39. There Are No More Monsters Coming for Us
39. THERE ARE NO MORE MONSTERS COMING FOR US
ELOWYN
With West and me fast in the wake of his pounding bare feet, Rush barreled through the gaping hole that had been the grand double doors that gained entrance to the Hall of Mirrors. We’d had to knock out the wall—and many others along the way—so the dragons could exit the palace proper. They now rested in several cozy piles out in the gardens, crushing the manicured flowerbeds beneath their massive frames, waiting until we could figure out how to rescue any dragons that remained in the dungeons.
Although already industrious goblins had made progress in repairing the broken floor, and most of Talisa’s trapped snakes had been quick to leave, upturned glass still projected from it far too often. Hopping on one foot while his weapons belt rattled—only partially buckled around his hips in his haste—Rush stuffed his feet into his boots. After a backward glance at me to make sure I was doing the same, he raced through the hall, dodging bodies and startling the fae fussing over them.
When Rush and I’d finally succumbed to fatigue and shuffled away with laden steps for a little rest, a dull murmur had shrouded the space. Everyone had been as tired as we were, stunned by the gravity of our losses and our wins. But now an excited buzz enlivened the room; a joyful cry rose from one of the gathered groups. I heard crying too, but at least there was some celebration mixed in with the mourning.
Halfway through, Rush halted, sweeping those gathered, their diverse shapes, sizes, and colors. I knew he must be searching for Hiroshi’s particular lavender hair.
“They’re in the back corner,” West said as he piled up behind Rush. “By the tunnel entrance.”
Rush was already speeding forward again. He nearly bumped into a large rabbit with fangs that resembled tusks with their menacing length, spun as the creature snapped at him, and darted through an aisle opening up among the fae who’d realized something was happening.
I noticed them when Rush did. And truly, there they were: Hiroshi and Ryder, whole and in one piece each.
They were in the process of turning to see what the commotion was when Rush slammed into them, his wide arms engulfing them both at once, nearly knocking them over?—
A body dove onto my back, stunning the air from me in a garbled ooosh . Its knobby joints prodded me in the ribs and shoulders; its scrabbling feet poked my waist.
My pained wince was part smile as I guided little Saffron around to my front so I could hug him tightly. “Shhhh-shhhhh-shh-shhh. It’s okay, boy. It’s all over now.”
He scrabbled up my torso, using a boob as leverage. I sucked a grunt through my teeth even as I soothed him with a gentle touch along his back, between his tucked wings. “It’s alright, Saffy. You’re safe now.”
He only tried to climb me some more, his goal seeming to be to perch on my shoulders, when the dragonling was far too large for that. Struggling to untangle his claws from my loose hair, I guided him back down, amending, “I’m safe too, Saff. We’re all safe.”
The truth behind the assurance was too recent not to feel like a lie, not to feel like Talisa might rise from the ashes to somehow piece herself together and come at us again. But no. Before they’d headed outside, the dragons had roasted Talisa’s and Braque’s corpses until no fragment of them remained that was larger than my pinky nail. Their only destiny now was to fertilize the gardens and do perhaps their first—and last—piece of good for Embermere.
I clutched Saffron close. As his squirming began to quiet, the fast patter of the long, dragon-like feet of a goblin sliced through the boisterous guffawing of Rush and his brothers , a denomination that had expanded to include Roan, Reed, who wore a bandage wrapping his shoulder, and even Xeno, from the looks of their close huddle and easy camaraderie. I supposed there was no faster way to bond than through facing down a common enemy of the worst caliber.
Pru burst through the crowd. Her large eyes were wide and frantic until they landed on me and Saffron. Her slim shoulders rose and fell abruptly.
“Oh, thank the Ethers,” she said on an out breath, running both knobby hands along her face before squinting at the youngling in my embrace and wagging a finger at him. “You are a naughty boy, scaring Pru like that.” Her chest heaved. “Pru thought something might’ve happened to you.”
I unwove an arm from around Saffron to lower it gently to the goblin’s shoulders. Even though she saw it coming, at my touch she shuddered. I squeezed her gently. “You don’t have to worry anymore. There are no more monsters coming for us.”
Another shudder racked through her.
“You’re okay,” I insisted, with a glance at Rush and the others. Rush caught my eye and grinned like a beam of happy moonlight. “We’re okay.”
I scanned the busy hall. We weren’t the only ones celebrating the return of loved ones who’d been fortunate enough to go into the mirrors whole. But there were still too many whose heart-wrenching loss quivered and drooped across long faces.
I noticed Jolanda, whose bright, copper-hued hair was a precise match to Lennox’s, the son whose unmoving body she was prostrated over. I surely wouldn’t mourn the despicable drake who’d literally stabbed me in the back and had been a coward who preyed on those he considered weaker than himself. But I would respect a mother’s mourning.
Bringing my attention back to Pru, I sighed. “It’ll take time to recover. We all need it. I need it. But it will happen. And then we’ll see the Mirror World righted. We’ll get it as close to Faerie as we can.”
Pru sniffed.
I found my hand rubbing circles along her back. “You alright?”
For several long beats, she didn’t do or say anything. Then, finally, she gave a jerky nod.
“You sure showed her who was boss in the end,” I said on an unintentional cackle.
A shiver traveled the length of her small body, and I guided her head against my thigh, trying to soothe both the dragonling and goblin at the same time.
Pru sniffed again. “Pru did, didn’t she?”
A smile crept up my mouth. “Pru most certainly did. No doubt about that. Pru kicked some major ass.”
When Pru was silent, I glanced down at her. She was struggling to hold back a grin.
“Oh no,” I said. “Let that smile out. You earned it.”
Pru pressed her lips together in a valiant effort not to celebrate the death of anyone, no matter how deserving, but one side ticked up.
I pressed, trying to tease out the rest of that smile. “You took down the big, bad, awful, horrible queen all by yourself. You’re a hero. ”
The goblin stilled. “Pru … is?”
“Oh yes. You most definitely are. You vanquished the most terrifying monster of them all, and you did it in the name of everyone she should have protected.”
For several moments Pru and I watched Rush and his brothers, their easygoing interactions, the relief dancing constantly across their animated faces, their hands gesturing grandly.
Ryder was tugging on Rush’s short hair, apparently taunting him for the bad haircut, while his eyes glistened at the moving gesture. Ryder’s eyes moistened further as he took in Roan’s and Reed’s blunt locks, and West’s too, shorter than the last time he’d seen them.
Hiroshi was telling Xeno, who was back to being a man and clothed in his pants and boots if shirtless, how it had been the goblins’ magic that had called them forth from the other side of the mirrors, where it had been dark and cold and empty. When the goblins had gone to set the mirrors back to how they’d been before, the mirrors had ejected them and everyone else—whether whole or in parts—who’d gone into the bespelled glass. The monsters that had emerged from the mirrors had vanished.
Saffron snuffled into my shoulder, settled his head heavily upon it, and I knew he was preparing for a nap in my arms.
“Mistress?” Pru said.
I made a show of scanning the hall, alighting on a curious scene involving Zafi and other MISOs, before looking back at Pru.
“I don’t see any mistress . I see only equals.”
Pru stared up at me, her lower lip quivering, her large, dark eyes glistening as vividly as Ryder’s. She swallowed visibly, her voice tentative, as if trying out my name in earnest this time, as if she intended finally to address me as a friend for good, no going back. “Elowyn?”
“Yes, Pru?”
“Can Pru still stay with … Elowyn?”
“Of course we’ll stay together. We’re friends.”
“Even if Pru doesn’t attend her mistress anymore?”
“Especially then. I have no need of a servant, or worse, a slave.” I cringed. “But I do have an opening…”
I waited a beat, two, three.
Pru asked, “An opening for what position?”
“For a best friend.” Feeling Xeno’s stare on me, I jerked mine up to meet his. He smiled; I smiled back, amending for Pru, “A best female friend. I already have Xeno, and he and I will always be friends. But that’s not the same. I need a best friend with whom I can talk about funny things and silly things and female-y things and pretty much anything and everything.”
Pru stiffened beside me, pulling her head away from my thigh. She straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin all the way up so she could meet my eyes.
“Pru likes that position. She’d like to have it.”
With my one free arm, I bent over as best as I could with a heavy, dozing dragonling against my chest, and hugged her hard. “I’m honored to have your best- friendship. Plus, my best-friend’s a hero. How cool is that?”
Apparently at a loss for words, Pru pressed her face into my side and cried. Feeling the heat of someone’s attention on us, I glanced up and over the heads of Rush and our friends to find Edsel. He was half crouched over a fellow goblin, mending the goblin’s arm, his mouth agape. When he caught me looking, his lips pressed into a smile wider than I believed him capable of.
Oh yes, we’d heal. However long it took, we’d recover from the damage Talisa had inflicted. We were going to come back stronger than ever before.
A succession of tiny, sharp gasps drew my attention away from the gruff, goblin granddoody with the skill for healing, and back over to Zafi and the parvnits who surrounded her.
“What’s that about?” I asked Pru.
“Pru isn’t certain. The parvnits with Zafi are from the Nerotti Forest, and Pru heard that they know Zafi, but Pru doesn’t know what they’re upset about now.” She hesitated. “Best friend.”
My heart squeezed. “Wanna go see?”
“Pru does.”
With Rush’s and Xeno’s attention trailing me as we walked through a few fae who were recovering, resting on others’ laps on patches of repaired floor, we approached the gaggle of tiny fairies. Their wings hung limply against their backs and thighs as they crowded together on a molding. A pair leapt off it to swing around in a buzzing blur of wings to embrace Zafi from the open side. Their tones were hushed, fierce, and urgent.
Some of the others noticed us before Zafi did, and pinned suspicious, narrowed looks on us.
“This is private, if you don’t mind,” said a parvnit with fuchsia hair and a matching skirt. Her fuchsia lips were pursed in a line of snark.
“That’s our new queen,” hissed one with a bob of hair the orange of fire. “Watch it or it’ll be?—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. “There’ll be no off with anyone’s heads. Not anymore.”
With a sheepish flush to her cheeks, in a warm orange, she protested, “I hadn’t been about to say that,” only it was clear from her spreading blush that she had.
“You’ll never have to fear for your lives again,” I added.
With orange eyelashes so fine they were like spider web, she blinked furiously to wipe the sheen from her tiny eyes.
Zafi peeked out from behind a fairy with midnight-blue hair and eyes. Her smile was equally sheepish. “Hi, Elowyn. Pru.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Zafi opened her mouth but then deferred to Midnight Blue.
“We were telling Zafi that our new king saved many of us housed at the palace from certain death.”
My brows arched. “Today?” I hadn’t exactly been able to observe Rush’s every move, but we had been beside each other more often than not.
“No. During the Nuptialis Probatio.” Midnight Blue’s lips pursed in a hard, diminutive, blue line. “We were entertainment .”
“Yeah,” another piped up. “The old, ugly queen had pins put through our wings so we could be viewed as a curiosity .” She spat out the word while Pru and I gasped.
Saffron stirred. Automatically I ran a calming hand along his spine. Midnight Blue followed the movement.
“That’s…” I shook my head. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry!”
“Well…” Midnight Blue frowned. “The new king saved us.”
A teeny green-haired head nodded. “Set us free when most of us just wanted to die.”
“And when the old, ugly queen would have killed him for it too,” chimed one with hair of vibrant red.
“Wow,” I said. “Well, I’m so grateful he was there to free you from that”—I shuddered—“torment. If I could revive Talisa to kill her again just for what she did to you, I would.”
“We’d kill her with you,” said Midnight Blue.
“Saw off her fingers and her toes,” added Fire Orange.
“But first yank off her fingernails,” said Red.
“And every lock of hair on her head,” said Green. “Until we came off with her scalp.”
My mouth twisted in grim appreciation, I nodded.
“And Zafi here…” Midnight Blue said. “She stabbed the old, ugly queen in the eyeball.”
Tinny, squealing cheers went up around the parvnits, several of whom threw up their arms. One lost his balance as he did, his wings zipping behind him to right himself back on the slim ledge.
His hair was a yellow-orange as shocking as the sun, and his stare intent as it settled on Zafi. “We’d been looking everywhere for her.”
“Everywhere but at the palace with the old, ugly queen,” said another.
Zafi’s blush spread until it seemed like it would reach her acorn hat. “It turns out that … they didn’t think I was too plain after all. They’ve wanted me back all this time.”
I stiffened. “Wait. I thought they kicked you out ‘cause you were ‘too plain’ for their snooty asses.”
Midnight Blue pointed her tiny nose into the air in affront. “We did no such thing. Zafi’s one of us.” She crossed her arms over her chest and a frilly matching blue sleeveless shirt. “And we parvnits are not snooty.”
“Elowyn calls us MISOs,” Zafi said somewhat hesitantly.
Midnight Blue, Fire Orange, and Green whipped accusation my way.
“And what, exactly, does MISO mean?” Midnight Blue asked in a dangerous hiss.
“Hey,” Pru started, but Zafi piped up.
“Mini in size only.”
“Oh,” Midnight Blue said, canting her head to one side. “I guess that’s okay.”
Zafi peeked out from behind her crossed arms. “I guess I, uh, kinda misinterpreted things.”
Midnight Blue whirled around. “Yeah, you did. We’d never kick you out.” Her little shoulders softened. “We missed you, Zaf.”
Next Zafi disappeared behind a pile of sniffling, laughing parvnits—or MISOs.
One on the outside of their huddle had shocking violet hair.
“Kamilah?” I said hesitantly.
She turned with a wave of violet. “Yeah?”
“Thanks for helping me swipe that icepick. I never got to use it, but it was the thought that counted.”
Kamilah winked. “You got it. You already paid me back and then some.”
“Yeah well, we’re allies, aren’t we?”
“Always,” came Zafi’s muffled voice. “You’re never gonna get rid of me, El.”
“Hey,” Midnight Blue protested. “You belong with us in the Nerotti Forest.”
Zafi peeked out from around them. “Maybe. Nothing says I can’t be here and there.”
Midnight Blue tsked sternly. “We’ll see about that.”
Then Zafi’s little face disappeared behind the affection of her own again, her acorn hat wobbling perilously.
If the MISO’s greatest problem was being too wanted, I was counting it as another win. The day was piling up with them.
I dropped a kiss to Saffron’s head before resting my cheek on the soft scales of his crest. Tension slipped from me like I was a deflating cushion.
“Come on, best friend,” Pru said, her hand patting my leg. “Elowyn needs some sleep before she has to be queen.”
Without complaint, I allowed her to lead me to Rush, and I didn’t protest either when he scooped me up into his arms, took me to bed, shrugged us out of our clothes and weapons, and curled his body around mine like I was the most precious gift of all our many blessings.