The Last Faerie Queen

by Chelsea Pitcher

  Whatever the price.

  “Now that we’ve spoken our truths … ” I lowered my head, feigning shyness. “Could we go somewhere, away from all this? Away from the foolish dancing, and Naeve, with newly royal blood in his veins. Somewhere we won’t be bothered?” Or found. “I want you to know everything, but I don’t want them to overhear and use it against me. It will not make as much sense to … simpletons.”

  I smiled wickedly, and she smiled to match me. I wanted her to think we were cut from the same cloth, the only faeries good enough, royal enough, to understand what others could not. That false sense of superiority would be her downfall.

  But for now, it was the key to separating her from the rest.

  “Perhaps the forest at the base of the mountain?” I suggested. There, we would be close enough to the borderlands for the Bright Queen to come to my aid, but not too far from the castle to return by morning.

  “Ah, and perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of the humans on their travels?” the Dark Lady said suspiciously.

  I rolled my eyes. “Trust me, Mother. The last thing I want is to cross paths with them tonight.”

  And that, too, was the truth. The farther away they were from this place, and from me, the safer they would be.

  But my mother, poor darling, did not catch my meaning, and she smiled down at me. “Very well,” she said, lifting my golden crown from the ground. It must’ve fallen off during the sacrifice. “I do grow tired of the same old thing. Let us venture from this place, and if you can prove your intentions were favorable to the dark faeries, I may find a way to spare you yet.” She placed the crown atop my head.

  I smiled, as if joy was flooding my heart. Really, I was drowning in a sea of darkness. By the end of this night, the Dark Lady’s foolishness might well spare my freedom.

  Pity I couldn’t say the same of hers.

  33

  TayloR

  I was having the strangest dream. I knew it was a dream, in spite of the fact that it felt so real, because Elora was in it. She was sitting right in front of me.

  “You’re here,” I whispered, pulling her into my arms. I was in the Dark Court, just like I’d been when I passed out. Elora felt unusually hot. Like, lit up from the inside. Like a burning ball of light come to set me ablaze.

  I guess I was a little delirious.

  “God, is it really you?” I asked, touching her cheeks, her lips, her hair. “I thought I wasn’t going to see you … ”

  Until tomorrow? Ever?

  “I know,” she said, her voice strangely garbled. It must’ve been the dream. You know how you try so hard to remember something correctly, and it just gets more distorted?

  “I missed you so much. I love you.” I pulled her back into my arms, and she hugged me back, kind of. “I’m going to stand with you tomorrow. I’m going to fight.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “You’ve only just escaped—”

  “But that’s the point. Now that I know what they’re capable of, I can’t abandon you there.”

  I started to feel hot, like intuition was reminding me of something. But that’s the thing about dreams: you don’t have to focus on anything you don’t want to. So Elora’s mother had sacrificed Brad. That was a problem for Real-Life-Taylor. Dream-Taylor was only going to focus on the girl in front of him. The girl he needed to be close to before morning came.

  Who am I kidding? It’s already here.

  I tried to chart the sun’s progress across the horizon, but it was difficult. The darkness hovered over everything, blotting out the light. Wait, why was the dream world exactly like the real world, except for Elora’s presence?

  She couldn’t really be here.

  “Listen close, for we do not have much time,” she instructed, and I nodded, forgetting my thoughts so I could focus on her. She looked blurred around the edges, like she’d thrown on a glamour while racing through the forest. “I refuse to forbid you,” she said. “But I need to preserve you—”

  “Like a jam,” I muttered, but what I thought was: Like a non-corpse. God, my mind was jumbled.

  I needed to gather my thoughts. They fluttered like insects in my brain. They wiggled like worms. I tried to hook one. “But I owe it to you to fight,” I said, drawing the thought out of the muck of my mind. “I owe it to you, and us, and the world. I have to do what’s right.”

  “I thought you might say that.” Elora’s lips curved down on the ends. I don’t think I’d ever seen her frown so completely. Then her body flickered with light, like a lightbulb turning on under her skin. “I have something for you.”

  “What is it?” I perked up, thinking she’d give me something romantic. A lock of her hair, or a drop of blood—no, not blood; I’d seen enough of that to last a lifetime. But something else. Maybe a life-affirming kiss.

  When she stood and walked toward the shadows, I didn’t understand. Then she came back holding something tangled and dark, and my stomach dropped so hard I thought I might fall over. “You still have your old wings,” I breathed, hardly able to talk. “But I thought … ”

  “Oh these? These are not for me.”

  I narrowed my eyes. In the dim light, I watched her pull a needle and thread out of her pocket.

  “Think on it, Taylor. Think on what we have learned about faeries and mortals. If I give you these, perhaps you can—”

  “What … fly?”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh, because I never had wings in the first place. Because I don’t have anything to attach them to. What’s going on with you?”

  There was something strange about this entire operation—I mean, besides the obvious lack of logic. She was plotting something. Something she wasn’t saying.

  “You worry too much,” she said, brushing the hair away from my neck. “Now, won’t you be a good boy and turn around?”

  How could she talk to me this way? So casually, like there was nothing between us.

  “Let’s talk about this,” I said, turning my back to her. Wait, why had I done that?

  “The time for talking has passed,” Elora said in my ear, and it gave me all kinds of shivers. But not the good kind. The kind that warned of something terrible to come. “I truly believe you’ll be happy when this is all over.”

  “When this is all over? What does that even mean? We’re going to battle in a few hours. We’re … ” Then it hit me. This whole sordid encounter was a means to an end. And all those stories about trusting and respecting me? Total bullshit.

  I squirmed away from her hands. But damn, she was strong. Was she always this strong? “You can’t do this,” I said, trying to catch her eyes. They looked greener than usual, which was strange, considering it was still dark under the trees. “You think this will keep me from going into battle, but it won’t.”

  “Why would I want to keep you away from the battle?”

  “Because you don’t think I’ll survive.” I shook my head, talking more to myself than to her. “You said it yourself, that night on the hill. Trying to reattach your wings would have put you out of commission for weeks. Your body would have been too weak to fight. But it’ll be different with me, because my body will reject them. This could kill me.”

  “I would not be doing this if I thought that were a remote possibility.”

  “How can you know that?”

  Finally she looked at me. But the look she gave didn’t calm me. It scared me. She had absolutely no emotion on her face. “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders.

  I felt like two rocks were pressing down on me. “What are you doing?” I demanded, struggling to breathe.

  She sighed, not even straining to hold me in place. “I had hoped that your love for the princess would allow me to perform the ritual with ease.”

  “What ritual? An
d why are you talking like that? Is this the royal we?”

  “The ritual you promised me.”

  “I didn’t promise—”

  “You promised forgiveness, too.”

  “I—”

  “Taylor Christopher Alder.”

  “What?”

  “Sit still.”

  I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t move. It was like she had complete control over me. But it wasn’t until the needle pierced my skin that I realized two things:

  This wasn’t a dream. And she wasn’t Elora.

  34

  ElorA

  My mother and I walked until the commotion was a dull roar, and then we walked some more. Down the twisting ledge that had threatened to pitch the humans to the rocks below. Through the Unseelie Forest. The bright faeries might’ve had lush, leafy trees, but we had hundreds of beastly things: thorns that bit and brambles that tore. Tall pines reaching into forever, glistening with icicles and glittering beneath the stars. A cluster of rocks here, jagged and beckoning.

  One might sit and rest a while. One might be crushed. You never knew. That was the danger of the Dark Court, and the thrill. All of us were chasing death because we didn’t know what to do with our long lives. Long, and unfulfilled.

  Until now.

  “Perhaps we could rest here,” I said, gesturing to a cluster of moss-covered rocks. We’d reached a point in the forest where the ground dropped off swiftly, leading almost straight down. If I looked far enough into the distance, I could see the place where the drop-off led directly to the border between the courts, there below.

  But a faerie of the Seelie Court wouldn’t have to wait for us at the borderlands today. Today, all sentries of the Dark Court were attending the celebration, leaving the border unguarded.

  That was my mother’s first mistake.

  “Let us seek shelter beneath these pines,” I said, and sat beneath the second-to-largest tree. My mother would surely choose the largest, and this served my purposes as well.

  “The wicked sun is less bright in the shade,” my mother agreed. The darkness that blanketed the Unseelie Palace was more like a film here, a thin, insubstantial veil through which one could see the light. It hung low on the horizon, indicating early morning. The higher it rose, the weaker she would become.

  She sat upon a low-hanging branch, just as I’d suspected she would, facing away from the drop-off.

  That was her second mistake.

  I almost smiled. Down below, I could see a ball of light moving through the forest like a second sun, bold and bright and just as powerful. Gold among green. Beautiful in its own way.

  “How much time will you give me?” I asked.

  My mother shrugged. It seemed too careless a gesture for her. It occurred to me, in this moment, that she’d never wandered through the court with me. Never went on a long, leisurely walk. Never took her daughter on an adventure.

  Here, with the court’s fall imminent on the horizon, like those two shining lights coming from the east, my mother was giving me the things I’d always wanted. Her time. Her attention. Herself, removed from the court and her title as queen.

  Surely, that couldn’t be a sign?

  “My faeries will sleep through the morning,” she said. “Only when the fog lifts, and the sun rises high into the sky, will they scurry back into the earth like worms.”

  “So … ”

  “So, you have until then.”

  “That is more than gracious.”

  “I told you.” She looked at me with pity, with condescension. “I am a most merciful Queen.”

  “I suppose you could always be worse,” I allowed.

  She laughed at that. “Indeed I could. I could’ve slaughtered all the mortals, and my daughter, in a matter of minutes. I could’ve fed you to the wolves.”

  “The wolves like me,” I said, a petulant child. Still, how many times had I curled up in my mother’s bed, amongst her wolves, while she was off ruling her kingdom with an iron fist? The wolves had been there for me.

  “They may well love you,” she said, licking her lips as if the word tasted unfamiliar. As if it tasted funny. For a minute, I thought she might spit. Instead, she smiled. “But not as much as they love to eat.”

  I scowled, looking away from her. Down below, that moving light had disappeared, which meant the Seelie Queen had reached the bottom of the drop-off and was just outside my line of vision. My heart began to race.

  “Let us not waste time with things that might’ve been,” I said. “Or what might still be. Let me explain my interaction with the humans.”

  My mother swallowed, and then she did spit. Her saliva was laced with red. Had she been suckling on Naeve’s wrist, like he’d been tasting her? Or was she ill?

  I shook myself, refusing to dwell on the possibilities. The former was meaningless, in terms of what was going to happen next, and the latter would only help me overcome her.

  So why did my chest feel so tight?

  “Trust me, Elora. If we could gloss over this part, I’d be a much happier queen.”

  Enjoy being queen while it lasts, I thought.

  But I said, “That makes one of us.” She perked up at that. “What I mean is, I want to explain myself. I want you to understand.”

  She looked at me then, looked right into my eyes, and I thought I could see the beginning of time. The first wash of darkness, the first spark of light. I thought I could see, too, how they’d once lived in harmony.

  What had happened between them?

  “I have little hope of understanding,” the Dark Lady said. “But try me.”

  “I went to the human world because of the Seelie Queen,” I admitted. “Because she wanted a human.”

  My mother inhaled sharply, and I could tell she believed me. So far, she believed me. “But why?” she asked.

  “Why did I go, or why did she want a human?”

  “Either. Both,” she said, as light rose up from below. Even if my mother turned around at this point, she would only think it was the sun. Both lights were coming from the east, one lined up with the other, as if the Seelie Queen had charted her course accordingly. How easily she could sneak up on my mother. How talented she was at trickery.

  My heart skipped a beat as I said, “One answer is easy: I do not know. To this day, I do not know the Seelie Queen’s reasons for wanting a human. I can only assume she grew tired of the sanctions and wanted a toy. Something to pet, maybe more.”

  My mother shuddered, the way Illya had shuddered when I’d told her I was sleeping in the mortal world. The way I had shuddered when Taylor had first invited me into his home. If I could learn the truth about humans, maybe my mother …

  A wicked sliver of light pierced through the trees, forcing me to blink. My eyes closed. Behind closed lids, I saw the lifeless body of Brad sprawled out across the stage. I saw my mother ordering me to drink his blood like tea.

  She is too far gone.

  I bit my lip. “As for your other question, let me first explain what happened in the mortal world, before I explain why I chose to go there.”

  She nodded, agreeing to my terms.

  That was her third mistake.

  If all went as planned, the Seelie Queen would arrive before such an explanation was necessary. My mother wouldn’t know I meant to take down her court until it was too late. And as for what had happened in the mortal world, well …

  I was actually looking forward to telling that part.

  “I followed the ocean until I exited the Unseelie Court. From there, I headed farther south, until I reached a forest. The forest was greater than I would’ve expected for the human world.”

  “Give them a decade. It will be gone.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. I didn’t want to argue with her, and besides, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Regardless o
f Taylor’s sweetness, or Kylie’s, or anyone’s, it didn’t negate humanity’s penchant for tearing down forests and putting up “plants.” Ironic, I know, that they should fill the world with dead things and name them after the living.

  I still didn’t understand it.

  “After a time, I came upon civilization. First the farms, then the little towns. Then something a bit larger. I knew the Seelie Queen wanted a boy … ”

  My mother’s scowl deepened. But Darkness, she didn’t know the half of it.

  Not yet. “A boy old enough to lead, yet youthful enough to be considered ‘young.’ Color me conceited, but that made me think of my own age.”

  My mother smiled, and I thought she was proud of my affinity for leadership. Then she said, “Who would follow you but leaves and worms?”

  “Someone would,” I whispered. She looked up, and for a moment I feared she was going to turn around. That light was creeping up the base of the hill, crawling toward us like vines. The Queen must be close.

  The Seelie Queen, that is. Not my queen.

  I don’t have a queen, I reminded myself.

  “A mortal would follow me,” I said, drawing my mother’s attention back to me. “But I’m getting to that. You see, once I realized she wanted someone my age, I lingered on the edges of a mortal school, in search of a leader. What I found was a loner.”

  She tilted her head, as if listening for the part where I drew the mortal’s blood, or led him into the sea. Something to prove I was the daughter of the Dark Lady and not a total disappointment.

  But I did not need her approval anymore. “I watched him for the better part of a week. Watched the way he was pushed around by other students, or brushed aside entirely. Watched the way he slipped away to the park behind the school whenever he could manage it. There was something about this mortal boy, something that drew me to him.”

  “Oh, Darkness.” She paled, though I didn’t think it possible for her to get any lighter. In the brighter months, she would fade to almost nothing if she didn’t stay underground.