Writer in Motion Week Three: Post-Critique Partner Edit

One of my favorite things about writing is, without question, meeting and working with other writers. Here is a subtly but significantly improved draft thanks to the wonderful Dani (who would tell me to count the adverbs in this very sentence and be right). Looking forward to shipping this version off to an editor as the next step in the Writer in Motion process. 

Flight of Folly

Caius stepped onto the balcony, his footsteps silent as he moved from tunnels into the late morning light. The land dropped away sharply, rock becoming ice becoming sea.

He hated it here. Hated everything about it. The way his feet never got warm. The way everything tasted like salt. The way he’d followed Isidore here, as though he’d had no other choice.

“Tell her,” his mage had demanded over a breakfast of stale bread and fish, grumpy as usual. “It’s bad enough that you’re miserable, but you’re becoming distracted.”

She was right. None of them could afford distraction. Not with the armies of Airec preparing to destroy both his kingdom and Isidore’s in one fell swoop. And so Caius forced himself onto the balcony where the warrior queen spent her mornings. Not that he paid any attention to her routines.

She leaned over the balcony as though about to take flight. Wind pulled strands from the braids of dark curls crowning her forehead, creating an unruly latticework across her face. Caius fought down a horrifying impulse to pull her back from the edge. A smile lit her face, as though something on the horizon had just answered a question. 

He took a hesitating step forward, and her head snapped to the side. The smile dropped away, and something in Caius’ chest tightened. Wind sent his own blonde hair careening. He let it hide his expression before shoving it back to face her. How foolish to think he might be someone who could make her happy when all he’d ever done was the opposite.

“My apologies. I’ll leave you to your thoughts.” He turned back to the tunnels, but her voice arrested him.

“Tell me again.” He glanced back. Her brows drew together, a small line dividing them as she absently bit her lip. It was the face she made when she was puzzling something out, and he cursed himself for knowing that. “What are the three ways into Airec?”

“It’s nothing you don’t already know,” he replied, surprised by the question. By the fact that she was asking him anything at all. He leaned against the railing beside her, telling himself the swooping sensation in his stomach was a response to the staggering drop-off below. “By air, by sea, and by land. I don’t have the dragons to move my own army, let alone both of ours. And it’s too late in the year to travel by sea. The passage will be frozen solid.” He eyed the lonely ship on the horizon, one of the last to return, dwarfed by the ocean. Just as their combined forces would be more than outmatched by Airec’s.

 “Which leaves the mountain pass.” Isidore’s mouth twisted. “Where they’ll see us coming for miles.”

The council had hashed it over dozens of times, each conversation leading to the same reckless conclusion. They would march their armies through the pass. Many if not most of them would die. Their only hope was that enough would make it through to put up a decent fight, and that luck would be on their side. 

There was little good about the plan.

“What if we could go under the mountains?” Isidore asked. “If our armies made it through the pass whole, we’d have a fighting chance.”

Caius’ spine went rigid. “Those tunnels haven’t been stable since the earthquake crushed Egeon’s armies one hundred years ago.”

“I could do it.” Confidence lit Isidore’s face, her smile returning. “You saw what I did when the cliff collapsed. I think I’m strong enough to hold the tunnels. We could travel below ground by day, and come up at night to sleep.”

“You think?” An urge to brush a piece of wind-whipped hair behind her ear nearly overtook him. Caius shoved his hands into his pockets.

Dangerous. She was dangerous.

“The instability of the tunnels isn’t the only problem.” Panic crept in as he realized how serious she was. “The echnals that hunt in those tunnels picked off a fifth of Egeon’s forces, even before the mountain made itself their tomb.”

“That’s still fewer fighters than we’ll lose marching straight into Airec’s defenses.” She took a step forward, eyes alight with something none of them had felt in weeks: Hope. It cleaved Caius two. “And it wouldn’t have to be all of us. With you leading your dragon fighters above, we would have the advantages of surprise and of the air.”

Her words were a bucket of chill water dousing him.

“You can’t possibly think I wouldn’t be going with you.”

“There’s no need—" 

“Stop.” He turned away from her, terrified of what she might see on his face. “I won’t send my people into certain doom while I hide in the clouds.”

“You wouldn’t be hiding,” she protested. “You’d be leading our second offense.”

Only once he’d schooled his features into a smooth mask did he turn back. “You may be able to move stone, Isidore, but you cannot move me. My generals will lead the dragons. I will lead my people into the earth.” His lip curled into a smirk. “Perhaps I’ll surprise you and make myself useful.”

He saw the moment she relented. “If that’s the price of you supporting my plan with the councilors, I’ll pay it.”

“I’m glad you find my company as odious as I find yours.” He imbued his words with as much scorn as he could muster, pushing himself back toward the tunnel. 

He returned to the tiny cave that was his room to find his mage waiting, her thick, grey hair hidden beneath a hood. “Did you tell her?”

He shook his head. 

“Coward,” she sighed.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or perhaps I was distracted by her plan to march our armies directly under the mountains toward Airec. Or by the fact that I found myself agreeing to accompany her.”

The mage’s eyebrows flew up. 

“I take it back.” Her voice was gravel. “You’re not a coward. You’re a fool.”