook me awake with the lantern in her hand.

"He went at dawn," she said. "I said yes. I'm sorry. Look at the sky."

The sky had a window cut into it, with the feed from Brett's patch playing in the middle.

I saw Gabe standing on the cracked dirt with nothing behind him but black.

I saw the edge of a plank falling.

My hands went numb.

"I'm going to kill him," I said.

"Brett, or Gabe?"

"After I save him, both."

My Ember Points had come back to eleven overnight.

It was not enough for a feast, but it was enough for a bridge.

I ran to the stack of planks at the end of the street, forty of them, still wrapped in the ooze I had saved on Day 6.

TinyTurnip was already beside me, lifting.

The girl who could not have been twenty lifted the next one, and the big man took two.

"What are we doing?" the guildmaster asked, breathless, as Ironwall's officers hurried in behind him.

"Making a road," I said. "Light every plank."

I laid my palm on the first and poured in two Ember Points.

The wood went gold from end to end and held the glow.

We passed it hand to hand across the gap.

Plank after plank, each one burning, until a trembling line of light ran out over the void toward Brett's patch.

The whole zone watched it grow.

A player: [she's building a road of FIRE]

A player: [the hearth queen is COMING]

I walked out alone on the gold, and the black fell away on either side.

I did not look down.

When I came within ten feet of the edge, Brett's smile was waiting for me.

"Lacey. Right on time."

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