by H. E. Edgmon
Calvince’s horns—either brown or black, it’s hard to tell from here—curl out from either side of his head, his delicate, translucent wings wrapped around his shoulders. He looks tired and more than slightly irritable. Loureen reaches out and takes his hand, and he relaxes, albeit only slightly.
But it’s their energy that fascinates me the most. Energy, singular, because I have no idea where hers ends and his begins. One color surrounds them, a sparkling, pearlescent white, speckled with hints of green and pink and purple, like the surface of an opal.
It’s beautiful. You know, for old people.
By the time the last car arrives, it’s past nightfall.
“Paloma and Maritza Pereira—”
“I’m well aware of who these two are,” I cut Wade off, shaking my head.
Paloma slides out of the back seat, dragging Maritza along with her, a wicked grin stretching wide enough to take up her whole mouth.
Leonidas shouts something, pointing an accusatory finger in their direction. Angry for the late hour?
Maritza takes a step forward, but Paloma wraps an arm around her wife’s middle and kisses her neck, that smile never fading. She says something in response to Leonidas’s yelling, and whatever it is must shut him up. Because the queens simply drift right past him, up the stairs.
Just before going inside, Paloma turns her head up and finds my eye. Despite the distance between us, I know she’s looking right at me. And she winks.
I text Emyr.
i would really like to be there. i know you’re upset with me,
and i understand why. but i’m still your fiancé, right? i should
still be with you when you take the crown. i want to be there
for you. please.
No answer ever comes. Hours later, on the edge of sleep, I try again.
has it already happened?
Still nothing. I dream of dragons setting Asalin’s forest ablaze.
* * *
“How could you be sure I hadn’t done it?” I asked Briar the next afternoon as we walk through the woods to reach the cabin. “When all of you burst in and saw him lying there. You’d seen Derek’s video. You knew I was trying to get out of the contract by any means necessary. How could you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I hadn’t done something to him?”
“I just knew.”
“How?”
Briar sighs. There’s something haunted in her expression. “You didn’t see yourself, Wyatt. You were...you were torn open by what’d happened. I took one look at you and I just knew. There was no way you could’ve done it.” She shrugs. “Besides, we were pretty convinced by that point that Clarke had done something somehow. Just didn’t know exactly what. God, this is going to kill Jin.”
I shake my head. “No, trusting Clarke might’ve killed Jin. This is going to save them.”
Briar catches my eye, hesitates, then nods.
After another beat of silence, I ask, “Has anyone mentioned the door? Have you heard anything?”
Briar sighs, shaking her head. “No. Nothing. You?”
“Nothing.” I take a deep breath. “Briar, you know—”
“I know. It was one thing when we thought there was no one on the other side. But if what Leonidas said is true, if there are...worse fae over there, we can’t keep this between us. I’m still working with Lavender’s sigils, trying to piece together the spell to close the door. But if I can’t...we have to tell Emyr, either way.”
I’m glad she was the one to say it. Even though we both know it’s true, I understand now how important her family’s secret is to her. I didn’t want to be the one to force her to reveal herself to Emyr. The healing happening between Briar and me is tenuous, her words still hovering at the periphery of my thoughts.
Do you have any idea how hard it is being everything you need me to be all the time?
It’s possible I haven’t been the kind of friend Briar needed. While I was figuring myself out, while I was trying to survive being in my own head, she was always there keeping me upright. Hell, even when I broke up with her, hurt her, she didn’t let it show, not once, that things weren’t going to be totally okay. I should work on being a better friend.
“All anyone can seem to talk about is Derek and Clarke,” I finally say.
Briar makes a face, shaking her head. “What happened with them, anyway?”
“The Court has sentenced them to death for their conspiracies.” I heard the ruling come down this morning. “Derek’s wife, Martha, managed to convince the Court she didn’t know anything about her husband’s plans, but I think they probably just felt weird about burning a woman alive when she’s nine months pregnant.”
“Huh.” Briar clicks her tongue at me.
Huh indeed.
I also haven’t spoken to Emyr since that night, since Kadri finally pulled him from my arms and took him back to the palace. I have no idea what’ll be waiting for me when I walk into the cabin. I know he’s there only because Wade told me—after swearing me to secrecy, like the two of us were committing treason—he’d seen him slipping out earlier in the morning.
Boom lets out a loud bark when we come into view of the flower-speckled cabin and its field of peryton, racing up to meet us. He noses Briar’s hand until she reaches under his chin to give him a little scratch.
After a moment, she awkwardly clears her throat. “I’m gonna go check on the flock. Holler if you need me.”
“Okay.”
She squeezes my hand. I hope this goes the way you want it to, Wyatt.
I squeeze hers back. My chest hurts. Yeah, me, too.
Boom trots behind me as I head to the front door, and I reach down to rub him behind his ears. “Your other dad inside?”
He woofs at me, moving back into the house. I follow after, tucking my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie.
Emyr lies in the hammock in the center of the room, staring blank-eyed up at the ceiling overhead. His energy is small and dull, a foggy hint of gold clinging to his skin. He doesn’t turn his head my way, not even when I silently climb into the hammock at his feet.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Upon his head, intricately shaped to accommodate his horns, sits a circlet made of finely woven gold and multicolored gems.
Long live the king.
“How are you feeling?” It’s such a weak question and I know that, but I don’t know what else to ask.
“Okay, I guess.”
Silence settles over us. Boom makes a disgruntled noise before curling into a ball on his dog bed.
Finally, Emyr asks, “So, when are you leaving?”
“What?”
He looks at me for the first time, raising his eyebrows. “You’re going back to Laredo with Briar, aren’t you? Now that all of this is over?”
“I...” I shake my head. “Sorry, what? Why would I do that?”
“Because you aren’t trapped in the contract anymore.”
I can only blink at him. I don’t understand. I mean, I know the meaning of the words he’s saying individually, but it’s like, together, strung in a sentence, my brain has no idea what to do with them.
“What?”
“No one told you? I assumed it would be all over the palace by now. You know how quickly gossip moves.”
I shake my head. I can feel acid rising in my stomach and worming its way into my chest.
He considers me for a moment. I don’t dare to interrupt the silence. Finally, he asks, “Do you remember the terms of our contract?”
“Of course I do.” We were so young when it was written. But it was the center of my life for so long. I went over it, with my parents, with Emyr, alone in my own head, over and over again, until I knew it backward and forward.
“The termination clauses?”
“Obvious
ly.” I can’t seem to make myself move, body made of lead. “If either of us broke the contract, the other could trigger the blood magic. It would...our blood would destroy us from the inside...that’s what happened to you?”
Emyr turns his head away and nods. “Only, instead of calling it in on you, I called it in on myself. I set my intention to break the contract, without even realizing what I was doing until it was too late. I triggered my own death.”
I can’t hear him talk about dying without full-body flinching.
And still, what?
Of course, I remember Clarke telling me about Jin’s digitizing the contract, uploading it to their own version of the internet. So, she got her hands on it. She got him to call it in, to use the very magic I’d worried he might use against me, against himself.
And he came back from the dead, but...
The contract can’t be unbroken.
I’m free.
Why do I feel like there’s a pile of rocks sitting in my lungs right now?
“I’m still not sure how she did it. The coding, the magic itself, it’s complicated spellcraft. The sort of thing a powerful witch might be able to accomplish, but not Clarke.”
“You think she and Derek have a witch on their side? Why would any witch partner with them?”
“I don’t really know what to think about anything anymore.” Emyr takes a deep breath. “Maybe it’s for the best. After everything, and now knowing you conspired with Derek, no one wants you near the Throne. I had to convince the Court not to stick you in the dungeon alongside him.”
“Emyr, I—”
“I know.” He nods, running his fingers through his curls and looking away from me again. “I know, you were only doing what you had to do.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. God, Emyr, I—I made my plans with Derek when I first got here. Okay? Before—before things changed between us. Before I realized who he is, who you are.” I think back to Derek shoving me against the wall, his smell and his energy pushing in on me and drowning out my thoughts. “And I’m fairly certain he’s been Influencing me this whole time.”
Emyr glances over at me with his eyebrows raised but says nothing.
Nerves make my hands shake, desperation clawing at me. I need him to understand. Ever since I got back to Asalin, Emyr’s been trying to convince me to give him a chance. But now he’s given up on me, right at the moment when I need him not to. And it’s all my fault. I’m going to be sick. “Look, I love you. I’m a disaster, and I’m going to keep being a disaster, probably, but I love you.”
Breaking free of the contract is all I’ve wanted for years. Every night, I’ve dreamed of this moment. Finally having my autonomy, my freedom, to do whatever I want.
And it feels completely and totally hollow. Because this...this is not what I want.
Emyr swallows. “Maybe you do. But that doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t the life you want, is it?”
I want to argue. I need to argue, to tell him that he’s wrong, but my tongue feels like it’s made of cotton. I can’t seem to make it work, can’t seem to form words, can hardly seem to breathe through a mouthful of static.
“Your life is in the human world. Everything you love, everything you value, is out there.”
“Not everything.”
He sighs, shaking his head. “You asked me if I would choose you over the Throne. And I thought, for a moment, that I could. There was a part of me that wanted to. But this is my kingdom, Wyatt. These are my people. And this is bigger than the two of us.”
“I never should have asked you to do that.”
“But you did. And it’s all right that you did, because it’s how you feel. You don’t want to be king. And I can’t blame you. Especially now, knowing what’s likely coming next.”
I want to argue with him, but he isn’t wrong. That isn’t what I want. That’s never been what I wanted, and that hasn’t changed just because I’ve gone soft and caught feelings for him.
I continue to stare.
“You would be miserable. I thought we could work past it, but I realize now that this isn’t your home. This isn’t where you want to be. And I—” He sucks in a deep breath, looking down at his hands, curling them into fists. “I love you too much to trap you somewhere you don’t want to be.”
Something inside me breaks open. Tears sting my eyes, blurring my vision. I drag my knees against my chest, pressing my chin against them and wrapping my arms around my shins. For a long moment, we just watch each other. Finally, I mumble, “Will I ever see you again?”
“I don’t know. It might—it might be too hard.”
Shit. I reach up to swipe my hand against my face, rubbing away the tears that have managed to escape. “What about the bond? You said—you said you could feel me, every moment that I was away. You said you couldn’t lose me again.”
“It turns out I can survive more than I thought. I bested death, after all. I’ll find a way to live through this.”
I laugh, but it isn’t really a laugh. To my own ears, I sound like a whining animal. “We’re supposed to be together, aren’t we? What about the bond?”
“You never did believe in the bond,” he says quietly. “Fuck genetic compatibility, right? It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
I think of Paloma and Maritza, bound together even though they can’t have children. Kadri and Leonidas, fated even though she never produced an heir. I think of the way Emyr looks at me, that hungry and wide-open look I’m not sure I’m ever going to see on his face again.
The fae have it wrong. I don’t think this bond has anything to do with biology. And if I leave now, if I disappear from Asalin and never return, I’ll probably never know what it really is.
“What happens next?” I ask, finally finished wiping my tears.
“I’ll arrange for a flight to take you home tomorrow afternoon. I assume you want to return to Laredo with Briar?”
Briar.
Right. The door to Faery. All of that, and I still have to stand here and tell him about Briar and the changelings and the door to Faery standing wide open.
“Um...” I sniff, tilting my head up to consider the ceiling. “I guess. Sure. But, uh. We need to talk about—”
“Wyatt.” Emyr’s voice cracks around the syllables of my name. He’s seemed so detached most of this conversation, holding me at arm’s length. But for a moment, I can see underneath it. For a moment, he looks at me and he is a wide-open wound. “I need some space, okay?”
My heart, buried underneath an impossible weight and holding on to the last strands of hope in my body, finally crumbles. I’ll tell him about the door. I’ll make sure he knows. But I can’t stay here another minute.
As I get up to leave, Boom rises to his feet and trots after me.
Emyr and I exchange one last look. For the first time, I can hear his words without them being spoken. We’re both saying the same thing.
I love you. I’m sorry.
Outside, Briar is waiting for me. She takes one look at my face and flinches.
“I have to get out of here,” I whisper. Behind me, Boom nips at my arm. I turn to look at him, something in me crumbling to dust. “But you have to stay.”
He whines, snapping his jaws and shaking his head.
“I know.” I pull him forward, leaning in to press my forehead against his. He licks and nibbles at my jawline. “You can’t come with me, buddy. My world isn’t meant for you.”
How can it be my world if it isn’t meant for Boom? If it isn’t meant for Emyr?
“Take care of him,” I whisper, scrubbing my fingernails into the fur on his neck.
Pulling back, I grab Briar’s hand to drag her away.
Boom’s pained howls follow us all the way back to the castle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LIKE TOO MU
CH AND NOTHING AT ALL
Before we’re out of the woods, it starts to drizzle. When we step past the tree line and water starts misting both of our heads, Briar wraps her arms around me and kisses the top of my face. Once, twice, a third time. She nuzzles my temple, her warms fingers slipping past the neck of my hoodie and making circles into the skin of my shoulder blades.
“What do you need?”
“I’m just going to go back to the room.” Probably take another depression nap. I can’t handle any of this.
She sighs, nodding and squeezing my arms as she finally pulls back. “You want me to come with you?”
“No, it’s okay.” I’m going to have some kind of meltdown, I think, and I don’t need to force Briar to take care of me during another one. “You should say your goodbyes. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
Leaving.
Everything hurts.
“Okay. I’ll go check in on Lorena and Roman.” Her full lower lip wiggles between the gap in her front teeth. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I watch her head toward the village. Only when she’s out of sight do I look away.
My eyes light on the carving of Vorgaine above the palace steps, half-shrouded in moss and ivy. Those eyes, a hundred of them, all seem to be locked right on me. As if this god, this ancient, dead god carved from stone, is looking directly at me.
If Faery is alive...
I don’t finish that thought. I don’t have time to think about that.
There’s a petite Guard standing in front of the doors, slamming her fist into her palm as she gives a heated speech to three other officers. It’s only when they leave, shuddering under the weight of her shards of amethyst energy, that I realize it’s Tessa. She catches my eye and scowls, motioning me over to her.
I don’t know what to do other than to walk up. “This is new.”
“I look like a fucking nerd in this getup.” She bristles, rolling her eyes and slumping against the stone railing. “How did your talk with Emyr go?”
