We were stuck.
“Please,” I begged, though I hated to say it. Would the light be brighter beneath those glowing leaves? Would it hurt her?
I started to panic, trying to figure out how possible it would be to carry Elora from the horse onto the branches. Never mind that between Aaron’s accident and the oak in the cemetery, the branches of a tree were the last place I wanted to be. If it was my only choice, I would take it. I would risk my own death to save her.
I reached out for the nearest branch.
“Ouch!” the branch squealed, peeling away.
Great. The trees can talk here.
And the branch had bent in an entirely unbranchlike fashion. It moved like an arm.
“Show yourself,” Kylie said, coming up beside us on the other horse. Keegan sat behind her, and Brad, dazed and useless, was strapped to Keegan with a vine.
The branches shook like they were snickering.
“Please help us,” I said. “Please. She’s dying. I’ll do anything.”
“Ooh. You said the magic words,” trilled a voice close to my ear.
I turned my head.
There, sitting on a branch, was a girl who wasn’t a girl. Her skin was the color of bark and leaves grew out of her head like hair. She had teeth like sharpened twigs, and when she grinned, I thought she might eat me.
She peeled herself away from the branch that had appeared to be a part of her.
The horses snorted and reared back, but now more creatures were slinking out of the holes in the tree and crawling out from between the branches. Creatures who didn’t bother with clothes, who had hair like vines or knotted branches or brambles. Without a word, they took Elora out of my arms. Others circled Brad, whispering about “the mortal offering” with his horse.
I’ll deal with that later.
The faeries led us down the tree, but they wouldn’t let my friends into the space where the doe had gone. They only let me, probably because I’d offered to give up anything to help Elora. Now the light was so bright I wanted to sew my eyelids shut. I couldn’t see anything, but using my hands, I found my way to the place where they’d laid Elora on the ground. I heard them disappear back into the tree, or into their glamour, or wherever they went to spy on visitors.
“Where are you?” I said, blinking as if my eyes could ever get used to this brightness. “I can’t see—”
Then, just like that, it was gone. It felt like all the light had been sucked out of the room, and in its place, black spots loomed over everything. I was defenseless. Anyone could have come at me. I understood, in that moment, the brilliance of the Bright Queen’s power. People could use whatever weapons they wanted, but if they were accustomed to sight, they would be useless the minute it was taken away.
And I felt useless. Maybe that was the idea. But I would still protect Elora with my life.
I draped myself over her, trying my best not to touch any of her wounds.
“Show yourself,” I said softly, imitating Kylie.
Laughter filtered over me like light, and behind the black spots I could make out flashes of the doe’s body. Then, before my sight fully returned, the doe began to change. But unlike Naeve in the cemetery, her body did not melt away. Rather, it grew, until a creature three times my size towered over me. She was frightening but beautiful, soft but strong. She was everything I expected, and nothing I could have imagined.
“Your Grace.” I bowed my head. It hurt to look away from her, from skin that was the color of earth and eyes that were so like mine, but brighter, almost blinding. She’d bound her body in a gown of glowing green, and the tops of her breasts spilled out over the top, but any sexuality was cancelled out by the feeling that I was looking at my true mother.
The mother of everyone on earth.
“Take heart, child,” she said in a gentle voice, “And look at me.”
I did. But suddenly that light was back, and I threw my arm across my face.
“Forgive me, young one.” Her laughter trickled over me. “An old joke.”
“Hilarious.” I struggled against the brightness.
“I thought it would be,” said the Bright Queen. “Now, give an old woman some room.”
Her words seemed to amuse her. Another joke? Sure, she was ancient, but she looked everlasting. Leaves and vines grew out of her hair, green to match the forest, and her lips were stained like she’d been eating berries.
I hope they were berries.
I gave her the room she asked for, but only a little. Elora lay in the grass, curled up in a fetal position, her chest barely rising and falling with each breath.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said.
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.” The Queen’s skirt billowed around her as she knelt, trailing a hand across Elora’s forehead. It should have been a soothing movement, but her nails were long, like sharpened knives, and I thought I saw the thinnest trail of blood.
“I understand,” I said, only partially lying. “What would you ask in return?”
“A simple token of your loyalty.” She touched her bloody finger to the earth and a drop of water sprang up. Soon there was a pool there, sinking into Elora’s clothes. Washing the blood from her skin.
“Just a little, to draw out the poison,” said the Queen. “Blood holds such power.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked, horrified at the possibility of Elora bleeding out right in front of me. But the Queen wouldn’t let that happen. She hadn’t invited us in here just to murder the daughter of the Dark Lady.
My heart started to pound.
“I can give you—”
“Your blood?” she asked. “Oh, Brightness, no. As you can see, I have plenty of blood.”
She gestured to the pool, where the water had turned from crystalline blue to magenta.
My heart screamed for relief, but I couldn’t backtrack now. Whatever the Queen was planning, I had to try to save Elora. I had to believe it was a possibility.
“Let me make this clear,” I said as Elora’s breathing softened. “And I say this knowing full well it’s a foolish thing to offer. But I would give you anything to save her. Whatever you want for her life, just ask.”
The Queen’s smile grew so big it almost eclipsed her face. Sharp teeth slipped out from between her lips. I wondered, in that instant, if her lips were dark because her teeth were constantly cutting into them. What would happen to a person who’d spent centuries in that kind of pain?
“I’m at your mercy,” I said, in spite of the danger. “I’ll do anything so that she can live.”
“Isn’t that sweet? But I would only ask for a very small offering. And, after you give it, you get to keep it.”
Another riddle?
“Tell me,” I said, creeping right up to danger and calling out to it. Even kneeling, the Bright Queen could crush me in an instant. Her light could burn me up.
Turn me to ash.
“I ask only one thing,” she said to me. “A name.”
I looked down at Elora. The bloody water was sinking away now, crawling back into the ground. “I don’t know her full name.” I cradled Elora’s head in my lap. She was still breathing, but it was even harder to detect.
“I’m not asking for her name,” said the Queen.
“You want my name?”
Elora sighed, and my heart leapt. My body started buzzing. But maybe it was a warning of some kind.
“You just want my name?” I repeated.
“A simple token.”
It’s a trick.
I don’t know if the words came from me or from somewhere else. Holding Elora in my lap, I could feel her energy. Maybe I was tuned in to her thoughts somehow; I didn’t understand how I could intuit such a thing about the Queen on my own. Then again, maybe a part of me was remembering Elora’s story.<
br />
What did she say about names?
It didn’t matter. I would give the Queen my life if it meant saving Elora’s. “My name is Taylor—”
Elora’s lips parted, and I leaned in. Was she trying to tell me something about giving away a name? After all, she’d only given me her first name, and that had taken weeks.
It doesn’t matter.
“Taylor Christopher—”
This time, Elora shook a little, and moaned as if in the throes of a nightmare.
Don’t give up your name, warned a voice inside my head. Names are power. Giving a name is giving up power.
I looked down at her one last time. She was so pale, she looked like she’d never be warm again.
“Remember that first night in my bedroom?” I whispered. “When you promised me my heart’s greatest desire? My desire is you, safe and alive. That’s the only thing I want.”
I lifted my head. “Taylor Christopher Alder.”
31
ElorA
Back in the human world, my heart had made a promise before the rest of me knew what I wanted. The promise had been foolish; the boy could have asked for anything. And after I said it, I was certain I would be harmed by it.
I was right.
The light from the Bright Queen’s bower was so bright that it reached into the land of the dead. It bled into the darkness and, as light will, obliterated it.
Everything was revealed then.
I saw the universe. I saw the nearly infinite number of spirits. But I did not see Taylor, the boy whose greatest desire I had pledged to give. And before I even decided to keep my promise, my heart knew that I was choosing him.
So I did.
My spirit slammed back into my body so hard I forgot how to breathe. The poison still swam in my veins, but it was different now. The knives and claws of it had been replaced by needles, tiny and only scraping my skin. I knew then that I could withstand the pain.
I felt Taylor holding my hand.
Love flowed into me as light did. The Bright Queen and Taylor—together, they healed me. Together, we make our way from pain to peace.
Only, always, together.
Taylor leaned over me, fingers touching me so lightly, like feathers. Like wings.
His voice drifted into my ear. “I’m here,” he said.
I opened my eyes to him; they struggled against the brightness.
I opened my lips. “Kiss me.”
He did. Lips warm and soft. Breath rushing into me.
“You saved me,” I murmured, remembering how to breathe. I was as a newborn again, and I hadn’t even been born that long ago.
Who else can say that?
“Who would have thought it—the mortal saving the faerie?” said a rich, pleasant voice. A voice I had only heard once before.
“Lady,” I breathed, looking to the back of the bower. “My deepest appreciation … ” I fell silent. The Queen’s magic danced in my veins, drugging me gently, blotting out the worst of the pain. Blotting out the memory of all that had happened to me.
The Queen glared down at me as if I were a naughty child.
Bad Elora.
A giggle escaped my lips.
“I did not do this for you,” said the Queen, as the trees bent down to whisper in her ear. “You have disappointed me. You failed to complete your end of the bargain.”
“Failed?” I mumbled. “But I brought … ” I glanced around the bower, half expecting to see Brad tied to a tree, vines circling his wrists and flowers in his hair.
“I’m sending him back.”
“What?” I tried to sit up.
“Relax.” Taylor brushed his lips against my cheek. It felt so amazing—every touch, a quiet ecstasy—that I wanted to climb over him right then and there.
Rein it in.
“I did not want something spoiled and rotten,” said the Queen as I fought to collect myself. “You knew that. You must have known that.”
“But … the riddle.”
It was Taylor who answered me. “I think I understand.”
I looked up at him, and saw that he looked perfectly at home. His golden hair was adorned in leaves. Light curled around his limbs, clinging possessively. Did he even know it was there?
“You thought bane of the darkness meant the most horrible human,” he said.
Well. Obviously.
“So you twisted the meaning of perfect for light to mean someone the human world wouldn’t miss. Someone like Brad.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t twist … ”
Did I?
I could hardly remember it. Wait, there it was, flitting in front of me.
Catch it, Elora. Catch it!
I reached out my hand.
Gotcha.
“Perfect for light meant a perfect, mindless toy,” I said slowly, as if relearning to use my lips. “Someone she wouldn’t feel guilty about keeping.”
“Look at it the other way around.” Taylor’s eyes never left my face. His hands stayed in constant motion, stroking my hair.
What a sweet devotee. Perfect for light?
No. Perfect for me.
“Perfect for light means the best kind of human,” he said. “The kind that proves the Seelie Court right about humanity. And the riddle didn’t say ‘horrible for the darkness.’ It said ‘bane’—someone who has the power to thwart you. In other words, the bane of the darkness is a human who thwarts the dark faeries. Who proves the dark faeries wrong about humanity.”
The sweetest kind of human.
“Oh, Darkness … ” I murmured. Taylor leaned into me, thinking I was in pain. In truth, I felt tingly all over. Happy. The strange fact that the Queen’s light hadn’t killed me didn’t even concern me. Nothing could concern me here in this happy, lovely place.
Nothing except …
“Taylor.” I looked up at him, trying to understand the unpleasant, cold feeling in my chest. It wasn’t just the wet clothes.
There was a danger here that I was not quite grasping.
“Don’t try to talk.” He lowered his forehead to mine. He felt so warm against me; he was practically radiating light. “You’re shivering.”
“I am?” I lifted my head. “Well, look at that.”
He laughed like I’d said the funniest thing.
“Such things do happen when one is draped in the water of a pond,” said the Queen. “I shall take my leave of you for now. Let her rest, and perhaps free her of her garments,” she said to Taylor.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My mind had gotten stuck on the thought of nakedness, and Taylor, and being alone. Never mind that I needed to rest.
The Bright Queen began to transform into a deer. I clapped, utterly delighted at the show. I had seen the leaves of her hair darken with her moods, but not this. This was fantastic. My mother might transform into a wolf or raven, but never something vulnerable.
I wished she would.
Wearing her animal disguise, the Bright Queen bounded out of the clearing. The sight almost made me laugh. But my shivering had worsened, and now I could feel it.
“Taylor. Something feels wrong … ”
“It’s okay.” He kissed my cheeks. “Everything’s okay. You’re just cold.”
I couldn’t help it. I believed him.
“Should I … can I undress you?” he asked.
I suppose I should have felt shy.
But I didn’t. “Yes.”
Yes, please.
I was eager to get these suffocating clothes off me. Eager to feel his hands on my skin. Hidden in the land of the human-loving Seelie fey, I allowed myself to feel the things I could not accept before. I felt bold. Desirous, though I was much too weak to engage in anything too strenuous.
Or am I?
I touched the knee of his pants. “It seems I’m not the only one who is wet.”
He looked away for the first time since I’d awakened.
“And the air might be pleasant, if I was not so near to freezing. Would you consider undressing along with me? My body could use your … heat.”
Taylor blushed red. But when he’d finished undressing me—slowly unlacing my corset, guiding my skirt over my hips—he set to work unburdening himself of his clothing.
He was beautiful. Strong bones. Soft skin. Everything was as it should be.
Except …
“You’re glowing,” I breathed, staring at him unabashedly. Behind his back, great beams of light unfurled like wings.
He laughed, his eyes darting away again. “I think the forest likes me.”
“More than the forest,” I said, though I couldn’t track the comment to its source. There was something strange about the way the light was responding to him, circling his arms like darkness circled mine. It was as if the Bright Court had claimed him.
“Taylor … ”
“Don’t worry,” he said, taking my hands. “Let me take care of you.”
Who could argue with that?
He drew me into him. His body was warm, and mine grew hot in every place that his touched. I found myself crawling over him, my thigh sinking between his, my arms pinning him to the ground. He lifted his head and gave me the softest, sweetest kiss. And he guided me down to his chest. There we lay, in each other’s arms, skin pressed against skin, hands cradling, holding, until my eyes closed and I fell into pleasant dreams.
32
TayloR
The mortal saved the faerie. That’s what the Seelie Queen said. But the truth is, Elora saved my life long before I ever saved hers. She saved me that first day in the park.
She gave me a reason to live.
For seventeen years, I’d only gone through the motions, never letting myself love someone completely, and never really feeling loved.
Now I could feel everything.
Her love had opened me up, made me whole where I’d been fragmented like Humpty Dumpty. Like a puzzle missing half its pieces. Maybe she was love embodied. That’s how she felt to me, lying on my chest. She felt like happiness, like safety. And I’d never felt so alive.
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