Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

by Maggie Stiefvater

  I gasped, pulling myself free of the memory with effort and blinking my wet eyes. “You tried to kill yourself.” Saying it out loud made the memory real. I stared at him, repeating, “You tried to kill yourself?”

  Luke swallowed, still as a statue beneath my fingers.

  Trying to put this piece into his puzzle, I traced the pale lines that coursed over his torc. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

  “You saw.” He looked into my eyes, unflinching. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Sixteen years of Catholic church filled my mouth with answers, but they all tasted like paste and I was silent. Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t have to have an answer—that I didn’t want to speak. Instead, I hugged him, throwing my arms around his lean frame and pressing my cheek against the scar on his shoulder where he’d first traced the blade.

  Luke lay his head on top of mine, his breaths counting the minutes, my heartbeat slowing to fall in step with his. Then I felt his mouth, his breath hot on my cool skin, push against my neck, at once tender and insistent. Part of me urged me to stop him while I still had my senses, but the better part of me wanted it too badly—wanted to feel him lay a path of kisses up my neck, under my ear, along my jaw, until his mouth found mine and stole my breath. I couldn’t think, with the musky smell of his skin pressed so close to me and the feel of his fingers tangled in my ponytail. My brain screamed too far! but my body moved on its own accord, pressing closer to him.

  A sudden, stabbing pain in my heart forced a gasp out of me, and I felt Luke’s body stiffen. He pushed away, his hand moving up to his chest, his fingers against his skin, his eyes darkening. As the pain flamed through my chest again, Luke shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered. But the finger of fire dragged across my heart again, and this time, Luke’s body spasmed and he crashed against the counter, sending a pot lid clattering to the floor. He reached a shaking hand toward the counter before collapsing down next to the pot lid on the tile. The torc glowed white hot on his arm, illuminated by some sort of fearsome magic.

  It was only then I figured it out. This wasn’t my pain—it was his. What I was feeling was only a shadow, some sort of sympathetic pain caused by the weird magic I’d performed on us in the graveyard. I dropped down next to him as he shivered in time with the waves of fire that rolled through my chest.

  “Luke.” I touched his face, and he focused his eyes on me, biting his lip. “What’s happening to you?”

  It was worse than I could have imagined, feeling his body shaking underneath my hand and seeing him work so hard not to cry out. His voice was tight. “I’m—being—punished.”

  I jerked my head up, looking at the windows, trying to see what could have been watching us.

  Luke, seeing my gesture, forced out, “For—what I told—Eleanor.” He groaned, and curled his body tightly around his clenched fists.

  I remembered Eleanor’s face then, the puzzlement on her face when she asked Luke why he couldn’t kill me, just a girl. Faerie bitch! I wasn’t just a girl. I was a girl with freakdom off the charts. I reached into the tangle of limbs and pressed my hand against Luke’s chest, feeling the thump of his heart, slow and labored, each lethargic beat slamming against his ribs.

  I closed my eyes, trying to think about the feeling I got when I was moving clovers across tables. In my head, I saw the fire in Luke’s chest, burning brightly across the wings of a frantic dove. The flames, reflected orange and white in the dove’s black eye, ate one feather after another, curling them black and useless.

  “Go out,” I whispered. But the fire kept burning, and the dove opened its beak and stared at the sky, eyes frozen and empty with the pain. I had to concentrate, to focus on the problem. What made fire go out? Lack of oxygen, right? I imagined the air sucking away from the flames, fleeing from the heat, leaving nothing but emptiness for the fire to feed on.

  The fire flickered and diminished on one of the wings, and the ache in my own heart flickered in response.

  “No,” gasped Luke, and I opened my eyes to see him shaking his head. “No, don’t do it. Just leave me alone.”

  “Why?”

  “She’ll know.” Beneath my hand, his heartbeat crashed convulsively. “She’ll—know what you can do. She’s—only —guessing—now.”

  I could see the pain written on every muscle in his body. “I can’t just watch you like this.”

  “I—lied to her. Told her you—weren’t—a threat.” He turned his face away, bitten lip bleeding. “Please—Dee—don’t.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I was so afraid that he would die there on the kitchen floor, lying next to the pot lid on the tile. If he could die; after seeing the knife blade stuck in his chest, I wasn’t so sure he could. But I knew he could feel pain, and watching him writhing on the floor was harder for me to bear than physical pain of my own.

  I lay down on the cold tile beside him and curled my body next to his, wrapping my arms around his shuddering muscles and burying my face in his neck. And lying like that, together, him growing hotter and hotter and me squeezing tighter and tighter, I waited until he stopped shivering and finally lay still, breathing hard. Knowing, the whole time, that I could have stopped it. I think it was the hardest decision I had ever made.

  Luke opened his eyes and lay a hand on my cheek, his words barely loud enough to be heard, “Thank you.”

  Maybe he hadn’t even said it out loud.

  fifteen

  I didn’t want to go to the party. It had seemed pointless to go in light of Granna’s condition; now, after watching Luke tortured in the kitchen, it seemed downright idiotic. I had a horrible sense that time was precious and that entertaining a bunch of rich lawyers was a waste of it.

  “Life has to go on,” Luke said when I told him I wanted to blow the party off. “You can’t just stop. What else would you do?”

  Spend it with you. Lie on my bed with you and memorize your smell and the sound of your voice so no one could ever take it away from me.

  “Dee.” He ran a hand down my arm, twining his fingers in mine. “You’ve got to go on as normal. If you don’t—They’ll come in to finish my job for me.”

  So we packed my harp in the car and went on our way to the Warshaws. As Luke had promised earlier, the sky was clear and fresh, the only signs of the storm already disappearing behind the trees. While Luke drove, lost in his thoughts, I slouched in the passenger seat and typed an epic text message to James—confessing all, like we always used to do. For as long as we’d been friends, we’d relied on the written (well, typed) word to convey thoughts that seemed too embarrassing or serious to talk about in person. I remembered getting a long text from James about guardian angels and whether or not everyone had one, and another one about whether I thought being an introvert was a mental illness, and I remembered sending a long one about how I thought I’d never fit in and another about music as a possible time-traveling device—so long that it took an hour to punch in all the letters on the cumbersome keypad. This one was a bit shorter than that.

  james, i should’ve been honest with u from the start, but i was afraid of hurting ur feelings or ruining our friendship. i’ve been spending a lot of time w luke & i think i’m falling in love w him. i know it’s crazy and too soon but i can’t help it. somehow he’s in this faerie thing, but i don’t know how yet. i read his mind that’s one of the new freaky things i can do i guess & i found out he’d killed a lot of people. i know this will sound messed up but i think he was forced to do it. he’s supposed to kill me too but he won’t & now i’m afraid whoever’s behind it is going to do something awful to him. i don’t know what to do. maybe i’m supposed to save him. plz dont be angry w me i need ur help.

  I sighed and deleted the message without sending it. Closing the phone, I turned toward Luke. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Whether they’ll write my life story as a tragedy or an epic fantasy.” He had pulled himself out of his thoughts
with effort, and it seemed he’d lightened them a lot for my benefit.

  I laughed. “And whether or not they’ll get a cute guy to play your part?”

  “No, I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely.” He glanced over and brushed the top of my hand with his fingers before looking back to the road. “I’m hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot.”

  I frowned. “Can you tell me who did that to you, back in the kitchen?”

  Luke paused, as if trying out the idea. “Someone … who started out like you.”

  “Oh, that’s specific.”

  “I can’t be specific.”

  I squinted in the dying evening light and tried to think of what I was like. “Shy? Ruled by an iron-fisted mother? Musical?”

  Luke groaned at all of my choices. “Think basic.”

  “Female? Human?”

  “Ding! Give the girl a prize!” Squinting in the evening light, he put on a pair of sunglasses; they made him look almost unbearably cool. It really wasn’t fair that he had so many Deirdre-felling weapons in his arsenal. “So theoretically, if she’s like you, I can talk about you and you’ll learn about her and I won’t get in trouble.”

  “That makes my head hurt, but I think I’m with you.”

  Luke warmed to the idea. “Okay. Let’s talk about your gift. It can’t change who you are. It’s like—” he struggled for the words. “It’s like being drunk. Getting sloshed doesn’t change who you are—it just takes away all your inhibitions. It makes you more you. So if you’ve got a nasty streak, you’re a mean drunk. If you’re a nice person, you’re one of those amiable drunks. You’re a crazy talented girl with an amazing force of will, and this gift just takes that and explodes it.”

  “You’ve already won me. You don’t have to compliment me.”

  Luke made a vague motion. “It just comes naturally to me. I can’t seem to stop. You have an amazingly cute ponytail; it makes me want to touch it. See, that one just slipped out.”

  “If you make me blush, I am going to hit you.” I was thrown off-balance by his sudden lightness of mood—this was the Luke who had flirted with me at the competition, not the Luke shedding tears of blood in a tomb or the Luke lost in memories in the kitchen. I’d missed him.

  He glanced over at me and rewarded me with a brief, shining smile.

  I bit my lip and blushed anyway. “So, go on with the gift bit. I assume that this someone else who might be a lot like me, but isn’t, wasn’t a nice person who became an über-nice person after they found out about their gift.” My emphasis on the word “gift” was decidedly sarcastic; the jury was still out on whether or not I agreed with Luke’s terminology.

  “No. Someone who might be like you and might have something to do with my condition was a nasty, paranoid-schizo girl who loved telling people what to do. And when she grew into her gift, she was a nasty, paranoid-schizo girl who told people what to do and hurt them if they didn’t do it. A lot of people.”

  I contemplated this. “And where do you come into it?”

  “I think that might be where the hurting comes into it. If I try and tell you, I mean.” His glance toward the torc was almost imperceptible.

  “Then where do I come into it?”

  “The paranoid part.”

  “She’s afraid of harpists?”

  “Your brain, Dee. Use it. What were we just talking about?”

  It dawned on me. “My telekinesis. That’s what you meant back in the kitchen, when you told her I wasn’t a threat.” I thought further, and burst out, “But that’s so stupid. If I hadn’t been messed with at the competition and had four-leaf clovers hurled at me by perv freaks, I would’ve never even known faeries existed. The only people I would’ve been a threat to would’ve been the ones between me and the bathroom when I got nervous.”

  Luke grinned at me; I’d never seen him so cheerful. “That’s where the paranoid-schizo part comes in.”

  “But I can’t be the only one like me—oh.” Suddenly, the pile of bodies in Luke’s memory was starting to make sense. “So, that’s why—oh.” All the overheard conversations were starting to make sense, too. “So, she makes you do it. Why you?”

  Luke answered with another question. “Why not Eleanor?”

  I saw Eleanor in my mind, her elegant fingers jerking back from me and the key around my neck. “The iron …Eleanor can’t touch it. But can’t the Queen touch it? She’s human.”

  “Not quite, not anymore.”

  I shook my head. “But I saw you—I saw how you felt about all this. How can she make you do it?”

  “You know I can’t tell you.”

  I thought of Luke plunging the knife into his heart, trying to destroy himself. And of him sitting in the tomb, plaintively asking me if I would ever forgive him. Whatever it was that compelled him to kill those people must have been pretty awful. A horrible idea occurred to me. “You don’t go into a trance, do you? Does she do some sort of voodoo remote mind control?”

  Luke shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m utterly conscious for the whole thing. But you came along and fascinated me, and that was the end of it all.” He grinned suddenly, surprising me. “I’m so damn giddy. Is this what love is?” Before I could answer, he braked hard. “Is this the place?”

  I looked up. “Yep.”

  The Warshaws’ enormous brick house sat well back from the road, its columned facade dominating the massive sloping lawn in front of it. Luke drove Bucephalus up the steep driveway, peering at the immaculate grounds. “I don’t see any cars. Are you sure we’re here at the right time?”

  “It’s seven thirty, isn’t it?” A glance at his car’s clock confirmed the time. “This should be right. Mrs. Warshaw said the party started at eight but to just go around back and set up in the rotunda. I’ve been here before, for her daughter’s reception; they’re friends with Mom.”

  “Your mother has friends?”

  “Be nice!”

  Luke grinned and parked the car near the house. He took my harp, I took his backpack, and then he came closer and clasped my hand tightly. Together, we walked around the back of the huge brick house, past bushes sculpted in spirals and a stone fountain in the shape of a little boy peeing into a puddle. I hoped that if I ever got rich and famous, I wouldn’t be so warped by my gobs of money that I thought little peeing boys counted as acceptable lawn ornaments.

  The spacious back yard was empty of people, although folded tables leaned up against the wall near the back door and folding chairs leaned in long rows against a screen porch. I led Luke through the orange-green evening to the rotunda, a brick-floored circle of columns covered with a white dome.

  “I think we must be very early,” Luke remarked. He retrieved a folding chair for me and sat on the edge of the rotunda, watching me set up. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “I know about your brother.”

  I looked up from tuning my harp. “My brother?”

  He reached into his battered canvas backpack and withdrew his flute case. “From one of your memories. How old were you when your mother lost him?”

  I could have feigned ignorance, but the truth was that I remembered the exact month, day, and hour that Mom had lost the baby, down to the weather outside and what I’d eaten for breakfast. I wondered what else Luke had dug up from inside my head. “Ten.”

  His deft fingers assembled the flute pieces while his eyes scanned the edges of the yard, ever on guard. “Does it bother you to talk about it?”

  I remembered Mom’s huge belly disappearing too soon, and the last time I’d ever seen her cry. But it wasn’t my sorrow; I was a step removed, and to me, the pregnancy had always been a bit surreal anyway. “No. Why do you want to know?”

  Luke’s eyes flitted over the trees closest to the rotunda: three petite thorn trees a few yards away. “Before I decide I don’t like someone, I always try and figure out if there’s a reason why they
are who they are.”

  “Me?”

  He gave me a withering look. “Your mom, stupid.”

  I chewed my lip, feeling both defensive and relieved that an objective third party thought she was hard to live with. “She’s all right.”

  Luke frowned. “I’ve had plenty of time to watch the two of you, thanks to your memories, and I don’t think she’s been all right in a while. And don’t get me started on Delia.” He shook his head, and added after a moment’s pause, “We’re going to have to protect your family. If I won’t touch you, They’re going to try to come at you any way they can.”

  I imagined trying to coax Mom into wearing iron jewelry. Or trying to have an intelligent conversation with Dad about faeries. And Delia—well, she could fend for herself. Maybe I could use Delia as a decoy.

  Luke laughed when he saw my face. “I think we have to find out what Granna was working on before They got to her.”

  I sobered, remembering that Granna was lying in a hospital while we were laughing. “Will the doctors be able to fix her? Do you know how to fix her?”

  Luke shrugged and shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. Some of Them might know, but it’s not as if I can just call Them up. Even if I could, I don’t know if I’d want to. Even the best of Them aren’t exactly safe.”

  “They aren’t all like Eleanor and Freckle Freak?”

  “Freckle Freak?”

  “He was at the reception. And again, at Dave’s Ice.”

  Luke frowned, remembering. “Aodhan. That’s his name.” His eyes narrowed further. “He was at Dave’s?”

  “James bitch-slapped him with a fireplace shovel.” That reminded me of something else I wanted to say. “I think James is jealous of you.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “You think?” He lifted his flute as if he were going to play it, and then rested it on his knees again. “He’s known you for years, Dee. He had plenty of chances, and he blew it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t worried about it, then?”