"You want me to survive so much, then help me! Take me to him and I swear I"ll do everything I can to make it out alive."
"I can take you home in a heartbeat, you know."
I lifted my chin. "And I"ll keep finding new ways to get back here if it kills me."
He stared at me, his heartbreakingly beautiful face devoid of any expression. Finally the corners of his perfect lips turned down ever so slightly. "I"ll be very upset if you die."
I ignored the small, annoying, creeping warmth in my heart. He wasn"t allowed to make me feel that way. "Does that mean you"ll help?"
"Give me your hand."
I tucked Tasey into my jeans, pulled out my knife, and slid it through the duct tape, severing Jack"s connection to me. Ripping the last of the sticky gray strands away, I laced my fingers through Reth"s-then was surprised by Jack taking my other hand, his fingers circling mine.
"You"re off the hook, Blondie. Go terrorize someone else." I gave him the best smile I could muster. He"d helped me when no one else would. He was still unbalanced and only helping me under duress, but it was something.
"Well, I don"t know. It"s bound to be exciting, if nothing else. I think I"ll see this one through."
"Really?" He was free-completely and totally. And he was still here. He might have been sincerely sorry, after all.
He flashed an impish grin at me. "Really. Maybe we can light something on fire again."
"We can only hope." I smiled back at him, surprised and happier than I thought I could manage right now. With the two unlikeliest of allies, I was going to save Lend or die trying.
It wasn"t a bad way to go, really.
"Off to it, then," Reth said, and the city snake-scape twirled away, replaced by...the most breathtakingly beautiful place I had ever seen in my life.
It was a riot of color, explosions of flowers carpeting every surface. Trees in the most brilliant shades of orange, red, and pink were cl.u.s.tered together, arching overhead and filtering the light so that everything was somehow softer and brighter at the same time, like your eyes were finally working how they were always supposed to. Jewel-toned b.u.t.terflies the size of my face fluttered lazily on a breeze that smelled like sweet, sleepy contentment. The whole place was warm, and gorgeous, and very, very not scary. I turned to Reth, angry. "Where are we?" Of course he wouldn"t have brought me where I asked him. I don"t know why I expected anything different.
"Welcome to the Dark Court," Reth said.
Well, bleep. Not quite what I"d imagined.
DANCE, DANCE REVOLUTIONS.
I looked again at the obscenely serene and beautiful scene around us. There was nothing sinister, nothing threatening, nothing even remotely creepy about it. Unless you had really bad allergies, in which case the flowers might be considered evil.
"Are you sure?" I asked Reth, still dubious.
"Positive." His eyes darted around, scanning our surroundings as though he expected something horrid to come screaming out of the candy-colored trees.
"Well. Okay then." I was so confused. Why was this the Unseelie headquarters? Compared to that silver lake with black sh.o.r.es and red sky, this was somewhat lacking in the intimidation factor. I couldn"t imagine the Dark Queen in all her soul-sucking black hole glory anywhere near this idyllic setting. "Any idea where they keep the prisoners?"
Reth waved a hand at the entire forest. "Anywhere around here."
"No jails? Or cages? Or, you know, chains?"
"You underestimate the power that comes with making humans happy and content. I seem to recall you overlooking several key problems with our relationship back when you allowed me to warm you."
I scowled. Oh, I so didn"t like him. But he had a point. I hadn"t cared that I was fifteen and he was ageless, or that we were entirely different species, or that he controlled every aspect of our time together. This was the same way, all happy and warm and nice smelling. Who would want to escape? "Let"s find Lend and get out of here."
Maybe the Dark Queen wouldn"t even be here. This didn"t seem like her scene. It could be just a huge, elaborate, bizarrely b.u.t.terfly-filled prison, after all. All we had to do was find the area Lend was in and hope he wasn"t permanently screwed up by being in Happy Land for too long. Oh, please, please don"t let him be permanently changed.
One of the huge b.u.t.terflies alighted on my outstretched hand, fluttering its wings slowly. I looked closer, and realized that the brightly colored blue-and-purple scales all looked like miniature eyes. Interesting camouflage.
Then the eyes blinked.
"Bleep!" I shouted, shaking my hand until the creepy bug flew away. Jack gave me a weird look. "It had eyes! On its wings!"
"Of course it did," Reth answered, annoyed. "They already know we"re here."
"Fabulous," Jack said, reaching down and plucking a crimson flower. A small scream sounded from it as he severed the stem. He smiled maliciously, then started stomping with abandon through the beds of blossoms, a chorus of tinny, shrill screams punctuating every step.
"Maybe you shouldn"t aggravate the flowers," I hissed. "Let"s find Lend and get out of here!"
"Lead the way," Reth said wearily.
I frowned and scanned the trees around us. There seemed to be a path through the flowers winding around the trees to our left. I figured it was as good a bet as anything. A path meant someone was using it, which would hopefully lead us...somewhere.
I walked over to it, followed by Reth and Jack. "I really need better plans."
"I wasn"t going to say anything, but...wait, I already did." Jack shoved his hands in his jean pockets and whistled tunelessly. I scanned the trees constantly as we walked, but the only movement was those creepy b.u.t.terflies, tranquilly drifting through the trees.
Wait-no, not drifting. Following us. "We have an audience," I said to Reth, nodding at the cl.u.s.ters of flying insects.
"I suppose we can"t make the Dark Queen any angrier with us than she already is," he said, then his perfect mouth moved, silently forming words, and he gracefully waved his hands through the air in a semicircle. The warm breeze suddenly froze, and I saw frost eat across the nearest b.u.t.terflies" wings. They stopped midair, then dropped to the ground with tiny clinking noises, frozen solid.
A serene smile spread across Reth"s face. "I"ve always disliked insects."
"If the whole being-a-faerie thing doesn"t work out for you, you definitely have a future in pest control."
We walked for a few more minutes, the air now devoid of fluttering spies, until the trees grew thinner, revealing a light-drenched clearing. Low, murmuring voices and sweet but strange notes of music drifted back to us on the wind.
"This is bad," Reth said, frowning.
"What? What"s bad?" I pulled out Tasey and hurried forward, wondering if Lend was in the clearing, wondering what was happening. My feet seemed to dance ahead of their own accord in my eagerness to find him.
Jack, too, rushed with me, reaching out and taking my arm. Then he raised our hands above my head, twirling me in a rapid circle, which made perfect sense with the music. I spun around and around, my hair whipping out, then stopped, skipping forward again with Jack.
He laughed and I laughed with him, dropping Tasey on the path as we twirled together in flawless synchronization. I wanted to be wearing something as beautiful as I felt moving to this music. I wanted a dress made of spiderwebs and b.u.t.terfly wings, with dewdrops for jewels. But it didn"t matter, not anymore, not when we could dance together.
We kicked off our shoes in wordless agreement, then broke through the trees and fell into line with the other dancers. I didn"t know the steps, I couldn"t know the steps, but the music whispered them to me, told me what to do with my feet and my hands, but most of all what to do with my heart.
I laughed again, feeling lighter and freer than I ever had, my face flushed with exertion as I took someone else"s hand, and then someone else"s, and then someone else"s, twisting and turning, exhilarated with the pure joy of movement. We were a circle, and then two, and then three, and then one again, writing patterns and creating tales with our movement.
I closed my eyes, felt the warm light on my cheeks, felt the wind in my hair as hands grabbed mine and twirled me around and around and around again. There was nothing but this, nothing but the dance and the music and the joy. My feet moved faster and faster, tracing their song of happiness on the ground, telling a story that would never end. I never wanted it to.
BUNDLES OF JOY.
I was laughing breathlessly-doing pretty much everything breathlessly-because I couldn"t seem to stop dancing long enough to catch my breath, but I didn"t want to stop, couldn"t even if I wanted to, everything was twirling and laughter and motion and my feet, my feet wouldn"t stop, and they hurt, but they didn"t hurt, they wanted to do nothing but this forever, and the pain in my side wasn"t pain, and I wasn"t gasping for breath, I was laughing, because I"d never been this happy.
The faces in front of me blurred together in light and movement and sound, one indistinguishable from the next, only their hands mattering as we moved in and out and around in patterns while our feet tripped along the inevitable ch.o.r.eography. One of the faces looked familiar, triggered something in my brain, but then it was gone again and so was the thought, the wonder; there was only the dance.
Forever, there would only ever be the dance.
My hands met others and I prepared to spin, but these hands were wrong-they spun me the wrong way, tripping my feet that knew which way they were supposed to go. My feet kept moving, kept trying to tap out the story the music told them to, but now the hands were lifting me, and my feet kicked and turned and twirled in the air, desperate for contact with anything so they could keep dancing, because the dance was everything, I had to dance, I had to, if I didn"t dance I"d fly away into pieces, everything would stop, it would be dark forever, I"d- "Neamh," a voice like the wind through golden sheaves of wheat said in my ear. "Come back to yourself."
The name coursed through me, lightning in my veins, pushing out the desperation of the dance. I blinked rapidly, shaking my head past the fog. "Reth?" His face was right in front of mine as he held me against his body, my feet several inches off the ground.
"There you are."
"I-What on earth just happened?"
"Well, nothing on Earth, obviously."
He set me down and I yelped, immediately collapsing to the ground. My muscles were trembling, my legs riddled with spasms of pain. I looked down at my feet and cried out in horror again-they were bleeding and raw, the bottoms one big mess of blister and ruined skin.
"I saw-there was someone there I knew. Is...oh, no, is Lend there? Is he in the dance?" I turned my face toward where I thought the dancers were, but Reth had brought me back into the trees and I could only see flashes of movement from the meadow. Now that I was out of it, the music was wrong, all wrong, all desperation and frenetic motion without any sense or beat or rhythm.
"Not Lend. Jack. Stay there," Reth said. "I"ll see if I can recall him to his senses, although he never had many to begin with."
I cried softly, lying back on the ground, every muscle in pain. Grat.i.tude to my crazy faerie ex competed with the overwhelming pain for my attention. Pain won.
A body thudded to the ground next to me, and I heard a whimper like a hurt puppy. I opened my eyes and turned my head to see Jack lying there, his face screwed up against the agony. He was in as bad shape as I was.
"Reth." My voice was hoa.r.s.e and my throat raw from how hard I had been breathing. "How are we going to find Lend now? I don"t think I can walk."
"Yes, that wouldn"t be advisable at this point."
"I don"t suppose there are any unicorns here?" I asked, hopeful. If I could get a magic patch job, we could get back to the business of finding Lend.
"No."
"c.r.a.p. How long were we dancing?"
"That"s not really quantifiable in terms you"d understand. Long enough that you nearly lost what little soul you have to the dance. But not so long that you weren"t retrievable. Honestly, mortals. You never understand too much of a good thing."
"Jack? You okay?"
He moaned, turning and smashing his face into the flowered ground. "Mmmph."
I took it as a yes. Or at least, that he hadn"t lost his soul to the dance and that eventually we"d both be okay. But we didn"t have time for eventually.
"Is there anything you can do?" I asked Reth. "This can"t be it. I need to find him. Now."
"There is something. It will get you walking. But you won"t like it, and it will do more long-term damage than good."
"Do it."
He nodded, still hesitant, then reached out his perfect, slender, long-fingered hands and wrapped them around my feet. I expected more of his heat, the creeping warmth and later burning that he used to put in me, but gasped as a searing cold left his hands. For an instant there was blinding pain, and then...nothing.
"That should hold for a while."
I looked down to see my feet shimmering with what looked like a light dusting of snow. I stood, but the snow stayed put, not getting brushed off or melting. All my muscles screamed at me, but I could stand, which meant I could walk, which meant I could find Lend.
"Thank you. Do Jack."
"I think we should send him back," Reth said, glancing at poor, broken Jack with something that looked shockingly like compa.s.sion in his golden eyes. "He hasn"t your resilience, and, admirable as it was of him to join us, this isn"t his fight."
I knelt down and brushed Jack"s blond curls back off his forehead. He opened his eyes. "You always did know how to have fun," he whispered, trying to smile.
"I"m a laugh a minute. Can you get away from here? Back to your room, where you"ll be safe?"
""M not going anywhere," he mumbled.
"Yes, you are. And when you"re well enough to make it through the Faerie Paths, go find Arianna. She has a unicorn who can fix your feet. And tell her that when"-my voice cracked, but I hurried on-"when I get back with Lend, we"ll talk."
Jack looked up at me, guilt on his features. "I really am sorry, Evie."
"I know, you idiot. Now go."
He nodded, huge blue eyes sad, then held up a hand and rolled to the side, disappearing in a shimmer of light.
I stood again, groaning as muscles and joints I"d never even noticed let me know in the most painful way possible they existed, and took a few deep breaths to push past it.
"Onward?" I asked Reth. He nodded, holding out his elbow like a gentleman, and I put my hand through it.
My feet didn"t hurt, but they couldn"t feel anything, either, which led to a lot of stumbling on the uneven ground. Without Reth I would have been flat on my face, but even with him progress was slow.
And so we walked, the forest around us shifting from brilliant reds, oranges, and pinks, to rich blues, greens, and violets. Just when I was sure I couldn"t go any farther on my trembling legs, we came to another clearing. This one had no music, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
It was filled with six women, girls really, all human, laughing and singing and lounging contentedly next to a babbling lavender brook. They glowed with health in clothes that looked like woven clouds.