“You’ll be a wraith forever, then?” Miles tossed out another spike.
“I’d intended to ride a human out of this universe,” Terris said acidly, “but then someone had to go and swallow a lethal amount of silver.”
“I’m not dead yet. Stop distracting me.”
“What the devil is going on?” the Lord of Dreams demanded and stormed up beside Miles, walking right through Terris.
“And you—shut up,” Miles snarled, then turned and drove an iron stake straight into the heart of the Lord of Dreams.
The Lord screamed and fell back, but Miles ignored him and went right back to working.
“Miles.” This was Harry, approaching the box carefully, looking wary. “Miles—what are you doing?”
“Fixing things.” Miles had everything out of the arms and the chest. He just had a few in the groin and two in the head that had squicked him out at first, but by this point, they didn’t bother him at all. He had to do this. He had to finish this.
“I think he’s gone insane.” Terris turned to Harry with a sneer. “You’ll have company.”
Harry looked uneasy. “Miles, you’ve made the Lord of Dreams angry. You need to get out of here.”
“Where am I going to go?” Miles dug his fingers into the flesh of Terris’s groin. “Back to Summer Hill? Take Terris’s silver pill and forget everything?” He yanked out the spike. “Go back to waiting for the world to fix itself for me? Never.” He aimed the spike at Terris’s face. “I’m not like the fey. I don’t expect the world to be there to serve me. I know it looks like that, but that isn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to not have to do the work. There’s a big difference. I thought the world wasn’t fair, and I was hurt because it wasn’t fixing itself for me. Well, I’m done with that. I’m going to fix my own life. I’m going to fix what’s wrong. Me. That’s what I’m going to do. And I’m starting with this, because it’s the most wrong thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Miles,” Harry said, even more desperate now. “Miles, he’s getting up!”
Miles pulled the last stake out of Terris’s head, then turned to face the Lord of Dreams, who he’d known was right behind him even without being told. He turned, full of rage, and raised the stake.
The Lord of Dreams hissed in fury, his horrible gaunt jaw gaping as he shouted at Miles.
“You stupid fool! You can’t best me, no matter how much silver you take! I am the Lord of Dreams! I am invincible!”
“You’re nothing!” Miles shouted, and he knew for the first time that it wasn’t just him shouting. His voice was an angry flute now, and he knew that Murali was there, too. “You’re nothing, and you’ve always been nothing. You’re nothing more than the dreams you suck out of lives. I looked at you and saw a god, and then I saw you through the mirror of the silver, and I realized how stupid I’d been, how you’d hypnotized me just like everyone else, that I’d never loved you at all. I’d only been glamoured like the rest. You never loved me, not even in the horrible way any faerie loves another. So I ran, but you wouldn’t let me go, not even then—not because you cared, but because you hated to be bested!”
Terris went still, and so did Harry. The Lord of Dreams blinked in surprise. “Murali?”
“You tortured Terris!” Miles cried, but he was just a vessel now, getting out of the way so Murali could have his moment at last. “He helped me, and you tortured him! He didn’t have to do it, and it didn’t give him anything at all—”
“—power,” Terris said quietly.
Miles turned and looked at him. In the back of his head, he began to see the truth, just the corner of it, and it stunned him and made him ache at once, but Murali was in control now.
“You didn’t have to help me,” Murali said, through Miles’s mouth. “It was a risk—”
“—that I took because if I hid you, it would frustrate a powerful man, which would give me power.” Terris sighed sadly. “I also thought, I’m ashamed to say, that it would be fun.”
“What is this?” the Lord of Dreams demanded, and without even glancing at him, Murali used Miles’s hand to drive the stake into the faerie again.
“You were different,” Murali said to Terris. Miles’s voice was almost pleading. “You weren’t like him. You helped me because you felt sorry for me. You felt for me!”
It was Terris that Murali fell in love with, Miles realized, dizzy. It was Terris all along that he wanted to free. Not himself. He laughed, quietly, in the back of his head. Terris was right. He lied to me too. All faeries lie.
“I lied,” Terris said to Murali, and Miles knew he was reading his mind, using his thoughts against Murali. “I used you, Murali. Don’t paint me as your hero. I was as cruel as any faerie would be.”
“But you’re not like them!” Murali said, and it was a plea now. “You let him trap you.”
“I didn’t. I let you imagine it all. I got caught in my own trap, and I’ve paid. I only want to die now, Murali, and see what happens next.” He reached out and stroked Miles’s cheek with a ghostly finger. “Maybe next time I’ll have a heart like yours, and I’ll do it right.”
“No,” Murali wailed, and Miles felt his despair. He felt the half-fey’s resolve begin to crumble.
He felt the Lord of Dreams begin to stir again.
Miles took control of his body once more and looked across the room at Harry. He was close now, watching Miles, ignoring everything else. Miles wished he knew how to free him. He wished one of the faeries would tell him, wished they would tell him more than lies. He wondered if there was any truth to what Murali said—if Miles freed him, would that release Harry? But no, it was Terris’s spell again that bore him. The Lord truly was nothing. He was illusion only, defeated by a simple mirror. Terris was real. But Terris was just another cruel faerie, and he didn’t feel—
Miles jerked his head up, eyes wide as the solution, so obvious, unrolled before him.
“No,” Terris said, tersely, reading his mind again.
“You can feel,” Miles said, ignoring him. “You couldn’t before, but you can now. Or, rather, you could.” He looked down into the box at the mutilated body. “You have feeling there. You just have to claim it.”
“You have no idea how much that hurts!” Terris hissed, silver tears brimming in his transparent eyes.
“I do,” Miles replied. “Every human does. We all face it, every day, all alone.” He nodded to the Lord of Dreams, kicking like a beetle on the floor. “He gave you a gift, putting you in here. He gave you what no faerie has ever had before, no full-blooded faerie. He gave you despair, and pain, enough to move even your leaden heart. And now you can love Murali, just as you told him you would. You can have power you never even dreamed of—but you must pay the price, just like the rest of us. You must feel. Your body knows how, now. All you have to do is claim it.”
“I will help you,” Murali said, taking over Miles’s body again and reaching for Terris’s ghost hand. “The first part you must do alone, but once you are able, call me, and I will come to you.”
“You will leave me,” Terris hissed. “You’re horribly fickle, and you’ll leave me.”
“And you’ll have the power to find another, if he does,” Miles said. “But I don’t think he will. I’ve felt your heart, Terris, and now I’ve felt his. He does love you. He’s waited as long for this as you have.” Miles looked at Harry, who was watching this drama quietly, knowing how his part would end, and Miles felt heavy. “You have a chance at it that I don’t. I’m going to die, because you’ve poisoned me. I let you, so it’s my fault. I let you because I wanted to save Harry. And I have—everyone but myself.” He paused. “No, that’s not right. I’ve saved myself too. It’s just that I’m not going to live to enjoy my work.”
The Lord of Dreams climbed back to his feet with a feeble but angry roar. “I will not have this!”
Miles turned, and this time, it was he who took control of Murali. “See yourself,” he said, and became a mirror, so that the fae
rie could see.
The Lord of Dreams gazed into Miles, screamed, then burst into flame. He was gone.
For a moment, Miles paused, surprised. The move had been an instinct, but while he’d hoped it would at least stun the faerie, he hadn’t expected it to destroy him so completely. Especially not like that. Could it really be possible that someone who had caused so much pain to so many for so long could dissolve with just one glance at his own reflection?
He was nothing more than the reflection of the dreams of others. Which meant that he himself was nothing. For anyone else to see the Lord of Dreams, they saw their own poisonous desires and were captivated by them forever. But when the Lord of Dreams saw himself, he saw nothing.
And when faced with his own truth, his own reflection, his own dark truths—in the face of that, he didn’t exist.
Miles turned back to Terris, who regarded him strangely.
“You’re right,” the faerie said. “You’re not fey at all. You’re something much, much worse.”
“Take back your body,” Miles told him. “Take it back and learn to live with pain, just like the rest of us. Take it, and Murali will get his body back, and I’ll get mine.” He looked sadly at Harry. “Just let me be with him as I die.”
“Why?” Terris said, baffled. “What good will that do?”
“It will be one good moment,” Miles said. “And it’s better than nothing.”
I’m sorry, Murali said, inside his head. It was never my intention to steal your life.
It’s okay, Miles replied, and he meant it. You didn’t steal it. You gave me a real one, for the first time. Thank you.
Terris leaned forward and kissed Miles tenderly against his lips. Then he sighed, shuddered, and slipped into his body.
Miles was aware, briefly, of a terrible scream, of a conscious being feeling real pain for the first time, beginning not as an infant but as a man, bearing it all at once and buckling like a loose strap under the strain. And he felt a course of love streak through him as Murali saw, too, the force of it wrenching him from the spell, and he was free—not for a moment, but for good.
And so was Miles.
He heard the shatter of silver all around him as it left his body, but he didn’t care, didn’t notice anything else at all, because as the darkness closed around him, he fell into Harry’s strong arms, looking up at him blearily, blood caking his eyes as the mirrors fell away. He looked up into his lover and touched his face.
“I love you, Harry.” He closed his eyes. “Even if you can’t love me back, I love you.”
As he slipped away he felt someone push something small and hard inside his lips, and he swallowed it. Then he drew his last breath, let it out in a shuddery rasp, and died.
And then, because the world is a funny old thing, he came right back to life.
Chapter Twelve
O life! O glory! O wreck! O stain!
Faerie, take me away again!
For life is glorious, but life is a bane.
Life is wonder.
Life is pain.
BECAUSE AS TERRIS had told him, over and over again, it was all nothing but a dream.
Miles did not figure this out, not at first. He lay in Harry’s arms, and he truly was dying, leaving in a manner that ensured he could never return. But he did not leave the mortal plane—just the faerie one.
He died an achingly beautiful death in his lover’s arms. And then he opened his eyes and sat up in the middle of the storeroom floor. His neck ached, he had a splinter in his ass, and he was really fucking cold. Beyond that, bodily, he was fine.
It took his mind a little while to realize what had happened and what it meant, and so he enjoyed a few hours of shock, which he used to get dressed, fumble with his magical supplies with shaking hands, then give up entirely and head downstairs, only to start his shock all over again when he saw that no more than forty-five minutes had passed since he’d gone upstairs. He thought perhaps it had been a day and forty-five minutes, but when he went back to the trailer, they just looked up at him with uneasy interest and nothing more, looking mostly like they hadn’t expected to see him so soon. They also looked at his hair a lot, but they didn’t say anything. Not until he came closer to them, and then Julie squinted at him.
“Is something wrong with your eyes?” she asked.
Miles blinked a few times, then shook his head. He couldn’t manage to say anything somehow, and Julie just shrugged and smiled an uneasy smile.
“I must be imagining things.” She went back to the book she’d been reading.
Miles nodded, gruffly, and went to his room.
The computer was all in one piece. The picture frames were intact. Everything was fine. Miles stared at it all for a few minutes, frowning. Then he swooned slightly, suddenly very tired.
Maybe this is the dream, he thought, fumbling for his bed. If I go to sleep, I’ll wake up in the dungeon again.
And so he slept. He dreamed of nothing, just blankness and peace. When he woke, it was morning, and he was still in his bedroom. His head hurt, and he had to pee, so he got up, worked the kink out of his shoulder, and headed down the hall toward the bathroom and flipped on the light.
His hair was pure white.
It was white. Silver-white, end to end, every strand. And as he stared in shock at his reflection, he saw that his eyes were silver too. Technically they were light gray, but when he moved, they glinted silver.
On instinct, he looked down at his right thumb, and saw an ugly gash across it, a scab forming over the top of it. Also, his ass was incredibly sore, as if he’d had the fuck of his life.
It had happened.
It had been real.
Forgetting about the bathroom, Miles turned and stalked down the hall, pausing only at his room to grab his shoes before heading out the door. He put his shoes on as he walked, then ran, laces flapping at his ankles, all the way to the forest. He ran deep inside, cutting his legs on branches and snagging his clothes, his skin reddening in the cold.
“Terris!” he shouted. “Murali!” His heart swelled, and his voice broke as he added, “Harry!” He called them over and over again.
No one answered.
He stayed there shouting until he was hoarse, and then he just kept walking, deeper and deeper into the forest until he went all the way through it and made it into a cornfield. He walked back through from a different direction, shouting even though his voice was gone, letting his heart do the calling now.
He ended up at Katie’s house.
She whisked him into the living room, where she poured tea into him and wrapped him in a blanket and plied him with questions, which he couldn’t answer, of course, because he’d wasted his voice shouting in the woods. So she gave him a piece of paper and a pencil.
It took him over an hour and a half to write it out, and every time he finished a page, he gave it to her. She would read it, then nod, then wait patiently for the next. After she read the first few pages, she called Julie, who came over and began reading too. Neither said anything to each other; they just read, Katie looking subdued, Julie looking sad.
Eventually, Miles finished.
I had too much silver in me. I was dying. Except I came back here. I don’t understand.
“You only died in the dream world,” Julie said. “Not reality.”
Miles set his jaw and scribbled again. But my hair changed! My thumb! I still feel nauseous from the silver!
Katie shook her head, clearly as lost as he was. But Julie sighed.
“Dreams echo life,” she said. “We carry some of them with us, each in different ways, but they are still not real.”
Something thick and awful was forming inside Miles’s chest. But it was real, he argued. It happened. I felt it. I was there! You two taught me magic, and I did it! It was not just a dream!
“Not just, no,” Katie said, very gently. “But it was still a dream.”
The thick awfulness was growing, making it hard for Miles to breathe. And see
. But Harry, he wrote, and then couldn’t write anymore.
Julie’s hand closed over Miles’s own. “As I said. We carry some of the parts of dreams with us.”
Miles’s head spun. There was a silent scream inside his head, but even if he’d had a voice, it wouldn’t have come out, because what Julie was implying was too horrible for him to bear. No, he wanted to shout. No, no, this can’t be right! He looked to Katie, but she was blinking hard, as if fighting off tears. I saved him! I did it! If I get to live, I should get to live with him, Miles wanted to cry.
No! I deserve so much better than this!
Except he knew, now, that he didn’t. No one deserved anything—and even if they did, they were unlikely to get it.
He thought of Terris, looking down at his body full of pain, of his reluctance. The emptiness he knew was inside. How he had fought it. How he had sought death instead.
Death. Miles had expected death. Had wanted it, because it would be release. But it hadn’t been death that waited for him, but his life. Oh, he had died, yes—the Miles who had sulked, the Miles who had raged, the Miles who could not understand that he already had a life full of goodness and worth, that he was richer and better and stronger than any dream he could ever hope to have.
He’d seen heaven, for one moment. For several of them, in fact, and all of them in Harry’s arms.
And now those moments were done. It was time to live again.
Harry. The tightness overwhelmed him, pressing on him like iron bands, pushing inside him like spikes. The pain, oh God, the pain. The pain of heaven seen and taken away. A connection, known for an instant. A joy found and removed.
Miles blinked at Julie.
Smile still in place, she held her arms out to him, inviting him to her embrace.
Pain. So much pain.
So much life.
Miles blinked again. And again. And at last, with a broken sigh, he fell into Julie’s arms.
He cried.
MILES SOBBED LIKE a baby in Julie’s arms, wept until he was spent, but even once she had helped him back to the trailer, back to his room, even after he had slept, the pain remained. It snuck up on him at odd moments, coming up so swiftly and violently that it startled him and anyone around him, and so he learned to weep in secret, stealing away into the woods. In a way he hurt here the most, here where he so longed to see Harry or Murali or even Terris come out and tell him the joke was over, that it would, actually, be okay. But of course this never happened. And so Miles wept over and over again. He wept in his bedroom, with his face in the pillow. He wept in the shower, playing a stupid game where he pretended he wasn’t crying, that it was just the water, but his eyes were always red after, and his nostrils swollen and stuffed.
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