“Ask you what?”
“If I was born this way, or … ”
“You can tell me if you like.”
“Well, we were talking about our parents,” she said, tugging at a thread on her dress.
My eyes widened, and my heart nearly stopped. “They did this? Your parents—”
“No. Not exactly. It’s just … ” She shook her head, and I feared she was going to stay silent. But after a moment, she said, “My dad used to hunt.”
“Like … animals?”
“Yeah, like deer,” she said. “He’d go on these weekend trips with his friends. And when Keegan was old enough, he’d take him along, because you know, boys hunt! Girls … gather, I don’t know. Like we were all cave men.” She laughed, and I laughed with her.
Then, nothing. “And this bothered you?” I pressed. “This inability to hunt?”
“Not that. Just feeling inferior. I mean, I was eight, and I already knew he loved me less.”
A shiver, slow-starting, skittered up my spine. “You offered to go with them,” I said.
“I thought I could win him over.”
“By hunting?”
“I wasn’t going to hunt,” she said, as if it were obvious. “I was going to swim and eat s’mores and they could go hunting down the road … ”
“But they didn’t?”
She fell silent again, looking off into the trees. “That was probably the plan. But the second morning we were there, this deer came into our camp. A girl. Fully grown, you know, but without any horns. I thought, Aw, maybe it’s a mama deer searching for food. I thought I could follow her back home, real quiet, and catch a glimpse of her fawns.”
This time, I waited a beat before saying, “Did you?”
Kylie blinked her eyes, but no tears fell from her lashes. “Everybody was drunk. I mean, not me and Keegan, but the guys would bring, like, four eighteen-packs and stay hammered the whole time. One of my dad’s friends picked up his shotgun and fired without even batting an eye. He caught her in the leg.”
“What did you do?” I asked. I could see it all so clearly. The panic. The blood. And eight-year-old Kylie trying to make sense of it.
“I just lost it,” she said. “I started screaming and running over there, waving my hands. And my dad was yelling at me to come back over, but I didn’t. The second I moved, the deer was dead, you know?”
I nodded, closing my eyes. “And he … shot you?” I asked.
“It was his friend. He wasn’t trying to shoot me. He was just drunk, and he thought he could hit the deer behind my back. When the shot fired, the deer took off, and he hit me here.” Kylie twisted, pointing to her side, down low. “You’d be surprised at how many people suffer spinal injuries that way. Except mostly it’s guys shooting their girlfriends. Or wives.”
I winced, fingers tearing at the grass. I’d come so far, gained so much faith in humanity. But faith could bleed into fury in an instant.
“Did he go to prison?” I asked softly. Perhaps if humans had taken vengeance on the man, I wouldn’t feel so angry. I wouldn’t ache to see his blood running over my hands.
Kylie shook her head. “When the whole thing happened, everyone was screaming, and my dad was yelling at the guy. Saying he was going to kill him.”
Perhaps he should have, I thought. I kept that to myself.
“When I woke up in the hospital, things had shifted. I could hear my dad talking to the nurse, saying, ‘Why did she step in front of the deer? Why did she insist on coming?’”
“Oh, Darkness,” I breathed. But it was a foolish thing to say. Darkness hadn’t done this. People had.
“I think it was easier for him, you know? If he blamed me, he didn’t have to blame himself.” She sniffed, tilting her head to look up at the sky. “I just needed him to say that he loved me no matter what had happened before. No matter what happened after.”
“But he never did?”
“He didn’t say much after, in general.” She lowered her head. “And then Keegan came out, and our parents kicked him out, and … I was just done waiting for them to come around, you know?” Her eyes shimmered again. “To see us as we were, not who they wanted us to be.”
“I see you,” I said. “I know it isn’t the same thing. I know it isn’t. But we’re making a family, the five of us.”
She nodded. “We are making a family,” she agreed. “And families stick together in times of turmoil. In times of battle … ”
“Kylie.” I froze, my chest tightening. “We’ve been over this. Each one of you is helping me—”
“We are,” she said, flashing a mischievous smile. “I’m making you a secret weapon that’ll knock Naeve on his ass. But I’m also making armor, made out of iron—”
“Iron is forbidden.”
“Not to humans. It’ll keep us protected.”
“Kylie, please! You cannot go to battle. It is too dangerous.”
“Alexia’s going. Keegan’s going. I don’t even know what Keegan’s plan is, but I know it’s a big one. Can you stop all of us?” She paused, staring into my eyes. She wasn’t crying anymore, but those eyes were bright. Filled with possibility. “I know you’re letting Taylor go.”
“Yes, because I need … ” An offering. But was that really why? Or had I simply realized that I couldn’t make the decision for him?
I lowered my head. “Please … ” I whispered. “Please reconsider.”
“Go talk to the others,” Kylie said. “Everyone has a good reason for wanting to fight. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“What’s your reason?” I asked.
She looked out at the Seelie Forest, glittering with light. “Faerie isn’t what I expected. I expected a world of elemental beings. A world of chaos, maybe, but a world where everyone was free. A world you’re working toward. I want to work toward that too.”
“It will not be easy.”
“No, it won’t. But if I wait here, hoping things go well in the battle, do I even deserve the world you’re fighting for?” She looked up, and her gaze was fierce. She looked like a warrior. “I’m ready to fight for what I believe in.”
I nodded, taking her hands. “Thank you,” I said. “I wish you would stay behind. I wish you all would. But I understand why you want to fight. I’ll speak with the others.”
–––––
After an afternoon of tracking down Alexia, then Keegan, I finally went to see Taylor. He sat in the center of a clearing, making careful strokes on a makeshift easel. When I entered the space, a dozen horn-tipped pixidellies darted away from him, taking shelter in the surrounding trees.
Little gossips, I thought. What stories are they spinning for him? And then I forgot them, mesmerized by the sight of the boy who’d healed me all night.
“Taylor?”
He looked up, red blossoming in his cheeks. At first, I thought he was bashful about the previous night’s adventures. Then it hit me.
“You did it?” I said, unable to stop myself.
He cocked his head to the side, his attention split between me and the canvas. His smile was sheepish and suggestive at the same time. “Sort of,” he said, turning the easel in my direction.
I approached slowly. Teal eyes stared back at me. Waves of scarlet cascaded around them, falling over snow-white skin. And just a hint of wings.
It was me. He’d painted me.
My breath hovered on the borderland between lungs and lips. “I look dangerous,” I said after a moment.
“You are dangerous.” He stood, wrapping me in his arms. “You appeared that way last night.”
“And you remembered? You drew from memory?”
“Your image is burned into my mind.” He kissed my throat. “It was all I could think of when I woke up this morning.” His lips traveled up to my ear. “You were all I coul
d see.”
His kisses were melting my resolve. But I had to remain strong today. “Then let me be your inspiration to draw other things. Didn’t many of your painters claim to have such inspiration—muses, I believe?”
“You aren’t some spirit flitting around my ears,” he replied. “You are my muse in flesh and blood. Everything about you inspires me. Your touch.” He clasped my hands in his, pressing them to his chest. “Your lips—”
“Taylor.”
“I’m just being honest,” he said with a grin. “I thought you’d appreciate that.”
“Then you might appreciate this.” Unlacing my fingers from his, I stepped back, crouching on my hands and feet. I gave him a threatening growl.
“Miss Elora. You’re trying to seduce me.”
“I’m posing for you,” I explained.
“With clothes on?”
“If you do what I ask, I’ll take them off.”
He dropped his gaze, bashful. “I have to say, I’ve never heard that one before. What do you want me to do?”
“Draw me,” I said, catching his eye. “Like a gargoyle. On a building.”
“In a human city,” he finished, already shaking his head. “I’ve been trying. But everything ends up looking like a Surrealist nightmare.”
“I can work with that,” I said. “Just promise you’ll keep trying.”
“Okay. But don’t you have work to do? Some meeting with the Queen, or, I don’t know, strategy to plot?”
“Always,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder. “But this is important. You are important. I’ve tried too long to keep myself away from you. But last night, I came to you unafraid, unhindered by fear of consequence, and offered you my heart and my soul, and I found what I needed in you. Through you.”
Taylor sat down at the oak, his gaze lingering on my face. “What could I possibly give to you that you couldn’t give to yourself?”
“Love.”
Three hours later, he’d painted a single glittering skyscraper. By the end of the night, a city was forming.
13
TayloR
Now that Elora was back, Maya de Lyre stopped coming around. I guess it was too risky to conspire in front of the princess. Still, I knew Maya de Lyre was busy investigating how to free me from the Bright Queen, because she started leaving me little notes. Two days after Elora’s arrival, I awoke with a leaf in my hand (which promptly dissolved into dust) that said, “I’m getting close.” Three nights after that, the vines on the bathroom wall spelled out, “Just a few more days.”
She was actually going to pull it off.
It was a good thing, too, because my investigation (about the identity of Elora’s father) had hit a dead end. With Elora back in the Bright Court, I just couldn’t get the Seelie Queen alone. In fact, I could hardly get Elora alone, because I was so busy painting or practicing for battle. By the time I finished my work for the night, my arms were exhausted, and if you’ve ever tried to heal anyone, well … you need your arms.
So we mostly just slept.
We did manage to sneak away a few times, in the days leading up to the fifteenth, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy me. My desire for Elora spilled over into my dreams. I could hear her voice, hushed and whispering, with an urgency that made my blood shift. I could feel her breath on my ear. I started to laugh a little, murmuring all the things I wanted to say to her when I was awake. As first, she was responsive, murmuring back in pleasant tones, but when her tone grew harsher it pulled me right out of the dream.
That’s when I realized the voice I was hearing wasn’t in my subconscious. And the ear it was whispering in? Not mine.
I sat up and looked around. Elora was gone. Kylie and Alexia were sleeping a few feet away, wrapped up in each other’s arms, but Keegan was missing. Or maybe he was just misplaced. I could hear his voice in the distance, bobbing around the forest like a ghost without a body. I crawled across the ground in its direction.
As I got closer, Elora’s voice rose to a shrill pitch, stopping me in my tracks. “No,” she said. “I’ve told you all week. I will not allow it under my leadership.”
“Why not?” Keegan asked, his pitch rising too. “You know it’s a good idea. If it wasn’t, you would’ve said so already.”
“We think ourselves so clever, don’t we?”
Pulling myself onto a moss-covered rock, I peered through two trees into the space where they were standing. It wasn’t really a clearing, but eerie light filtered through the forest, and I could make out their silhouettes.
Keegan’s hands waved in the darkness. “I want a life of meaning,” he said.
“Then fight along the fringes with Taylor.”
“Do you know how tired I am of living on the fringes? Just once, I want to be the hero.”
“You’ll be the martyr. The fool.”
“Better me than you. Last time, he made an example out of you. But that, with all its consequences, was just a game to him. This time will be different—”
“No, Keegan.”
“What happens if he kills you? You think your followers can survive without you, but what if they can’t? What if they take your death as a sign that they’ve lost the battle?”
“How nice of you to speak of me as if I’m already gone.”
“Come on, Elora, he’s going to do everything he can to kill you. It’s pretty much his life goal, from what I can tell.”
“I can best him. I’ve done it before.”
“But isn’t there a chance that you can’t?”
She said nothing. Their conversation disturbed me in a way I couldn’t even articulate. But I had no time to work through my confusion. I needed to take in every word.
“Please.” Keegan took her hands. I felt a surge of jealousy—not because I thought he would take her from me, but because I needed that closeness. I needed her near me in those final days.
“Let me do this,” Keegan said. “I’ll go in head-to-toe armor. I’ll take the most magical sword in the world.”
Elora huffed a little at that. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Did Keegan really think he could go up against Naeve? It was ridiculous. Preposterous. A suicide mission. Besides …
Why him and not me?
“Come on,” Keegan said. Even in the dim light, I could see he was searching her eyes. “You know I’m right. And if you won’t help me do this, I’ll find someone else. I bet the Seelie Queen would—”
“Peace, Keegan.” Then she said something I couldn’t understand. I inched forward, just a little, and lost my balance, tumbling into a fat pile of leaves.
Crap.
The two of them turned in my direction. I could hear it. With the exception of my impromptu collapse, the forest had been dead quiet. I knew it was only a matter of time before they came over to investigate—or ran away like frightened deer—so I did my best impression of the Lady Claremondes and slithered backwards in the underbrush.
And yeah. It hurt.
Slithering through the forest is probably different for snakes. For me, my legs and elbows and shins met with every tiny rock and twig. But what are a couple of scrapes to a guy who’s about to go into battle? I mean hey, if Keegan got to face off with the Prince of the Dark Court, there was no way Elora was keeping me on the fringes. I would fight alongside the servants of the Dark Court.
I would fight to defend their princess.
She was coming for me. I could hear her, even though her steps were much more calculated than a human’s. It never really occurred to me, back home, that she was quieter than the rest of us. But then again, I was too busy being infatuated with her to notice her strangeness.
Fearing I was about to be caught, I rose to my hands and knees and crawled backward through the forest. That was probably my dumbest mistake. I ran smack-dab into a tree and my tailbone starte
d to throb immediately. At least I thought it was a tree, until I heard the voice.
“Going somewhere?”
I shot to my feet, turning around as quickly as I could without falling. And there she was, struggling to hold in the light that spilled easily from her fingertips, her mouth, her hair. I could see it, just under the surface of her brown skin, threatening to break free.
I bowed out of habit. “Your Highness.”
The Bright Lady grinned. “I thought you’d be sleeping, young mortal. After all, you’ve been quite busy.”
“Painting is hard work.”
“But that is not all you’ve been doing.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. Did she know I’d been fighting? Did she know I’d been doing other things? Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a faerie hovering between two branches. She looked familiar, her tiny horn tipped in red.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been investigating.”
“Investigating?” the Queen said with a smile. “Trying to find a way out of our bargain?”
“I still don’t know what our bargain is,” I said casually. “I mean, I don’t know what it entails.” She held up a hand, but I went on before she could stop me. “Besides, I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“Oh?”
“Elora’s brother said something in the graveyard. I mean, her adopted brother.” The difference seemed significant, considering his relationship with the Dark Lady.
“What did he say?” the Queen asked, leaning in. Farther off, I could hear the sound of feet crunching against leaves, and I knew Keegan and Elora were returning to our camp. Once she realized I wasn’t there, would she come looking for me?
I spoke quickly. “He called her ‘her father’s daughter.’ He said he knew she’d go to the human world. How could he know that?”
“He couldn’t. Not for certain.” Now the footsteps were coming closer, and I could hear Elora whispering my name. Soon, she’d start yelling. I knew, because it’s what I would’ve done. And she wanted to protect me like I wanted to protect her.
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