The Last Faerie Queen (6 page)

“What?”

“People are going to
die
because of me. I know it sounds ridiculous that I should only realize this now, when mortals have offered to fight, but … ” She swallowed, looking away. “I think, deep down, I truly believed I could keep my people alive if I prepared for everything. That's why I spent
years
gathering up the servants of the Unseelie Court. There are thousands of us, and only hundreds of courtiers. Surely, with those odds … ”

“Your plan is going to work,” I told her. “The Bright Queen will bind your mother, keeping her out of the battle. Your army will overpower the courtiers. You're going to
win
, Elora.”

“And people are going to die. Good people, who only wanted to be free. The ground will be littered with broken bones and blood as bright as poppies. And I will know who is to blame.”

“The courtiers who abused them. The queen who enslaved them.”

“And me. That's why I wanted you to paint, my sweetest salvation. It isn't because I am cruel. It's because I am
desperate
. I thought, if I could truly shock the courtiers at the beginning of the battle, they would have no chance to … ” She looked up, eyes glistening. “I thought I could protect everyone, and I ended up hurting you. It was terrible of me.”

“No, I'm the one who's being terrible. I'm the one who's being selfish.” I pushed off from the tree. “You're trying to use my ability to save your entire world, and I'm just trapped in this cycle of beating myself up, when I don't
have
to be. After Aaron fell, I locked up my paints, even though painting made me happier than anything. It made me feel like I fit in the world, you know? Like I could contribute something.” I reached for her hands. She took mine instantly. “And instead of trying, instead of letting myself be a part of the world, I'm going to keep them locked up, while you do this life-changing thing? This world-changing thing? No, I'm going to help you. I'm going to
try
.”

She closed her eyes, head dipping toward me. For one brief second, the shadows broke away from her, and she was
mine
. “We can save the world,” she said. “Together, we can save the world. I can even create a double illusion, glamour upon glamour, so when Naeve rips the first glamour away, he will think the city around him is real!”

“Slow down there, turbo,” I said. “You're getting ahead of yourself.” Or at least, she was getting ahead of
me.

“Trust me, it's going to work. Everything will be an illusion.” She started to break away from me. “When I come back—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're not leaving yet.” Again, I was bolder than I'd ever been. But I didn't care. I couldn't leave it like this.

Elora paused, her lips curling, like maybe she knew. “And why is that?”

This time, I wasn't taking any chances. As gently as I could, I pulled her into me. Still, even with all my gentleness, it felt like a collision of some sort.

A force of nature
.

Isn't that what she'd called me? Here, now, she was a storm, twisting me in circles. Torrential rain covering me. I wanted to go swimming in her, to come away soaked and invigorated.

I lowered my lips to hers.

“Taylor,” she whispered, but it wasn't a protest. It was more like a surrender. Because I wasn't the force of nature, and neither was she. It was
us
, together.
We
were the force of nature. And you can't fight nature.

We both surrendered.

My leg slid between hers, and then I was backing her up against a tree, but I stopped myself before we reached the bark. I didn't know how much her wounds had healed, and I wasn't going to risk hurting her the tiniest bit, not for passion. Not for anything.

The true wildness could wait. Because this girl, when she was at full force, could handle anything I had to throw at her. I was probably the one who needed to worry. But I would rise to meet her, every time. I would make myself good enough, make myself strong enough, because this? This was better than anything.

Her lips parted to let me in. Her breath was hot, and so was mine. I could feel heat rising between us. Here, between our lips, and lower. Electricity shot through our entire bodies, reaching out to meet in the middle. Tangling in the air.

But no, there shouldn't be any space between us. I wove my fingers into her hair, grasping, pulling her closer to me. She didn't pull away. She kissed me harder. I could hear her breathing. She was making these sweet little sounds that were halfway between a sigh and a moan, and my legs got shaky.

“Just stay a little longer,” I begged, lowering my lips to her neck. “Just one night. A couple of hours.” Her back arched when my lips touched her skin, and I thought I was going to lose it. I thought I was going to die. How could anything feel this wonderful, and make me ache so badly at the same time?

“I can't,” she whispered, but her hands were cradling my face, and then they were gliding past my neck, down to my chest. She couldn't stay still any more than I could. “I have to go.”

“You always have to go,” I said, and I turned us around, so that I was up against the tree, and she could do anything she wanted with me.

“I always come back, don't I?” Her hands slipped under the bottom of my dress shirt. I couldn't believe that, only a day earlier, we'd been at the prom. I couldn't believe something so mundane had been so important to me.

But it had never been about the prom, not really. It had always been, would always be, about her.

“Maybe someday, you'll actually stay,” I said, and I knew it sounded harsh. But I couldn't help it. “Because even when I have you … ” I looked up, into her eyes. Her skin was so pale, and her lips were so red, but all I wanted to see were those eyes. “I don't really have you. You keep pieces of yourself—”

“I know.” She looked down. Why did she always look down when I needed her to look at me? To actually
see
me?

“And I get it, okay? You're trying to keep yourself safe.”

“I am.” She spoke to the ground.

“But nothing here is safe.”

She looked up. I met her gaze,
showing
her that I didn't need to be protected. Showing her I could face the truth head on.

“And none of us is safe, regardless of how we
feel
,” I said. “So maybe, just this once, you could go all-in, you know? And I'll go all-in too.”

For a minute she just looked at me. Really looked at me, and let me look back. Finally, she said, “You'll go all-in too?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

“No matter what I … do, or what happens to me?”

“Of course.”

She looked so relieved then, I thought she was going to cry. But she didn't. She said, “All right, then. Yes.”

“Yes?” My heart jumped so high, it couldn't be contained within my chest. It cleared the trees and shot for the stars.

“Yes, it's what I want.” She held my gaze. “You are what I want.”

“Oh my God. Seriously?”

She laughed, and then she kissed me. “From the moment I met you. Before it even made sense.”

“I know what you mean.” I kissed her back. And just like that, our hands were back, and our lips were exploring, and I was holding onto her so tightly …

“Taylor.” She pulled away, eyes shimmering. But she didn't look sad, exactly. She looked
hurt
.

The breath rushed out of me. “What did I do? Did I hurt you?”

She started to shake her head, but didn't. God, I
had
hurt her. “I am … still healing,” she said, and my heart sank to my knees. Up one minute, and down the next. This roller-coaster of agony and bliss. “But I will be all right. Perhaps when we meet again.”

“How long are you going to be gone?” I moved aside a little bit. Giving her space to breathe. To
heal
, without me.

“A few days, if all goes well. The battle itself will not take place until the Solstice, when the dark faeries are at their weakest.”

“The Solstice? So we'll have more than a month to—”

“Reconnect, yes. The Queen has agreed to set up camp at the borderlands, to keep you happy. She'll provide whatever is necessary to help you with your tasks.”

“Tasks?” I asked, wrinkling my brow.

“Painting, for you,” she said. “And as for the others, well, she'll find a way to draw out their
mortal magic
.”

I grinned, but it fell away quickly. “Be careful.
Please
.”

“I have always been careful. Except … ” She let the unspoken words drift between us.

Except with you.

“Of all the things that could hurt me … ” She stepped up, planting the softest kiss on my lips. She lingered, and I loved it.

“I won't,” I promised. “I'll do anything I can to protect you. I'll cut out my heart and hand it over to the Unseelie Queen.”

She closed her eyes, and a chill ran through me. Then she kissed me again, long and deep. As she disappeared into the darkness, her voice drifted back to me. “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

6

E
l
o
r
A

There were few neutral spaces left in Faerie. No wide expanses called “No Fey's Land” by faerie children. No faerie children, but that's another story.

The faerie courts had snuffed neutrality out.

In order to survive, you had to pick a side, or else go into exile—and who would choose that? Who would wander into the human lands, to be forgotten, when they could be kissed by a queen's loving lips? When they could, at the very least, be graced by her smile?

They all chose sides, long ago, before I was born into this travesty of a world. They all chose light or dark, and bent themselves accordingly. Just like that, the neutral wild was reclaimed, and renamed. Bright Court
here
, Dark Court
there
. No in-between.

No place where we could hide.

Still, if you were resourceful, and very clever, which I believe I am, you could sniff out the places the royals refused to go. The places the courtiers wouldn't deign to visit, because the land might sully their precious robes. I started seeking out these places as a little girl, perhaps already understanding my difference. Perhaps knowing from the beginning that I would be the reason the courts would fall. I hated the niceties, hated the etiquette that came with courtly life. We were faeries, shouldn't we be dancing in the dirt? Shouldn't we be shedding our stately robes and letting the rain clothe our skin? 

Shouldn't we be free?

But no. Not according to my mother, and not according to the Bright Queen, who was supposed to be her opposite, and yet …

They are so alike.

Two sides of the same coin. Light and Dark, playing off of each other. Creating the same divided courts, where the queens control everything, and the rest are just pawns. Laying waste to their people in different, yet ultimately similar ways. After all, does it matter how you stifle and kill your brethren? You are betraying them all the same.

And so it went, for the young Princess of the Dark Court, the little faerie with strangely tattered wings: I'd wait for my mother to tire, and I'd go slipping away into the ubiquitous darkness. I'd travel through caverns and tunnels and mountains and burrows. I'd find places where I could simply be myself: The underwater caves beneath the Sea of Kalayna, where great, multi-colored crystals jutted out, casting prismatic rainbows all across the walls, and if you twirled just so, your wings would catch the light and send everything spinning. The Lost Ruins of the Lord and Lady, where, centuries ago, the faeries had come to worship the earliest forest beings to walk the earth. There, I'd climbed over the broken stones reclaimed by moss and ivy. I'd danced in the circle where the Lord and Lady were rumored to have been born.

Now, centuries later, the two Queens of Faerie shunned the Lost Ruins, refusing to admit there was a time when
other
beings were revered. And the courtiers, ever eager to please their jealous mistresses, perpetuated the illusion. That's the thing about faeries: we may not be able to speak a lie, but we built empires by avoiding certain truths.

When I was seven, the Dark Lady learned of my affinity for the ruins and stopped me from visiting. No matter, there were other places to see. And if she'd never forbidden me, I never would've discovered the Courtyard of Everlasting Love, which existed right on the borderlands, half in the Dark Court, and half in the Bright.

In the circular Courtyard of Everlasting Love, couples danced for all eternity, staring into each other's eyes. Not because they wanted to, necessarily, but because they'd made a promise there, centuries ago, to never be apart, and Faerie takes such promises very seriously. As a young girl, I'd woven in and out of the couples, sometimes spinning, sometimes studying the look in their eyes to see if the spark of love had survived.

Sometimes, they looked on each other adoringly, more deeply in love than when they'd met. Sometimes, they looked detached, or even appalled, because a hundred years is a long time to love someone, especially if you didn't know them very well to begin with. Five hundred years can be agony if you realize you've made a mistake. And a thousand years? Well, would you still cling to your lover, as desperate and devoted as the first time? Or would you long for death, the only thing that could offer you release?

Still, they danced. Each of them, dressed in the decadence of their time: in velvet robes and corsetry and armor, horns curling out of their heads, or wings from their backs. Wearing garlands of flowers, or vines in their hair. Dancing to whatever song most reminded them of their lover. A concerto, perhaps. Or flute music. The pipes, or a grand, joyous band.

And me? I heard music too, as I stepped into the outdoor courtyard, between the dancers. I heard the song that had played, not when Taylor and I had danced together at the prom, so awkwardly, but the one that had screeched to life after we'd escaped the ballroom and went running across the grounds to the darkness beyond. The singer was a woman, someone fervently singing of love and devotion against a backdrop of heavy beats and frenzied piano. Violin, at the climax of the song.

The crescendo.

The music had faded as we'd run into the night, but still, parts of it stayed with me. I remembered it so vividly. Remembered Taylor's fingers tripping over my skin, sliding under the folds of my skirt, lips tasting, kissing, loving—

Stop.

I leaned into a tree, pain pulsing through me. At any other moment, I might've chuckled at the irony of a seventeen-year-old depending on an elderly tree to hold herself up. But there was no humor in this.

I'm still healing
, I insisted, taking slow, metered breaths.
That's why it hurts. It has nothing to do with him.

“I'll be all right,” I told myself, straightening up in a way the tree never would. And yet, to my utmost surprise, the tree laughed.

I spun around, my heart thundering in my chest. It was funny how one could grow up in Faerie and still be surprised at how quickly stillness could transform into agility, how trees, and rocks, and even the ground herself could shift, so quickly, to reveal someone living there. Waves unfurled to reveal horses. The sky peeled back the layers of a gown, offering you just a hint of what lay beneath. Trees became wise women, or old chuckling men, or boys with horns. Scampering off into the forest to tease you. Coming forward to seduce you.

Still, no boy
scampered forward to take my hand. No face appeared in the bark. I had to shake myself, wondering if I was going mad, until a figure emerged from the darkness. I almost shrieked an
d pulled her to my chest. But I needed to be cautious, so I whispered the riddle we'd created to weed out imposters: “What happens when the light touches darkness?”

“The fractured fragments of Faerie become whole.”

My chest surged with warmth. “Illya, my little survivor!”

“Littler now than I used to be,” she said, scampering to the edge of the closest branch. She was a marsh sprite, a creature that mortals would never understand: born with the legs of a frog, the upper body of a human, and dragonfly wings. But to me, she made more sense than anything. To me, she was sea and land and sky, all wrapped up in one perfect package.

She was also my favored servant; though, if I had my way, the very idea of “servant” would be tossed aside. We would be equals. And now, with her dragonfly wings burned up like paper, courtesy of Naeve, we were equals in another way. Equally wounded.

“How do you fare?” I asked, wondering why she wasn't coming closer. Was she afraid to be seen, like I was? Or was it something else?

“Better, now that I know you're alive.” She smiled, but it was grim. Her eyes trailed to my back, to the glamours and shadows there.

I was all smoke and mirrors, these days.

“Lady,” Illya said, eyes growing wide. “Did you somehow … were you able to—”

I lowered my gaze. I wasn't ready to speak of what I had chosen in the Bright Queen's bower, or what it had cost. “I … I can't—”

“I understand. Does it hurt much?” she asked after a minute.

“It is mostly a dull ache. I'm able to push it aside, except—”
When he touches me
. “When it catches me off guard.”

She nodded, watching me intently.

“Where are the others?” I asked, my gaze flickering to the edge of the clearing. The trees grew darker there, gnarled and grasping at the wind with clawed hands.

“Farther down.”

“How much did you tell them?” I took a single step. Three more, and I'd be crossing over into the Dark Court.

She hesitated.

“Illya?”

“I told them you went to the wasteland, yes, but only in search of something to help our cause. I didn't say what, or
why
.”

“Clever Illya. What else did you say?” I took another step. The dancing couples were spinning around me, making it difficult to maneuver with ease.

Illya took in a breath. “I told them Naeve caught up to you there, and took your wings, but you managed to get away.”

“What did you say of the mortals?”

“That we wanted to bring you home, but they insisted on taking you to the Seelie Court. That we were outnumbered—”

“Illya.”

“We were! And everything I told them is true. We didn't want to carry you into the Seelie Court.
We didn't want to leave you—”

“I'm sorry. I didn't plan to … ” I paused, lowering my head. “You cannot blame me for what Naeve did.”

“No.” She was silent a moment, kneading her hands into her hair like she did when she was nervous. “But you stopped him from hurting that human. You sacrificed yourself—”

“It was necessary,” I said, because that was much simpler than explaining the whole truth. Naeve was going to hurt Taylor, so I placed myself between them. “I needed an offering for the Seelie Queen.”

“
One
offering. You could've let the boy die and taken the others. Any of the others!”

“No. I couldn't have. The Queen would never have helped me if I'd caused a mortal's death. These things have consequences.”

“All things have consequences,” Illya said.

We had reached the line that separated the Bright Court from the Dark. Here, the checkerboard pattern of the courtyard floor turned from red and white to red and black.

Blood and death, rather than blood and life.

Now the dancers spun away, to let me pass. It should have been a relief to breathe fresh air, but it didn't feel cool in their absence. It felt
populated
, as if a hundred figures lingered in the trees beyond the courtyard, breathing heavily, in anticipation of … something.

“Illya … ”

In anticipation of me?

“Illya, where are my followers?”

She didn't reply. Instead, she skittered away, into the shadows. But that was all right; I needn't have felt alone in this place. For the moment Illya disappeared, the very trees came to life, branches curling like fingernails.

They formed a line in front of me, forbidding me to pass.