I looked down and put my hand over my heart, wanting to hold my soul there, to cradle it. Vivian and I knew how precious they were. "It is, isn"t it?" I hadn"t wanted to hope, but now that she confirmed it, I agreed. I was brighter. Me, not just the extras.
"Yup. Because, lucky Evie, I was right. Everyone loves you. Or enough people, at least, for your little sucky Empty One soul to grow all by itself. I never had that."
I looked down, feeling guilty. Even with my bizarre life I"d always had it better than her, always had people who cared about me. "So you mean the people who loved me put it there?"
She shrugged. "Heck if I know the mechanics of it. Probably. I"m guessing you loving them helped, too."
I felt warmer than I ever had before. Because this meant that not only did Lend fill that hole inside me, but Raquel did, and David, and Arianna. And, most important of all, it meant that I had never truly lost Lish. If I had a soul because of the people who loved me and who I loved, then a huge part of it would always be hers.
"So, thanks," Vivian said.
"For what?" I looked up at her, confused.
"For being stupid enough to love your crazy, murdering lunatic of a sister and being such a pathetic dork that I couldn"t help but love you, too."
"That"s why you were disappearing," I said. "You were waking up."
"Because of you."
This time I was the one to wrap my arms around her in a huge hug. "I"m so glad," I said, my face buried in her hair. "But please, promise me no more killing, okay? I have way too many other things to worry about. Please be a happy thing in my life."
She laughed, pushing me away. "Ouch. You are all elbows. And no worries. I"m not about to risk my own kick-A soul to mix it with some lame vampire mess. It"s too pretty." She let her head flop back against the couch and closed her eyes. "Besides which, even if I wanted to go hunt for some souls, I"m pretty sure a legless werewolf could outrun me. All your little friends are safe."
I breathed a sigh of relief, watching her face for any sign she was lying. It remained completely smooth and calm. I wasn"t about to invite her to a sleepover with Arianna or anything, but I had to hope that she was sincerely changed. It was all I could do.
"What"s going on that"s got you so stressed? Dark Queen stuff?"
"Oh, if only that were all." I explained the entire situation to her from start to finish. At one point I thought she"d fallen asleep, but her eyebrows remained drawn over her closed eyes instead of relaxing. "So," I said after what felt like forever, "I"m going to open up the gate. Tonight, apparently."
"Wow," she said, exaggerating the lip movements to draw it out. "You have been busy, haven"t you."
"Yup. What do you think? I mean, am I doing the right thing?"
She laughed and opened her eyes, her nearly colorless gray eyes meeting my own. "You"re really going to ask me that? My moral compa.s.s isn"t exactly known for its accuracy." Her face softened. "Seriously, Ev, I think if anyone can make the right choices in all this mess, you can. Me, I"d just try to kill all of them. Did try to kill all of them, actually. But your way seems better. And less work in the end, because you get rid of them all in one fell swoop."
I nodded, biting my lip. "It"ll work, right?"
She shrugged. "You"re the only one of us who"s ever made a gate. But sure. I think it"ll work. It"s why we"re here, right? At least one of us can fulfill her destiny."
"Destiny totally sucks."
"Don"t I know it."
I stood up, pacing. I"d been debating what to do with her. I wanted to take her home to David"s, but putting her around that many paranormal creatures didn"t seem like a good idea. Best to ease her back into soul temptation. Because I couldn"t deny that even I was drawn to the souls of the paranormals around me, knowing how they"d feel, how they"d fill me. How much worse would it be for Vivian, who had once carried so many?
Yeah. Far away for now. Tonight I"d make sure Raquel was in charge of her. And that Raquel had Tasey. "Reth, are there any faeries with the people we saved?"
"No," he said, his eyes closed, his thick eyelashes the same crescent as the dark circles beneath his eyes. "They are safe there alone, and all the Seelie faeries have gathered with the queen."
"And what about that meadow where we have them? Is it going to, I don"t know, poof out of existence as soon as the faeries leave?"
He frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose it will remain as it is. All this will. We created it, but the matter from which it was formed was never ours. I can"t see why it would cease to be since we don"t do anything to keep the things we make here. Once made, they simply are."
"Are you sure?"
He opened his eyes. "Of course not."
I glared. "Well, thank you."
"Part of my queen"s preparations have been gathering food, ensuring there will be enough to sustain the duration of the lives of every mortal tied to this Realm."
"a.s.suming this doesn"t all just wink out of existence."
"Yes, a.s.suming that."
"Well, it"s something." I"d have Jack bring over as much food as he possibly could, but I had no idea how long faerie food would stay good in the normal world. We"d have to make sure everyone was in the mortal realm tonight and hope that all this would still be here after.
"Okay." I grabbed Vivian"s hand and pulled her up off the couch. "You get to go hang out with a bunch of weird, seriously screwed up humans."
"I"ll fit right in, then."
"My thoughts exactly! I"ve got some things to do with the faeries, including somehow convincing the Dark Court to join us. You"ll be safe in the meadow." And so will all the paranormals I loved. But I didn"t say that part out loud.
"As long as there"s a place to lie down I"m good."
We each took one of Reth"s hands, Vivian sliding hers down his arm before wrapping her fingers through his. "I forgot how pretty you are," she purred.
"Have you also forgotten trying to make Evelyn drain my soul?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in a way I"d swear was flirty if Reth were the flirting type.
Vivian laughed. "Nope, I remember that part."
"And this is awkward. Let"s go." I tugged on Reth"s hand, and that horrible twisting thing happened, dumping us in the orange gra.s.s. Jack ran immediately over to us.
"I took Lend back home along with a ton of food and most of the calmer people. Where were you?"
I sat heavily on the ground to make everything stop spinning, hugely disappointed that Lend wasn"t here to help me not freak out. I gestured to Vivian, who was already lying on her back next to me.
"Meet my sister, Vivian."
"Wait, the one you put in a coma because she wanted to kill all the paranormals?"
"Yup."
He reached down and took one of her hands in his own, bending over to kiss it. "Anyone who"s personally tried to rid the world of faeries is a friend of mine."
Vivian laughed again, this throaty laugh that was so unlike mine. I liked it. "Charmed, I"m sure. Now bug off so I can sleep."
I walked away from Viv, Jack following me, and stood next to Reth, looking at the crowd. He swayed and I moved closer, nudging him with my shoulder until he leaned against me. He was lighter than I thought he"d be, for all his impossible faerie strength.
Most of the people still here had calmed down more or less, and I could see Carlee going from group to group, smiling or listening as the situation called for it. I loved her. It was super bad luck that she"d been sucked into all this but good luck for everyone else. No one could beat Carlee"s infinitely perky, innately bubbly personality.
"Keep an eye on Vivian, okay?" I said to Jack. "Just...well, make sure she doesn"t hurt anyone. You probably want to start taking everyone back right now so you"ll all be safe in case the Faerie Realms get messed up. Also bring as much food as you can carry."
"That sounds promising."
I shrugged, my attention elsewhere.
Jack followed my eyes to the group of pregnant girls, sitting together away from everyone else. "They"re not doing very well," he said. Most of them sat listlessly on the ground, staring into s.p.a.ce. One was biting her arm and rocking back and forth. The blond girl was slowly and methodically ripping out her hair. My stomach turned, sick with grief for them.
"Is there anything we can do?" I asked Reth.
"Take them back to the Dark Queen and give them to her. Let the Dark Court take the new Empty Ones so they will think they can leave your world on their own terms with their human pets and reject our offer."
I closed my eyes, pressing my hands over my stomach, feeling like my own soul wanted to break into a million pieces from too many impossible decisions. "We can"t."
Reth reached out and took my fingers in his own, his touch light but comforting. "I"ve found that sacrifice is called that for a reason. We have all lost much of what we were or could have been because of the mistakes of my people. We"ll yet lose some things to set it right. But when you join eternity, you will not feel the sting of this life with such intensity."
"You mean I wouldn"t feel at all?"
"I feel, my love. Simply not in the same way you do. And thank heavens for that, because you are quite an embarra.s.sment at times. Your inconsistent and flailing pa.s.sions will no longer be a concern."
Leave it to Reth to go from comforting me to insulting me in the course of one short conversation. With one last long look at the girls I probably wouldn"t be able to save, I tightened my hand around Reth"s as he stood straight.
"Okay. Let"s go convince the Unseelies I"m their only option and get you all the bleep off my planet."
LIGHT AND DARK.
Neamh. Evie. Neamh. Evie. Lend, Lend, Lend. Neamh. Evie.
"What are you doing, my love?"
I scowled at Reth for breaking my concentration. "Thinking. Shut up." The Light Queen was speechifying up on a podium made of liquid light, her radiance bathing all the faeries in a glow that was nearly overpowering. Within a few seconds of being around this much faerie glamour I was having a hard time seeing straight and found myself slack-jawed and dazed. Thus, the name equivalent of pinching myself.
I realized at some point she had stopped talking, and now every single set of faerie eyes-a few hundred of them-were trained intently on me.
"Oh, uh, hey." I waved. "What did I miss?" I whispered to Reth.
"You"re supposed to tell us how to convince the Dark Court to join us."
"I-What? Seriously? I"m only here to make sure everything happens. I thought the queen would have a plan! I"m a glorified doorman. I open the gate, I close the gate. Nowhere in my job description of Empty One does it say I also manage to convince a mob of anti-Evie faeries to saunter on through the gate."
Reth smiled. "And just when she"d finished praising human ingenuity and a.s.suring us that everything will work out according to plan."
"Yes! Plan! Her plan! Gosh, you guys are sucking it up all over the place. Aren"t you supposed to have these things in place for centuries, or were you too busy writing pretty little poems to describe the plans that you never bothered actually making them?"
His golden eyes, now with fine lines around them, twinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt. "We had a plan, my love. I was to fill you up and you were to open a gate for us immediately. But I seem to recall you doing everything in your power to resist and change that plan. So now we"ve had to account for all the other creatures from our world and conform to your requirements. I think you"ll find that we fey, while obviously superior in nearly every way, are not quite so adaptable as temporary creatures. If you want improvisation, you"ll have to provide it yourself."
"Of course I will." I rolled my eyes, huffing. Why had I expected anything else? "Okay, fine. Do you all know any of the Unseelie names? Maybe we could force-"
"No," Reth said, cutting me off sharply.
"You don"t know any?"
"It is not a matter of whether or not they are known. My queen knows every name of every soul from our world. But we will not use our brothers" and sisters" names to control them. It is not done."
I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "So you could have stopped this-all this-at any time? Your queen could have controlled those faeries?"
"If you could stop all this by killing someone you know-anyone-would you have done it?"
"No!"
"There are some boundaries we do not cross. IPCA visited great evil on us when it ensnared us and forced us to reveal the names of other faeries. We would have sooner perished but had no choice."
"But you used my father"s name!"
He sneered as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "That creature hardly counts as fey."
"But you still broke the rule."
"I might have, yes. But there is a chasm between the Light Queen and myself that can never be crossed. You and your entire world have changed me, pulling me further and further from myself. I am not proud of it. She remains unsullied."
"Well, goody for her."
"Child?" The Light Queen"s voice stilled the turbulent waves of my soul, singing calm and grace to every fiber of my being. Neamh. Ah, there, I was p.i.s.sed off again.
I looked over the gathering of fey, all the ethereally impossible faces blending and blurring together. I didn"t want to look too closely at them for fear of seeing the faerie who was my father, Melinthros. I didn"t want to talk to him ever again. I didn"t even want him to exist.
Putting my hands on my hips, I sighed. "Okay, here"s what we"re going to do. We"re going to Unseelie territory, and you"re all going to protect me with whatever faerie mojo you have, because I"m pretty sure the Dark Queen will not be very excited to see me. And then I"m going to talk to them."
"Talk to them?" the Light Queen asked.
"Yes," I said, trying to compose a poem on her beauty comparing her to the light of the dawn, to the rays of sunlight piercing clouds after a thunderstorm, to...Evelyn. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Gosh, can"t you at least try to turn it down? Anyway. We"re going to talk to them. If they"re anything like your court, a lot of them probably think their queen is a freaking idiot."
The Light Queen"s wide, white eyebrows rose like a question mark.
"I mean, obviously not all these faeries agree with all your decisions. Like the one that got them stuck here. So we"re going to tell the Unseelies that time is up and bank on them wanting to get out, period, more than they want to get out under the Dark Queen"s terms. And then...we"re going to hope she decides to come rather than hanging out here all by herself."
Yeah. This was going to go well, I could tell already.
The Light Queen inclined her head in a regal nod, holding her hand out to me.