Ace released my wrist. “Kajika, get her closer. I want her to be ready when”—his Adam’s apple bobbed—“when it’s time.”
Kajika didn’t need to be told twice. He strode right up to the slot machine, and Ace placed my hand on the lever, cementing my fingers underneath his.
My portal stamp flared, the peculiar symbol a bitter reminder that I was no longer welcome in my home.
The air shifted then, and Silas materialized. “It has begun.”
“How much time…will his heart stay stopped?” Cat asked.
Dread was stamped on Silas’s face. “According to Gregor, three minutes.”
Cat cleared her throat. “Three human minutes or—”
“Neverrian.”
“That’s good.” She licked her lips as though they were chapped. “That’s fifteen minutes. That’s good.” She wet her lips again. And again.
A chill enveloped me, and I shivered. I couldn’t see how it was good. Cruz’s heart was no longer beating.
Kajika rubbed my extended arm, attempting to drive heat into skin that felt rubbery and numb.
Thank you for giving me last night.
He lowered his gaze to the navy carpet beneath his feet, tracing the geometric pattern with his eyes, his hand still skating over my skin.
I loved last night. It was…magical.
“It will work,” he said so roughly that his voice scoured my skin like a Brillo pad.
Don’t lock up your heart, Kajika. Dare to give it away again. After me.
He jerked his eyes off the carpet and set them on me. “It will work!”
Kajika… I tried to prepare him.
“No.”
I tried to offer him a comforting smile, but my weak lips wouldn’t bend.
Couldn’t bend.
My wrist started flickering, my stamp’s botched lines and curves shifting.
Cat and Silas crowded around us.
“Her stamp won’t be able to let her through,” Cat was saying softly. “Someone’s going to have to go with her, Ace.”
“It’s already been decided.” My brother removed his hand from atop mine. He wouldn’t be the one to take me.
It wasn’t a surprise. Until the lock was altered to let Cat back in, my brother wouldn’t risk leaving her behind on Earth. Not even for a second. Not even if it meant he incurred the same fight as mine.
As though someone had pulled a lever on my wrist, my stamp reeled and reeled, warping at lightning speed. Dread and hope dripped into me, seeping into my bones, down to the marrow. I averted my gaze, not daring to watch anymore, not daring to hope.
Hope was too dangerous an emotion.
My mind wandered to Cruz. Was he scared? Was he comfortable? Was he lying in his bed? Was Veroli fussing over him? I hoped so. I tried to picture him. Not with a stilled heart, but with a lively one.
A long-ago memory washed over me. It was the year of flight. I was five—twenty-five fae years, a mere child still. It was the year we learned to use our fire. Once we achieved this, we evidenced the accomplishment by removing our shoes. Every day, one of my friends either came to school barefoot or took off their slippers before the end of the school day. I was almost six, and I still wore my soft-soled shoes. Ace tried to reassure me that there existed no Seelie unable to fly, so I would eventually get it. It hadn’t reassured me.
One morning, after yet another miserable attempt at flying that had rendered my uniform mucky, Cruz barged into my classroom on the first floor of the school calimbor.
I have orders to collect Lily.
My teacher had frowned, but everyone knew Cruz was almost a member of the royal family, so she’d let me go off with him.
Did something happen to Ace? My brother was always first and foremost on my mind. Or is it Veroli?
A smile had danced over Cruz’s face. Everyone’s fine. Hop on my back.
I climbed onto his back and clutched his neck as he soared upward and out toward the cliff that overlooked the Hareni. Not many faeries went there, either afraid of the wild animals that crowded the cliffs and valley behind it, or afraid that an Unseelie would somehow sneak out of their underground prison.
I heard you wanted to learn to fly, he said once we’d landed and he’d put me down.
I grimaced.
So I’m going to teach you.
I started to tell him that I was a disaster. That perhaps not all Seelies could fly. That maybe I was defective. The same way I couldn’t talk, maybe I couldn’t fly either.
He placed his hands on my shoulders. Lily, mark my words. By the end of today, you will be flying.
He ran me past the fundamentals again, and then he made me work on pushing my fire into my legs and feet, which was the key to taking off. Once piping hot, your feet lifted off the ground. This was called hovering. To fly, though you had to redistribute your fire into your body. Easier said than done. I desperately tried repositioning my fire, but it was useless.
I was useless.
I hopped and fell, and hopped and fell, my slippered feet inevitably smacking against the rocky ledge.
Twelve-year-old Cruz crouched to my height. Lily, it’ll happen. It’ll happen.
Embarrassed, I wept.
You can do this. He’d rubbed my legs to get the dirt off my tunic pants, then rested his palms on my feet.
His hands were so warm, and my feet so cold. The heat felt good. It made my numb toes prickle. The soggy insoles of my slippers made the balls and heels of my feet ache, and my arch tingle. My shoes felt too small, too tight. I was desperate to kick them off and scratch my skin until it bled smoke, but I didn’t want to push away Cruz’s hands. I wanted him to keep them there forever.
Hey, Lily. He glanced up at me, a devastating smile arcing his lips. Look.
And I had looked.
He rose, and so did I. My feet hovered next to his chest, still caged in by his fingers.
I’d held my breath. You’re doing that.
He released me gently, and my body dipped but then shot back up, pitching sideways. I was the only person who could stumble on air. Cruz had leaped off the ground and grabbed my hands. At first, it was to steady me, but then it was to spin me around…and around…and around.
Oh, Cruz…
I felt my brother peel my fingers off the lever. “Fuck,” he roared. “Matthias, go to Neverra. Get an update. Quick.”
My stamp had stopped flashing.
It hadn’t worked. And now there was no more time for other experiments. I wouldn’t be buried in magical rose petals. I wouldn’t see Neverra without its cloak of mist. I wouldn’t get to laugh again, or be kissed again.
I would miss that most.
Skies, I would miss so many things.
My gaze bumped into Kajika’s. The whites of his eyes were marbled with burst blood vessels. I tried to touch his jaw with the hand clutching his neck, but I couldn’t inch my fingers down. It was as though the spindly bones had fused together.
I tried to rotate my head, but like my fingers, my neck wouldn’t obey. My body was shutting down. I peered at my legs, made sure they hadn’t grayed and flaked off. Even though I couldn’t move them, they were still there, still draped over Kajika’s taut forearm.
I stared back up at him, watched the reflection of my own face in his dark irises, my anger and desperation boiling down to the quietest stillness.
All of me became quiet.
“Lily…” Kajika croaked.
“Wait!” Cat all but shrieked.
I didn’t think I could wait any longer.
Something tugged at me.
Death.
My body rocked, and the faces of the people I loved blurred. Soon, the world turned into an endless sea of ink and silence.
39
The Pink Sea
The afterlife was bright. The palest of whites.
And noisy. Waves crashing, birds cawing.
And odorous. Briny and metallic.
I inhaled deeply. Listened carefully. I’d imagined ghosts
couldn’t smell, but perhaps I’d been wrong?
Something brushed over my legs.
I still had legs?
I could still feel?
I blinked, and my lids came upon. Like a developing negative, an image ripened before me. First, pale with the faintest of gray lines, but then color tinged the whites and grays—a blue-thatched roof, a glittery lavender expanse of water, sheer white fabric fluttering around a canopy bed.
Truthfully I hadn’t believed in the afterlife, so I hadn’t given it much thought. But, skies, it was beautiful.
I pulled off the feather-light sheets stretched over my body, then combed away the fine netting ensconcing my bed and placed the pads of my feet on cold, smooth stone. My body was so delightfully warm that I welcomed the nippiness. Carefully, feeling out my limbs, I padded out onto a small deck made of yellow wood.
All around me, water frolicked. I knelt and peered underneath the edge of the deck. My hut was suspended in the air over this strange ocean. It reminded me of the palace of my youth.
No mist here, though. I turned my face toward the pale lilac sky and closed my eyes against the relentless sunshine. But then I jerked my eyes open.
Lilac?
I got to my feet and walked around the wrap-around deck of my new house. No castle rested on a ribbon of mist, but the sea lapped at a towering cliff crowned with a sprawling tree. Its iridescent blue leaves swayed and glinted like diminutive peacock feathers. I swallowed, and my saliva slunk painfully around an expanding lump in my throat.
I knew that tree.
I knew that cliff.
A black form cut across the sky, growing larger as it soared toward me.
I backed up.
I knew that shape.
I was in Neverra.
Which meant—
I winced, unwilling to think of what it meant.
The draca landed, tucking its leathery wings along its frightful bulk. Green eyes gleamed at me. Of course Lyoh Vega would be the one to welcome me back. Maybe this small hut was a new type of prison.
The air shimmered as the black creature morphed into a human.
A man.
Not a woman.
Silas.
Of course…Silas was the new draca.
An elusive smile touched his lips. There one second, gone the next. “You’re awake.”
Awake.
Alive…
I’d made it through the portal. I passed a hand against the top of my head. Short, bristly strands tickled my palm.
“Veroli sheared off your hair.”
What was left of it, he meant.
“I sense it will become all the rage with the courtiers once they see you.”
Courtiers… I was really, truly back.
I stared at Silas, then signed Cruz’s name, but Silas didn’t understand sign language. Somehow, though, he must’ve understood what I was asking.
He lowered his eyes to the shivering, shimmery waves.
“He…when…” Silas rubbed the back of his neck. “He made Gregor inject all the venom in the syringe.”
My chest swelled and burned as though my raging fire had gathered there…charring the organ that had kept me alive…that had failed to keep Cruz alive.
“Lily, I owed him a gajoï. So did Catori. If it hadn’t been dile venom, he would’ve asked me to do the unthinkable. By suggesting the venom, you spared us.” Silas’s voice broke, and he pressed his lips together.
I raised my face toward the sun and closed my eyes, willing the slippery heat of my tears to evaporate from my lashes. When I felt like I had gotten myself under control, I looked back at Silas, whose face was scrunched with pain. Cruz had been a dear friend.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice inflected with the slightest quiver.
How was I supposed to answer that?
Alive and dead. That’s how I felt.
Instead of attempting to make words out of air, words that wouldn’t register with the draca, I stared beyond him.
“It’s been named the Pink Sea even though Ace wanted to baptize it Catori’s Sea.”
Of course Cat would refuse to have something named after her.
“Gregor would like you to go to him.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to see Gregor.
“It’s to fi—”
“Lily! My Lily!” A runa swayed in the pastel sky. Veroli was frantically agitating her hands, and then she carped to her driver to hurry.
It took me a moment to realize that the fae carrying the volitor basket was Dawson. The sight scraped off a sliver of grief.
The basket bumped onto the deck, and then Veroli stumbled out and rushed toward me, squashing my body with her arms. She snuffled loudly against my shoulder, tears wetting the thin white muslin that encased my body like a shroud. I held her tight.
“Welcome home, Lily,” Dawson said shyly, unhooking himself from the basket.
I removed my hands from around Veroli to formulate a question.
How long have I been here?
“You’ve been asleep for three days, deary.”
Three days… Just over two human weeks.
I signed my brother’s name next.
Veroli glanced sideways at Silas. “He hasn’t returned yet.”
I frowned.
Silas’s eyes shot to my wrist, to the faint circle slashed by five irregular lines. “He’s waiting for Gregor to fix the lock. That’s why”—he cleared his throat—“that’s why the wariff would like to see you. We need you to touch a portal for it to glow.”
Take me to him, I motioned to Dawson, who’d learned to sign before he’d learned to fly.
I started walking toward the runa when Dawson’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to carry you? I mean, I’d be honored, but I thought you weren’t a fan of runas.”
I wasn’t, but what alternative did I have? Climb onto Silas’s back? It wasn’t as though I could fl—
I froze, stared down at my feet. Like Cruz had taught me many decades ago, I willed my fire downward. Slowly, my feet lifted off the yellow deck.
And then I soared higher.
I can fly again.
Like during my very first flight, happiness curled through me, and I smiled. But then I thought of Cruz, and my smile wilted. I hovered in the air above the submerged Hareni and took in my brother’s kingdom. The cliffs sparkled with sunshine, the immense liquid expanse glimmered like cut quartz, and the air was rife with the scent of sunbaked moss and tinny soil. The calimbors in the distance stood like ageless sentinels over the land.
I remembered Cruz telling me how he’d always dreamed of seeing Neverra without its cloak of mist. His dream had come true, but at what cost?
I refused to cry as I twirled, filling myself with my home.
Home? Was this even still my home? Who did the hut I’d woken up in belong to? And the larger one bobbing next to it?
Without turning into his dragon form, Silas took flight and joined me in the air. “It has changed, hasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I… In case you wanted to visit Cruz”—the name soared from his lips as silently as one of Kajika’s arrows—“we placed his ashes…he asked me…said it was—”
To spare him the pain of explaining, I raised a palm. I knew exactly where Cruz would’ve wanted to rest for eternity. I dove into the air toward the cliff and landed beside the panem tree. A soft breeze blew through the branches, the wood tinkling like Catori’s windchime. The palm-shaped blue leaves frisked, dispersing the scent of warm, buttery bread.
I gazed around me until I saw it.
A carpet of orange dandelion clovers stretched over the chalky stone. The fluffy bush was slowly overtaking the rock, growing through each crack and crevice. I crouched and stroked the cottony stalks, and then I plucked one up and twirled it between my fingers. Unlike Earthly dandelions, the tiny white flowers that made up the three flower heads didn’t blow away, and as I spun them, they changed color—from orange t
o yellow to pink, then back to orange.
For a long time, Cruz had hated these flowers because his father had also turned into them upon his death, and everyone had convinced Cruz that his father had been evil. Yet upon opening one of my ex-fiancé’s many books, I’d found a flattened dandelion clover. It was then that I realized Cruz had forgiven his father.
Under Silas’s watchful gaze, I tucked the stalk behind my ear, rose back to my feet, and then sprang into the air.
“Should I take you to Gregor now?”
I nodded and trailed after him, flattening one palm against my ear to keep Cruz’s flower from falling away from me.
40
The Acorn
The palace no longer existed.
The mist, too, was gone.
These were the two strangest parts of this new Neverra.
Where did Ace and Cat reside now? Where did Ace hold meetings with his fae ministers, with his wariff? Where did the draca and the lucionaga convene?
My fingers itched for a phone on which to type all these questions, but phones didn’t work in Neverra. I needed a pen and paper. Or Veroli and Dawson. I glanced over my shoulder at the small hut that was no larger than a poppy seed from my vantage point. I couldn’t tell if the runa was still parked on the deck.
The deck which must have been made of volitor fronds.
Whose bed had I been slumbering in?
A sudden influx of gasps resonated around me. I froze, jerking my attention to the space in front of me instead of the one below.
Hundreds of faeries had approached. Whispers went through the crowd like wildfire. Two girls detached themselves from the crowd and flew toward me—Nadia and Eleanor. The girls I’d considered my closest friends until I’d made real friends. They squealed and encircled me with their arms. I let them gush into my ear about how happy they were to see me again—they hadn’t come to visit me once since I was tossed out of Neverra—before pressing them away and returning to Silas’s side.
The shy princess I used to be would’ve blushed from the attention of all the caligosupra—no…that term had been abolished…what were they called now?—but the Lily who’d stared death in the face only felt annoyed.
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