Chapter Twenty Six

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Chapter Twenty Six

Ember winced, holding her hand out to protect her eyes from the wind. Up here, at the top of the mountain, it was so strong that she would have been picked up off the ground and flung into oblivion if Norrin hadn’t been there to hold her down.

The thunderbird’s nest loomed over them, a mass of fully grown trees pulled from the ground and woven together in a haphazard, chaotic testament to the colossal bird’s power.

That thing could actually kill Fey, she realized for the first time. What a shame that would be.

The joke felt hollow even in her own thoughts. She hated the goat-walker and the way everyone idolized her, but she didn’t really want her dead. Usually. Not like this, at any rate. And some of their completely unjustified confidence in her must have rubbed off on Ember, because she had just assumed that Fey would find a way to survive. But now that she saw what the thunderbird was capable of, Fey’s chances against it seemed much less favorable.

And when it does kill her, it’ll come back here, she thought nauseously. She and Norrin needed to move fast!

“Glenn!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. There was no reply, either because the storm was too loud for Glenn to hear her, or because he was already… “Norrin, help me find a way in!”

It didn’t take long for them to locate a gap between the trees big enough for her to squeeze through. Norrin, however, was a different story. When he tried to squeeze in after her, his bulk pressed against the trees on either side of him and made the entire structure groan.

“Norrin, wait!" she said, holding out a hand to stop him. "You stay out here. Warn me if the thunderbird comes back, okay?”

“But you—”

“I am the one in charge here, not you!” she snapped. “Now do what I say!”

Reluctantly, Norrin let her proceed alone. Ember pushed her way further inwards. It was even darker in here than outside, and it had practically been night out there. She was forced to make her way forward almost entirely by touch. Occasionally a flash of lightning would give her a split second view of what was around her, but then she would be plunged back into pitch blackness.

“Glenn?” she called again. “Glenn, can you hear me?”

A faint murmur came from somewhere up ahead, and Ember’s heart leaped.

“Glenn!” she yelled, squeezing farther in as fast as she dared.

A section of the nest ahead had collapsed, letting in enough light for her to barely see. Ember gasped, half in joy and half in horror. There was Glenn—trapped beneath a pile of logs, each of them thicker and wider than Ember's entire body.

“Glenn!” she yelled again, hurrying to him as fast as she dared. “Are you okay?”

Only a small part of his face poked out from beneath the trees, but when she put a hand on him his eyes fluttered open.

“F…Fey?” he asked weakly.

Ember shoved down the wave of anger his words brought. “No, Glenn, it’s me! Are you okay?”

“Ember?” he groaned. “How did you get here?”

“That’s not important right now. Tell me how to get you out of there!”

“Where’s Norrin? Is he—”

“He’s fine,” she interrupted. “I told him to wait outside. Now hurry and tell me what to do!”

“I- I can’t move,” Glenn said. “You’ll have to get them off of me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know! You’ll have to figure that out yourself, Ember!”

Ember stumbled back, a chill running down her spine. Figure it out yourself. Three days ago, she would have welcomed those words. In bringing her up as his successor, Glenn’s training had largely consisted of comparing Ember to Fey. What would Fey do? When Ember failed, it was because Fey would have done it differently. Fey had always been his favorite. Ember had spent years living in that damn goat-walker’s shadow. Even when Fey had developed her own Instinct and left the pack, the constant comparisons hadn’t ended. To be told to do something her way would have, in any other situation, meant that Glenn finally believed in her.

But now Ember was the one who didn’t believe in Ember.

“I…I can’t,” she said, shaking her head.

Glenn looked at her in disbelief. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Glenn, I…I can’t do it!” Panic gripped her heart. “You were right about me from the start. I don’t have what it takes to be an alpha!”

“Ember, what in the world are you talking about?”

“I tried leading the pack while you were gone. I did my best! But everything I did was wrong!” Tears were spilling down her cheeks now. “Every decision I made just put Norrin and Clueless in more danger! I didn’t even mean to come here, Glenn! I’m only here because I got lost!”

It was all coming apart. She would never be able to get Glenn out from under the trees, and now they were both going to die because of her incompetence. After the thunderbird finished off Fey—and it would finish off Fey—it would come for them. And Norrin! Oh, God, she had led Norrin to his death too!

She fell to her knees, hyperventilating. Part of her wanted to run, to just abandon her alpha here. But where would she run to? And what kind of life did she think she would have? Living with the knowledge that she had failed her pack when they needed her most, haunted day in and day out by the knowledge that she hadn’t been good enough…she would be taking a swan dive off a cliff within a week.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, pressing her fists against her mouth. “I’m sorry, Glenn, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

“That’s enough of that!”

Ember was so surprised to hear Glenn yell that she immediately stopped crying and stared at him in shock.

“I’ve always believed in you!” he said, glaring at her from the gap between the logs. “I would never leave my pack in the care of someone I didn’t think could handle the responsibility!”

“I can’t do it! I’m not Fey! I’ll never be Fey and I’m sorry!”

“Of course you’ll never be Fey!” Glenn shouted at her. “I never wanted you to be Fey! All I wanted was for you to learn from her!”

“But you’re always comparing me to her!”

“There’s only one thing Fey has that you don’t!” he yelled. He was gasping for breath now, the logs pressing down on his chest, but he kept going. “Confidence! Your problem has never been your skills or your smarts, Ember, it’s that you don’t believe in yourself! That’s what I was always trying to get across to you! I thought if I could make you think like Fey, you would learn to be confident like Fey!”

Ember stared at him. She understood what he was saying, but his words made no sense. Confidence? She had confidence! That was why…

…why you always blow up whenever someone mentions Fey? her subconscious whispered to her. Because you don't think you're as good as her. You know she was Glenn's first choice to be the next alpha, and you assumed he knew best. And if he knew best, then what were you? Leftovers. Garbage!

"How can you believe in me?" she asked. "I almost got the others killed a dozen different ways before we even got here!"

"Ember, look at me." She turned, and flinched when she saw the pain in his eyes. Not from the trees, though that surely had to be hurting him, but from something much deeper. "What do you see?"

"I see…you?" she asked tentatively.

"You see a failure," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "A failure who lost more than half of his pack in one night—and one of them was his own son!"

"That wasn't your fault!" Ember exclaimed.

"It was my fault! As the alpha, everything that happens to my pack is my fault! You think there was nothing I could have changed? Nothing I could have done to avoid this? I failed everyone, Ember! I failed my son!"

Ember had to look away. Closing her eyes, tears spilled down her cheeks into her already soaked fur.

"But I keep going," Glenn went on. "I accept my mistakes, I get up, and I keep leading my pack! There's no such thing as a perfect leader, Ember! But as long as the leader cares more about the people they're leading than they care about themselves, what else can they do but keep going?"

Something sparked inside Ember, and she opened her eyes to look at Glenn.

"You’ve always put on a show of knowing what to do," he went on, "but you never actually felt the confidence you pretended to have. That's what I was trying to teach you, Ember. You don't have to pretend!"

Ember clenched her fists.

"You already have everything you need!"

She got to her feet.

"By being yourself!"

Climbing up onto the lowest of the fallen logs, Ember bent down and grasped the one that was putting the most weight on Glenn. Moving it wouldn't free him, but it might give him enough wiggle room to worm his way out.

"You just have to believe that you’re worth believing in!”

"I believe," she whispered—and then she pushed!

The log refused to move.

After a few seconds of straining, she gave up, collapsing to the ground and gasping for breath. Why had she forced Norrin to stay outside? He could have moved these logs with ease. Just another one of her failings.

No!

Catching her breath, she stood back up and looked at the mess…the puzzle. She couldn't overpower it. That meant she would have to outsmart it.

But how did she outsmart a pile of logs?

"I believe in you, Ember!" Glenn encouraged her.

Ember was drawn back to the log she'd just tried to lift. It was still the key to all of this, she was sure of it. But she needed a way to move it. She wasn't Norrin. She couldn't just grab whatever was in her way and throw it into orbit. She needed to think. She needed…

She paused. The way the logs were stacked on top of each other…it almost made it look like a…

"Glenn!" she exclaimed, dropping to her knees next to his head. "I need your Instinct!"

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but she could almost swear that he smiled at her.

She explained what she needed, and his eyes and antlers exploded with light. The prongs on his head reshaped themselves, becoming longer and thicker, and then twining around themselves until they were stuck tight against each other. The very end curved sharply into a hook, and then detached itself from his skull. It fell into Ember's hands, and for a few seconds she just looked at their creation.

This had better work, she thought.

It will, she thought back.

Moving back to where she had been before, Ember took the hooked part of her newly made staff and drove it in between the two logs. It slid in easily. Now came the hard part.

Taking a deep breath, Ember heaved downwards as hard as she could. The spot she had chosen was as close to a leverage point as she could find. She heaved again.

If she could just…

And again.

Apply the right amount of pressure…

Again.

Then she could use gravity to lift the log right off of Glenn for her!

Again!

The logs groaned as they rubbed against each other, but they stubbornly refused to move. Gasping and sweating from the exertion, Ember let go of the improvised crowbar. This had to work. It had to!

"I can do this!" she growled, reaching for the bar again—but then she stopped.

She couldn't do this.

"Ember?" Glenn asked.

She had to be even smarter!

"Get ready to move," she said, dodging around to the other side of the log pile. "We're only going to get one chance at this!"

With that, she climbed to the top of the pile. Glenn had to strain his neck to see what she was doing, but as soon as he saw her perched atop the highest log he got the picture.

Ember hesitated. This method was more dangerous. If Glenn wasn't fast enough, or if she miscalculated how the log would react, Glenn could easily be crushed. Even if he survived, it wasn't likely that the log would land in a position that would give Ember a second chance.

It had to be perfect.

Ember leaped from the log. For a split second, she was free falling. Then she landed on the crowbar, wrapping her arms and legs around it and holding on for dear life.

Just like she'd hoped, her weight and momentum combined lifted the log right off of Glenn—but then the crowbar slipped out from under it. Ember crashed down onto the ground, rolling over as fast as she could to see…

Moving with the grace only a deer could achieve, Glenn vaulted out of the log pile a heartbeat before the log came crashing back down. If he'd been even an instant slower, it would have smashed him like dough beneath a rolling pin.

"Glenn!" Ember shouted in joy, scrambling to her feet.

Glenn dashed over and wrapped her in a hug. "You did it, Ember! I knew you could, and you did!"

Suddenly, she could feel tears streaming out of her eyes again. "I‐ I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me!"

He hugged her even tighter. "No, I'm sorry. I thought I was helping you by comparing you to Fey for all these years. I should have focused on what made you special, Ember—and more importantly, making sure you knew what those things were too!"

Ember was tempted to just stay like that and let Glenn hold her like a child. She had earned that much at least, surely. But no. There was still work to do, and it wouldn't be right for the pack's leader—its leaders—to waste time on themselves at a time like this.

She pulled away from him. "Come on. Fey is out there fighting that stupid bird. We should help her."

To her surprise, as soon as she mentioned the thunderbird, Glenn's expression went dark.

"Not yet," he said, turning to face the center of the nest. "There's something I need to do first."

NEXT CHAPTER: 5/7/2025