Midnight Enchantment (37 page)

SHE raced to her mother’s side. Thea’s breathing was shallow and growing shallower by the minute. Her face had gone pale and her lips were turning blue. Elizabeth took her mother’s hand and stared down into her face, teardrops squeezing from her eyes and hitting Thea’s cheek.

Thea struggled to take in breaths, suffocating from a lack of life force. She reached up with a pale, shaking hand and cupped Elizabeth’s face, then she smiled. “It’s all right, Elizabeth. I’ll see you again, no time soon…but eventually.”

Elizabeth smiled down at her, thankful her mother seemed to be at peace with this. “I love you,” she whispered. “I’m going to miss you so”—she drew a shaky breath—“
so
much.”

Thea took Elizabeth’s hand and put it into Niall’s. “Not…alone,” she managed to force out.

Her head fell back onto the cobblestones and her eyes went wide for a moment. She gasped and clutched at her throat, unable to draw any air at all. Then a curious calm overcame her features. Her eyes focused on something neither she nor Niall could see, and her body relaxed. She smiled. Slowly, the light died in her eyes until they were glassy and vacant.

Then she was gone.

Elizabeth rocked back on her heels, pressing her free hand to her mouth. Tears filled her eyes, obscuring her vision. She squeezed them shut and the drops rolled down her cheeks. When Niall extricated his hand from hers, she realized she’d had a circulation-cutting grip on it.

He leaned forward, kissing Thea on her forehead, and then he gently closed her eyelids.

Elizabeth stared up into the sky. The glowing embers of the sprae were nearly gone, just one flitted here or there. Now only snowflakes fell against the gray velvet of the afternoon sky.

Sounds that had seemed to disappear while her mother had died grew louder in her ears. Laughter. Yelling. Gunshots in the distance. The crackle of the fire in the remains of the Black Tower behind them and the magickal efforts of the fae to quench the flames.

“Elizabeth.”

She blinked, the numbness slowly turning to pain. “Niall.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“The Wild Hunt will come for her soon.”

“I know.” She looked down at her mother’s body. A faint smile marked her pale, breathless lips. “She’ll be off to the Netherworld to see my father and my brother.” She glanced at Niall. “Do you think it was them she was smiling at as she died?”

Niall shrugged. “There are more mysteries in this world than I can explain. Maybe so.”

“I want to think that.”

He stood and held out his hand to her. “Elizabeth, the walls have fallen. We’re free. Will you come with me?”

There was so much more to that question than the obvious.

She stared at his hand. If she took it, she was committing herself to him. She would be forgetting the past and forging a new future…in a new world. She would be leaving the
bosca fadbh
behind, his decisions behind, her decisions behind. She would be forgiving him for leading her mother to the queen…and, as an extension, to her death.

Forgiveness of the past. Forging a new future together.

Could she do it? Did she love him enough? She looked up into his face and saw the note of fear and uncertainty in his
expression. He was worried that she would walk away from him right now. Her heart swelled as she looked into his eyes.

She was done walking away from this man.

Reaching up, she took his hand and let him help her to her feet. She cupped his face in her hands and held his gaze. “I love you, Niall.”

Niall’s face crumbled in a rush of emotion, and he dragged her up against his chest, burying his nose in her hair. “I love you, too, Elizabeth. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.” He cupped her face between his hands and kissed her hard. She tasted teardrops on her tongue and wasn’t sure if they were hers or his. “I want you to be with me always.”

She kissed him, her tongue skating into his mouth to meet his. Breaking the deep kiss, she feathered her lips across his and breathed against his mouth, “I want that, too. Let’s leave this place behind.”

Leave all of it behind.

“Elizabeth?”

She turned in Niall’s arms at the sound of the queen’s voice. Aislinn’s face held a gentle expression. “I’m so very sorry you’ve lost your mother. She wants you to know that she’s fine and she loves you.”

Elizabeth stiffened, then remembered that Aislinn was a necromancer, able to communicate with the dead once they’d passed.

“She’s here with us right now,” the queen continued, “waiting for the Wild Hunt.” Aislinn smiled. “Honestly, she seems excited about what happens next. None of us know, you know. Not a necromancer like me or even the leader of the Wild Hunt.”

Elizabeth gazed out over the square, feeling the warm presence of her mother’s soul at her side, and watched the fae. They were no longer fleeing or screaming. Now they all celebrated, jumping around, laughing, and dancing. Even the human soldiers who had been there to keep the peace had thrown down their weapons and seemed to be having a blast, fear forgotten. The
Faemous
crew roamed the area, interviewing excited fae who yelled and laughed into the camera.

For the first time since the Summer Queen had come to her with the pieces, Elizabeth could see beauty in Piefferburg.

She twined her hand with Niall’s. Yes, what the queen said
was true on more than one level. None of them knew what came next.

A sparkling caught her attention and she looked down at her feet to see her mother’s body shimmering with an internal light. “What’s happening?” she asked, stepping away.

Aislinn was quiet for a moment, speaking, Elizabeth presumed, with her mother’s disembodied soul. “The sprae are no longer here to maintain her physical structure, so it’s disintegrating.”

Elizabeth knew that the body at her feet was not her mother; her mother’s soul was standing right next to her, after all. Still, even though the disintegration was a beautiful shimmering, sparkling event, Elizabeth choked on a bubble of grief as her mother’s body turned to ash.

Niall pulled her toward him and shielded her face as a brilliant flash of light enveloped them. When Elizabeth looked back, even the ashes had blown away. Niall gently kissed the top of her head.

“Gabriel, Aeric, Melia, Bran, and Aelfdane have been called by the Wild Hunt even though it’s daytime,” said Aislinn. “Gabriel told me he’d never seen the Hunt arrive with so many horses.”

Of course. That was because today the Hunt would ride all over the world. All the free fae who’d died since the Wild Hunt had been imprisoned would finally be reaped, along with those, like Liam’s wife, who had committed murder.

“Your mother will be in the Netherworld very soon.”

“Where is the Summer Queen?” asked Niall.

Elizabeth jerked; she’d totally forgotten about her.

Aislinn’s face grew grim. “Gideon is dead, and the walls have fallen. She’s defeated.” She turned and looked pointedly at the Rose Tower. “I have a good idea where to find her. Shall we? She still needs to be dealt with, after all.”

“With reinforcements,” Niall answered. “Sure.” He motioned at his brother, Ronan, who stood with his wife, Bella, not far away. Ronan and Bella joined them, as did Charlotte and Emmaline.

The group made their way to the opposite end of the square, where the shiny rose quartz tower still gleamed in the falling snow. The double doors were thrown open. Elizabeth
entered with Niall by her side and tried not to gawp. The only times she’d ever seen the interior of the Rose had been on
Faemous
, and that coverage had never done the place justice.

Walking into the Black Tower had been like having the enormous wings of a raven enfold her. Walking into the Rose Tower was a little like entering the human idea of heaven.

The foyer was made of polished rose quartz and marble shot through with warm veins of gold. A sweeping staircase stood directly in front of them, and two long corridors stretched off on either side. Except for the roaming, frustrated sluagh the place was completely empty.

“I called off the goblins,” said the Shadow Queen, her voice echoing through the place creepily. “As living creatures with lives and children, I don’t like putting them in harm’s way unless it’s absolutely necessary. The sluagh can do what needs to be done next.”

She meant the destruction of the Summer Queen. Elizabeth hated Caoilainn, but she couldn’t suppress a shiver of dread for the woman’s ultimate fate.

Their footsteps echoed as the Shadow Queen led them to the right, down a long corridor to a set of elaborately carved doors.

Elizabeth frowned. “Where is the loyal Imperial Guard? I saw at least twenty of them back at the cliffs.”

“They’ve either deserted her, or she’s sent them away,” answered Aislinn. “I wouldn’t doubt the latter. Caoilainn is a sore loser and can be unpredictable when her will is thwarted.” She stopped in front of the throne room doors and drew a breath, as if marshaling her strength. “Remember that unpredictability and be ready for anything.”

She pushed the doors open.

WHITE light poured from the Summer Queen’s receiving chamber, making Niall blink. He pulled Elizabeth against his side as if he could protect her, all the while with a defensive charm ready on his tongue. All around him, claws scuttled on the marble floor as the sluagh scrambled around them to enter the chamber.

When his eyes had adjusted to the brightness of the room,
he saw Ronan and Bella beside him. Charlotte and Emmaline were a little bit behind, walking side by side, Kieran not far behind. Aislinn was in front, leading them all to the Summer Throne, because, of course, that was where Caoilainn would be spending her last bit of time in Piefferburg, reliving the glory days.

This place was nothing like the small, friendly room where Aislinn received people. This was a cavernous chamber with broad, tall pillars scattered throughout, a cold marble floor, and gorgeous, elaborate frescoes painted over the arched ceiling. This was a room meant to awe the visitor, make them feel small and put them on edge.

All it did was piss Niall off.

“Why should I let you live?” asked Aislinn in a steely voice. It echoed through the chamber.

As Niall rounded a pillar, he finally caught a glimpse of the Summer Queen sitting on her cushioned rose quartz throne. Like Aislinn, she looked like the loser of a prize fight. Her gold and white gown was smudged with grime and torn in numerous places. Soot marked her cheeks, lips, and forehead, and her hair had half come down from its formerly tight coif at her nape, the gold pins once securing it hanging free on tendrils of loose blond hair. One of her diamond earrings was missing.

“You won. Leave me alone,” she snarled.

They all stopped at the foot of her throne. “Sorry,” answered Aislinn. “We can’t do that. We don’t know what else you might have planned, and, after all, you already brought down the Black Tower.”

“Gideon, that spawn of the underworld,
he
did that, not me.”

“I was there,” Aislinn snarled with sudden and surprising vehemence. “You did it together—the Summer Royal standing side by side,
allied
, with the
archdirector of the Phaendir
. I saw it, and so did many of the other fae.” Aislinn shook her head. “You’ll never survive this, Caoilainn, no matter how much magick you wield. It doesn’t even matter that you probably helped the Phaendir create Watt, this action alone wins you a death sentence.”

Power swelled in the room, bigger and stronger. The room went so cold that frost gelled on the marble floors, made their
breath turn white in the air. Niall pulled Elizabeth toward him, suddenly worried something was coming—something big. Something he couldn’t protect her from.

“Your subjects have deserted you, Caoilainn,” Aislinn continued. “They’ve come to
me
for guidance and direction, the
Shadow
Queen.” She motioned at one of the roaming sluagh. “And your shield won’t hold forever. Eventually it will break, and the sluagh will devour you. It’s over and you know it. That’s why you’re sitting here all alone. This is the end.”

“It ends when I say it ends!”
the Summer Queen roared, her tense white hands gripping her throne and her face going red with rage.

The building began to shake. Harder and harder. The pillars started to break free of their moorings. One of them began to crumble. A moment later, it fell, crashing onto the floor. A crack appeared through the fresco above their heads.

All of them retreated toward the door. The Summer Queen had gone completely insane. It appeared she was going to take down the Rose Tower, too.

“Don’t do this!” cried Bella, her breath showing white in the chilled air. She and Aislinn had grown up in this court. Ronan was pulling her back toward the exit, but she was fighting him. “You may be tormented, but leave the Rose alone!”

Caoilainn stood, managing to look regal despite the wreckage of her dress and hair.
“I am the Rose,”
she bellowed. “If I go down, so does this tower!”

Another pillar crashed to the floor, splitting open. Razor-sharp shards of rose-colored marble slid across the glossy floor. Charlotte turned to run—what they were all doing now—and slipped on the floor that had become icy from the Summer Queen’s fit of emotion. Niall grabbed her before she fell and righted her, helping her and Elizabeth out of the room.