“What did you say, exactly?”
“I told him he could search all of Faerie and he’d never find you. I only meant to mock him—”
“Oh, Illya.”
How could this have happened? It could expose my plans to the Dark Lady. Worse, Naeve could find me.
He could find Taylor.
I had to get out of here.
“Where is Naeve now?” I demanded.
“Hovering on the border of the wasteland. It seems, for the moment, he dares not cross.”
“He’s reached the border?” I gasped. “Why did you not warn me?”
“I dared not believe it until now. He never spoke of his intentions. I followed him.” Illya paused. “I’ve been stealthy.”
I smiled in spite of the fact that my heart was breaking. All this time, I’d known I had to leave. But a part of me had searched for a way to stay.
To be with the boy I could never have.
The boy I should not want.
“You have done your duty to me,” I told her, fighting to keep from breaking down. I had to return to my old life and my old ways. No one could see my emotions. “Return to the Dark Court—”
“I will not return until I know that you are safe from him.”
“I will be fine,” I said. “I’ve solved the riddle. I know why the cruelest kind of human is perfect for light.”
“Why?”
“Because the Bright Queen actually cares for humanity, and she’d only feel justified stealing someone humanity wouldn’t miss. Someone whose absence would help the human world.”
“Oh, Lady, it’s brilliant,” Illya breathed, and I wanted to smile. But I couldn’t. There was something about my conclusion that bothered me, some little voice whispering in the back of my mind. Telling me I’d missed something.
I pushed it away. “I will return tomorrow night—”
“He could find you by then! Let me follow him until … ”
Silence.
“Illya? Are you there?”
“He comes for me.”
“What? How—”
“If I should fall, do not forget me.”
“Don’t speak of it! Please—” The word stuck in my throat. On the other side of the line, I heard scrambling. Then, a cry that was quick to die out.
I bit my knuckle to silence my scream.
Illya. Say something.
But only silence greeted me. I pressed the phone against my ear.
Still nothing.
The line went dead. When the telephone slipped from my hand, I did not try to catch it.
–––––
Rain poured over me, plastering my hair to my shoulders like a blood-drenched cape. I grasped my thighs with my hands, losing myself in the cold viciousness, the feeling of the shaking tree. Night fell faster than rain, the sky darkening to blue, then fluid indigo, then black.
The stars were slow to arrive.
Lightning flashed, exposing the belly of the sky. The air felt charged. Still I waited, eyes closed, shaking in the center of it all.
A voice bellowed from below, fighting against the roar of the rain. “Come down!”
Taylor’s face appeared at the bottom of the tree. The rain flung itself callously into his eyes and nose, trying to choke and to blind, but he refused to lower his gaze. His voice was laced with despair. “Please come down.”
He reached for the lowest branch and faltered. “Please don’t fall.” Lightning illuminated the terrified look on his face.
“Hold on.” Dropping easily to the next branch, I guided myself down. I had to be careful not to open the cut on my arm. But when I reached the tree’s midpoint, I stopped. Staring down at the ground, at the mortal bending down to pick up a small black object, I wondered if I really wasn’t safer in the tree.
“I think I broke my phone,” I called, opening my hands as if to say Sorry. I would not let him see the anguish that surged inside of me. What good would it do, to let him closer to me?
“You’re so weird,” he yelled back.
I climbed down the trunk a few feet. “Thank you.”
“I mean it.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “You do the weirdest things all the time, and then you say something so freakishly normal. I don’t know what to think of you.” He put the phone in his pocket as I stepped onto a lower branch.
“So don’t think of me.”
“I have to.” He lifted his arms as if to catch me.
I let myself hang from the last branch. “Please.”
Standing on his toes, Taylor wrapped his arms around my waist. I slid into his embrace.
“I have to,” he said again. “Don’t you understand that?”
“I do.” I ran my hands up his arms, feeling the tiny hairs rising. I wanted to sink into him, desperately. To let him comfort me.
I took a step away.
He pulled me back. “I don’t even care,” he said, lips close to my neck, “what we do. Or don’t do. I just need to know if this is real, or if … ”
“What?”
“It’s just a game, like with Brad.”
The words cut into me like thorns. “Do you think it’s a game?”
“I don’t know.” He turned away. “All I know is that you were scary today.”
“I was just fooling around. How could that scare you?”
“Because you’ve looked at me that way! And I believed it. God—” He took his hair in his hands. I placed my hands over them, pulling them down to a safer place.
“I am not playing you,” I said. “I might have thought of it when we first met, but I learned quickly I did not need to. You’re a good person, Taylor. I only hide around those who would hurt me.”
He waited a beat. “Then you feel the way I do?”
“I can’t … say.”
“Why not?”
“You would not understand.” I tried to evade his hand, but it found my cheek anyway. Sliding it down, he cupped my neck, holding me close. “Taylor, please.”
“Explain it to me.” His lips brushed my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine.
“All my life, I have been taught that this”—I gestured between us—“is wrong. That it goes against my nature. And now, after years and years of this belief, I come face to face with this supposed abomination, only to find it the most beautiful, joyful … natural thing in the world.”
He looked at me, unblinking, as rain fell from his lashes.
I lifted my fingers to his cheek. “Now I must choose between two conclusions. Either my mind has been corrupted by this world I’ve entered into, or else, all this time, this thing I believed to be true is in fact a lie.”
“Would that be so terrible?” His voice was soft as he moved his hands to my hips.
I followed his movements with my eyes, disbelieving the joy his fingers brought. I wanted to feel them everywhere, all over me, now. It scared me how much I wanted him.
“I have left so many of my beliefs behind,” I said, giving him the best explanation I could. “I don’t know how much more I can leave.”
After all, it had been difficult enough to accept that the forces governing Faerie did not have my best interests in mind. To believe I could be with a human would rip apart the very bindings of my existence. It would jeopardize my belief in everything: my life, my people.
Myself.
Taylor waited a minute before speaking. “I won’t ask you to leave anything else behind. But if you need me … ” He trailed off, his hands playing with the hem of my shirt.
I leaned in, wanting his fingers to slip beneath the fabric. “I need you.”
“You have me.”
“But not for long.”
His eyes closed, hands gripping at my hips. Pulling me into him without even trying. “You can’t leave.�
�
“I have to, Taylor. I have to.”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
When he looked at me, I was startled by the clarity in his eyes. “You haven’t told me the ending of the story.”
–––––
Taylor curled beside me like a wolf snuggling with his pack. A fluffy blanket came up to our waists. His hair was starting to dry, though mine still hung tangled and wet, and he adjusted the towel on my pillow.
Just like that, he was leaning over me. “What happened to your arm?”
“My arm? Oh.” I looked down, my gaze drawn to the place where the tree had tugged at my skin. Immediately, I regretted changing into his oversized T-shirt. It left my arms exposed, and now he could see me.
In spite of everything, I still feared showing vulnerability in front of him.
“The Lady vs. the Tree,” I said, trying to pretend that everything was fine. Trying to pretend my world wasn’t turning on its head. “The tree won.”
“Can I see?”
“All right.” I shifted stiffly. I wasn’t sure what he would do once I presented him with my arm. The cut was mostly clean; the rain had taken care of that. Now only a thin red line remained.
“Mmm,” he said, holding the arm delicately. “It’s not too bad. Does it sting?”
I shook my head, waiting for him to give the arm back. But he did something quite curious instead. Lifting the arm to his lips, he pressed a light, solemn kiss upon my skin. My breath fluttered in my chest. There was a holiness to the movement. A ritual aspect. He was using kindness to heal me.
Maybe, even love.
“Thank you,” I whispered, barely able to speak.
He nodded, looking away in that shy way of his. “We could bandage it,” he said after a long moment.
“That shouldn’t be necessary. I tend to heal quickly.”
More quickly than you would think.
He nodded again, settling into his pillow.
“Would you like to hear the next part of my story?”
Taylor trailed his nose along my cheek. He must have known, by now, the things we were forbidden to do. But he knew, too, that if he didn’t push too hard, I wouldn’t push him away.
“Every part of it,” he said.
I smiled at that. “The trap was set. The Dark Lady and her courtiers were being waited on by creatures who couldn’t wait to wring their necks. All the princess had to do was say the word. But she didn’t say anything, not then, for she feared they had neglected an important aspect of their rebellion.”
“What was it?” Taylor asked, his breath warm on my skin.
I turned to face him, to center myself, but the look in his eyes did nothing to calm me. “The Dark Lady was more powerful than any of them,” I said. “Oh, it pained the princess to admit it. She wished, more than anything, that she could stand against her mother and win. But even the most powerful young thing would be a fool to take on a thousand-year-old being, let alone one who had lived for millennia. On the best of days, the Dark Lady could lay waste to a third of the rebels before they defeated her. The princess wouldn’t stand for it.”
“What other choice did she have?” Taylor asked, watching me so intently it made my heart sit up and beg. “The members of their army knew what they were getting into, didn’t they?”
“They did. But the princess could not stand the thought of losing so many lives. She needed to find something else, or someone else, who could stand against the Dark Lady and win. She needed—”
“The Seelie Queen.”
“Clever boy.” I tapped his nose and he bit the air in front of it. “Beautiful, kind Taylor, why do you put up with me? I come here in a whirlwind, offer you nary but a story, and turn your life on its head.”
“I would do it again,” he said, apparently unfazed by the shift in conversation. “I would do it a thousand times.” He scooted closer and I linked my leg through his, pulling it over me. Then we were intertwined, though still not touching with lips or hands. Such things had to be given with permission, and he knew it.
“I shouldn’t have brought you into any of this,” I said, my words working in opposition to my hands. They went to his head, twining in his hair. “I should have done everything to protect you, the way you have done for me.”
I should be leaving, right now, this minute. But I couldn’t break away from him. I needed him.
“I don’t need protection,” he said. “I need adventure.”
I shook my head. “You have no idea the trouble it brings.”
“I want it,” he said, and then he was over me. His head dipped to meet me, hovering just over my lips. Noses touching. Tasting each other’s breath. I could feel his body responding to me. I needn’t have ever been intimate to recognize the way it felt, and I parted my legs to wrap around him.
It was wrong. Unnatural. Wrong. But I couldn’t stop it. My hands dug into his hair, pulling him down, down, closer to my face, and then he nipped at my lips with his own. I nipped back.
Nothing serious, I told myself. Nothing dangerous.
But oh, the taste of his lips! And the smell of him. I wanted to feel his breath pushing into my mouth, all of him, pushing into me. I arched my back.
“Please don’t go,” he whispered, lips dipping to find mine.
I turned my head. “Now, or otherwise?”
He trailed his lips across my cheek, following me. “Ever,” he said, and a shudder ripped through me. “Please don’t go, ever. Please don’t leave me.”
“I have to go.”
“Then take me with you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Up until then, I could almost have pretended this was a game. But now I sat up, pushing him off me, just enough.
“Why not?” he said, though I hadn’t told him no with words.
“You can’t—” My stomach tightened, forcing out a laugh, though it was the last sound I wanted to make. “You can’t come with me. I just said I have to protect you.”
He shook his head, rising on his knees to meet me. “That’s not how it works.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I protect you.”
“How very archaic,” I drawled, hoping to anger him. Anything to pull him away from me. “How very civilized. How very … ”
Human.
It wasn’t a fair accusation. My mother had witnessed, firsthand, a time in history when men didn’t control women under the guise of protection. But that wouldn’t make sense to him, and it did little good for me, either. After all, I wanted to protect him.
Why shouldn’t we be equals, protecting each other?
“Let me finish the story,” I said.
“Fine.” He pulled away from me, letting the cold move in.
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t sleep next to you,” he said, sliding off the bed.
“Why not?” I asked, suddenly angry. The thought of being without him tonight opened a chasm inside of me. “Are you such a slave to your impulses that you can’t be near me without having me completely?”
“It’s not about that!” He spun around, and the anguish in his voice astonished me. “It has nothing to do with that. Don’t you realize how you make me feel?”
“Taylor.”
“Stop. I don’t need to hear why you can’t be with me again. I don’t need to hear you reject me over and over again. I get it.”
“All right. I’m sorry.” I could not tell him that my coldness was not intended to be a rejection. I could not tell him that the very reason I pushed him away so hard was because I cared about him. “But Taylor?”
“What?” He stood halfway across the room, facing the wall, but I could still see the side of his face.
“What if tonight were the only night we could lie together?”
He closed his eyes. “Don’
t say it.”
“I haven’t said anything, not plainly.”
“You’ve said enough. Why are you going back?”
“I have to.”
“Why now?”
“Because I’ve learned what I needed to learn,” I said carefully. “Now I can face them. Possibly defeat them.”
“Alone?”
“I need you to let it go. I’m here now, and that’s all I can offer. And if you would have me, as I can give … ”
He didn’t think about it. He moved so fast, he couldn’t possibly have had time to think. But when he lay upon the bed, he kept his distance, facing away from me. He waited for me to come to him.
“All right,” he said as I curled into him, “tell me the rest.” His voice was sullen, but he molded his body to mine the moment we touched. I slid my hand up to his chest and he held it close to his heart.
“Please don’t hate me,” I said, murmuring close to his ear. He said nothing. I sighed. “The princess traveled to the Seelie Court and sought an audience with the Bright Queen.”
I paused, waiting for the back-and-forth I’d come to expect. He didn’t disappoint me. After a quiet minute, he said, “Why would the Queen help her?”
I held him tighter. “The princess was offering the one thing the Bright Queen wanted: the destruction of the Dark Court.”
“But wouldn’t the Bright Court still reign? Their Queen could seize control—”
“Ah, the princess thought of that as well. Really, the destruction of both courts had been necessary all along. But it was not until this point that she knew how to destroy them. Thus, she offered to take down the Dark Court herself, if the Bright Queen agreed to disband her own court in response. She let the Queen point out that the Dark Lady was too powerful for the princess to defeat. She let the Queen offer to bind the Dark Lady herself.”
“Brilliant.”
I blushed, wishing more than ever that I could kiss him.
Who am I kidding?
I wanted to do much more than kiss, and he was willing. But soon, I would be out of this place, and these unnatural feelings would leave me.
They had to.
“So the Bright Queen just agreed?” Taylor asked, wholly unaware of the places my thoughts had traveled to.
The Last Changeling Page 17
