by Sierra Dean
Once again my breath was robbed from me, as the icy grip of the water started to drag us both down. I kicked off him, but he grabbed my leg and held firm. He was sinking, and he knew it, but it seemed he was willing to die if it meant bringing me down with him.
I squirmed and thrashed, but he wouldn’t let go.
Just as I inhaled a mouthful of cold, murky water, the whole of the pond was engulfed in a purple-white light.
One minute I was underwater.
The next I was nowhere at all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There’s a big difference between what happens when people say “time stood still” and what actually happens when time stands still. It might not seem like an important distinction, because for most people, they’ll never experience the literal version, but once you know the difference, the phrase itself becomes pretty silly.
Time had stopped, and I was everywhere and nowhere.
I was in a room constructed of white noise and light, and since it had no boundaries, I was neither sitting nor standing. I was suspended, trapped between one reality and another.
It felt like passing between my world and Calliope’s. There was a space between where nothing made sense and things felt completely different. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be trapped, yet here I was, floating in it, with no idea of how to move forward or back.
Then, just as I’d wished to be free of it, I was.
I was back on the pond, but instead of drowning, I was sitting cross-legged on the surface of the water. The liquid was as still as glass, and around me everything was frozen in time. Below me I could make out Bill, his face bloated and purple, yet he didn’t move at all. The fire on the horizon didn’t flicker or dance; it was stuck in place like a photograph or a film on pause.
Like a creature built of smoke and mystery, he appeared. One minute I was alone, and the next I was looking up at the solid form of Aubrey Delacourte, King of the Fairies.
“Princess. Fancy meeting you here.”
I glanced around us and raised both eyebrows at him. Pointing out the absurdity of his statement seemed unnecessary considering we were both resting on water without falling through, and last I checked, neither of us was Jesus.
“I get the feeling this isn’t a chance encounter,” I responded, feeling the need to say something.
“Your assumption would be correct.” He offered me a hand and drew me up to my feet effortlessly. “I believe you’ve been avoiding me.”
We walked side by side off the pond and back to the shore. The ground didn’t feel quite the same, like I was floating just above it rather than walking across it. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but I’ve been a little busy.” I gestured to the frozen tableau of the burning city, in case he thought I was making up excuses. This was hardly an example of the dog ate my homework.
“You mortals are a constant amusement to me. Thinking things like this matter. So the city burns? A new one will rise out of the ashes, more daring and monstrous than the one before. Why should I care if this one is crumbling? Why should you?”
“Would you care if your kingdom was set on fire?”
“That would never happen.”
“Humor me.”
“All right. Yes, I suppose it would upset me.”
We’d wandered some distance from the pond until we were standing in the middle of the empty Great Lawn, with the bright orange light of the flames acting as a substitute sunrise. It was almost beautiful like this, like a painting of a great tragedy one might call a masterpiece.
“Well, this is my kingdom,” I explained.
He gazed up at the skyline where the buildings were mere black silhouettes against the blaze. “Some kingdom.”
“I might not have a glittery castle like some people, but this is mine. It’s my home, these are my people, and I won’t let it fall while I’m here to stop it.”
“You can barely protect yourself. How are you going to protect all this?”
I stared at him, taking a rare opportunity to steal an unguarded look at his face. Aubrey was a strange fellow. He was the only full-blooded fairy I knew, aside from Kellen’s husband, Brokk, and whenever I saw him, I was caught off-guard by his appearance. He should be too beautiful to be considered masculine. His cheek and jawbones were so precise and sharp they could probably cut diamond. And in profile, he had the face of a Greek god. His dark, curly hair was longer than might be commonly thought fashionable on a man, but he made it work. If anything, he looked like he’d staggered out of the pages of a sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel, as the prototypical elf character.
He noticed me watching him and smiled. “Keep staring, Princess, and I might be flattered.”
“Like your ego is small enough to require flattery.”
He grinned, and toothpaste models everywhere were put to shame. His teeth were bright white and gloriously straight. Under different circumstances I might have smiled back, but I wasn’t in much of a mood for playful flirtation. Not even with a fairy king.
“Do you know what I’m doing here?” he asked.
“Gonna go out on a limb and say you’ve come to collect on the debt I owe you.”
“You would think so, maybe. But the truth is I’ve come to strike a bargain with you.”
I pivoted towards him, trying to glean some kind of explanation from his face, but all I got from looking at him was a star-struck sense of his beauty. Stupid pretty man, distracting me. For all I knew we’d been here for days in Earth time, and a million different things might be happening to my friends while I stood here and stared at Aubrey’s face.
“What kind of bargain?”
“I think you need my help.”
I’d considered him a potential asset earlier, but I was hesitant to latch on to his hinted offer too quickly. Nothing came free with the fae. A promise was more than just a promise to them, it was an ironclad agreement. If I let Aubrey offer his assistance, it would come at a cost. I already owed him, and who knew what pound of flesh he’d ask for? One favor was too much. Two would be impossible.
“You’re going to save the city?”
“I’ll help you save the city. I don’t muddy my hands with bloody disputes. It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to fight for anything, and I don’t plan on changing that tonight. But this is important to you.”
“Since when have you cared about what’s important to others?”
“I think keeping you happy is in my best interests.”
Something about his statement sent my internal alarms firing, and I knew I ought to be wary of anything I said to him going forward. He definitely wanted something, but I wasn’t sure it was something I’d be able to give him. I knew it wouldn’t be something I wanted to give.
“Why do you want to keep me happy?”
“Perhaps happy is the wrong word. But I feel assisting you in this endeavor is my best opportunity to get what I need from you. In case you were unaware, love, you’re no good to me dead. Death is the only true end to a debt.”
Delightful.
“So what do you propose?”
“You don’t have the power to win back this city. Not on your own. Even if you manage to topple the power of the necromancers, which I believe you have grossly underestimated, you will still be the champion of a defeated city. You will be queen of the ruins.”
“Okay…” I still wasn’t sure if he was offering to help or was telling me the situation was hopeless.
“I will help you, on one condition.”
“Of course there are conditions.”
“Nothing in life comes without them. Not even love is unconditional, no matter what the poets try to tell you.”
“Ever the romantic, I see.”
Aubrey smiled stiffly. “You do nothing to understand me, yet pretend to know me. That’s a dangerous game to play. Yet I can see through you with no effort. Right down to the core of you.”
I looked away from him and back to the frozen skyline. I didn’t like the id
ea of anyone seeing that much of me, especially someone I trusted as little as I did Aubrey. But if he claimed to know me, it was difficult to imagine him lying. Fairies didn’t lie. They couldn’t. They could bend the truth masterfully to make it suit their needs, but they never outright lied.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“I see a damaged girl. Someone who has been broken apart and put back together again. Tell me, Secret, have you heard the term kintsukuroi?”
“My Japanese is a little rusty.”
“In Japan, there is a custom. When a piece of pottery is broken, it is put back together, but the cracks are fused with gold. They do not attempt to hide or diminish where the item was broken, but rather draw attention to it. Kintsukuroi means that something is more beautiful for having been broken.”
My lower lip trembled, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek to keep from letting the emotion show.
Of all the things people had told me after my time with The Doctor…with Kesteral…most of them were iterations on you’ll be okay. There was a steadfast belief from others I would be able heal and move on somehow. And when that proved not to be the case, they started treating me like I was a fragile thing, always on the verge of falling to pieces.
For Aubrey to be the only one who knew precisely what I needed to hear was stunning to me. His words shook me to my core because they were simple and elegant, yet healing somehow. They sank right into my soul, my poor damaged soul, and for the first time since leaving California, I didn’t feel like a lesser version of myself.
He offered me the gold to bind my own fractured pieces.
“Thank you.” My voice was hushed, but in the total stillness of our frozen moment, I had no doubt he heard me.
“I told you. I see you.”
And so he did.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aubrey and I moved back towards the castle, and a companionable silence I hadn’t thought possible fell between us. He still hadn’t told me what he wanted from me or what he was willing to offer in return, but for a minute or two I didn’t want to ask.
We crossed a place in the grass, and a pang of remembrance clawed at me. Like a hazily remembered dream I pictured myself, many years younger and more naïve, running across this same lawn and chasing a pretty blonde girl in her broken high heels.
How much was changed and set into motion that night, when I first saved Brigit from a vampire but condemned her to something much worse than death? That was the night I’d met Desmond and Lucas, the night my life really started. And now I was back here again.
If I had it all to do again, knowing what would happen, would I do it the same? Would I save her and set those dominos falling in the same order?
Of course I would.
I only wished I could have protected her when it really mattered.
But now I had the opportunity to save everyone. To restore the city, or at least keep it from further destruction. And if there was anything that would allow me to bring down Marcela and her gang and give life back to New York, I would do it. Regardless of what Aubrey asked for in return.
No doubt his price would be steep, but some things were worth the cost.
Moving beyond the scenes of my past, we reached the edge of the pond again. I stared up at the top observation deck and saw Holden and Desmond frozen in a tableau, gazing down in horror to the place where I’d hit the water.
Time wasn’t moving faster, like it did in Aubrey’s kingdom.
“You’ve stopped it,” I observed.
“Not stopped, no. But slowed it quite considerably.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do a great many things.”
“So help me.”
“Don’t you want to hear my terms? You should know better than to demand help from a fairy without knowing what they want first.” He clucked his tongue at me.
“Whatever it is, it’ll be worth it. As long as you demand it from me and no one else. I can’t give you what isn’t mine to give.” I remembered the last time he’d demanded a price from me he’d tried to make me choose between Holden and Desmond. I wasn’t about to let him paint me into an impossible corner again. I might not be able to talk my way out of it a second time.
“Clever girl. Come, let’s get you back to your champions. We’ll talk as we go.” He led me around the shoreline towards the castle entrance. “What I want from you is twofold, and you must agree to both parts or else I cannot help you.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“What do the whys and wherefores matter, hmm? If you do not agree, you won’t get help. It’s as simple as that.”
Simple was not a word I’d choose to apply to Aubrey or what he did, but it seemed pretty cut-and-dry this time around. If I agreed to give him what he wanted, I’d get fairy aid. If I shot him down, I got squat.
“What do you want?”
“First let me tell you what I’m offering, because I think it’s important you know what you’re agreeing to.”
“Fine.”
“I will give you my power for one night.”
I stopped walking and almost tripped over my own feet. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I will allow you to function as an extension of myself for one night, tonight, and only then. You will be able to do everything I can do with no limits or exceptions. For all intents and purposes, you will become me, though you will maintain your pretty self, and your thoughts will all be your own. I can’t imagine you’d want to think like me.” He winked.
“Why would you do that?”
“You are interesting to me, Secret. You’ve long been interesting to my sister, and I’ve been paying careful attention to you since our last encounter. You have a nobility in you I rarely encounter in mortals. And you’re clever. Not clever enough to outsmart me, mind, but smart enough to equal me from time to time. Seeing you in this situation has been intriguing, and I’d like to see you play it out. But as you are, you cannot. You will die. And that’s not how I want to see you go out.”
I was still too stunned to understand the full extent of what he was offering. I didn’t even know what a fairy king was capable of. The outer limits of his power were a complete mystery to me. His magic would certainly let me obliterate the remaining necromancers, but what else? Could I restore the city?
Could I bring the dead back to life?
My pulse tripped and picked up pace. The possibilities lying in front of me were too exciting to fathom. With the control of time, could I reverse what had happened already?
With my hands trembling and my mind spinning, I started walking with him again.
Of course I would agree to this. I’d be a fool not to. What price could he ask that would be too high? There was nothing. The gift he was offering was invaluable, so whatever he asked for I would give him. I made up my mind without thinking of all the manipulative and wicked things he’d done to me in the past. He was a master of finding a person’s greatest desire and using it to his own advantage. Was he doing that to me now? Absolutely.
Except it didn’t matter.
He wasn’t playing a game with me and toying with my emotional or sexual desires as he’d done in the past. Now he had found something I wanted more than sex, love or humanity. He was offering me the lives and freedom of millions. That was so much bigger than me.
“What do I have to give you?”
We had almost reached the stairs into the castle, and he offered me a hand to help me over Parker’s fallen body.
“You must know a power this great doesn’t come without cost. You will begin to lose control of it rather quickly. Though you’re a strong woman, even you cannot wield it without giving up a part of yourself. The longer you use it, the more it will take.”
“That’s fine.”
“Understand what you’re agreeing to. By the time the sun breaks over the horizon, there will be little left of what you once were. You begged me in the past to restore your monsters to you, but this will gobble
up all that makes you special.”
He was going to take my vampire and werewolf from me, as he once had. I’d been left human then, but I was still me, even without the two halves of myself. If he was saying I’d be human at the end of this, it was a price I was definitely willing to pay.
“Fine. Take it. I don’t need it.”
“No, you won’t.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s the second part?”
“I want your pretty sword.”
My hand went to the handle, and I withdrew it from its scabbard. The weapon felt light and warm in my hand, something I’d come to think of as an extension of myself. The sword and I had been to hell and back together, and she’d saved my life countless times.
“Take it.”
He shook his head. “I cannot. Not as it is. You’ve tainted it, poisoned it with the blood of the dead. But beneath the curse you’ve put on it, there is still a wondrous item, and I want to bring it back among its people. You will need to restore it.”
“Okay. How?”
“There is but one way to give a blade like this a new lease on life. And it will only work once all your vampire power has been leached from you.”
I clutched the handle and pointed the blade to the ground. “Which is?”
“The filth you’ve coated that sword in, it’s not of the sword’s doing. The sin is all yours. And if you are going to restore the sword, you must purge your sin from it.”
“How?”
“Tonight, after you’ve saved your city and my power has left you, the sword must be cleansed. And it can only be cleansed by the blood of its master.”
My breath hitched up, and my immediate instinct was to cut off his head and take my chances with the necros on my own. I didn’t need his help this badly, did I?
For clarity’s sake, I asked, “Just some of my blood?”
He shook his head. “Tonight, as darkness fades to day, you must bleed out your life on the sword. If you want my help…you’re going to have to die for it.”
