Chapter 22 #3
It started as a chuckle, then grew into full-throated laughter that echoed across the clearing. “Puck,” he gasped between fits of mirth. “Robin Goodfellow, that obnoxious little botfly. You want to put him in charge of both courts?”
“It is quite perfect if you think of it.” There was a wicked humor Abigail’s voice now. “He is too insane to be corruptible by power, too clever to be manipulated by the nobles, and too fundamentally decent to let either court dominate the other.”
“And a perfect punishment for the fae that I have come to abhor,” Valroy agreed, his laughter tapering off into delighted chuckles. “Yes. Yes, I approve. Let them try to manage their careful politics and ancient grudges with Puck as their guide. It's beautifully cruel.”
He rose to his feet, groaning in pain. “Very well, my beloved wife. I accept your terms. But know this—the moment you cease to be yourself, the moment you become nothing more than an echo of who you were, I will return to this world. And I will have my revenge upon everyone who forced us to this choice.” He offered her a hand.
“With you by my side,” Abigail rose to meet him, “haunting my dreams and nightmares, that day will never come to pass.”
Valroy kissed the back of her hand, and together they turned to face Ava. “Do it,” he said simply.
Ava looked at them—at the forces of creation and destruction choosing love over duty, choosing each other over the very purposes for which they had been made—and felt her heart break for them.
Serrik walked over to Ava, a weak and weary smile threatening to hold purchase on his face before it faded. He placed a hand on her shoulder before moving to stand behind her.
Taking a deep breath, she let it out, and resumed her chanting, her voice growing stronger as the ritual neared its conclusion. The cracks in reality widened, revealing the silver threads and infinite libraries of the Web.
A portal opened before them, swirling with silver light and the whisper of a million dreams. Valroy and Abigail stepped toward it hand in hand, and just before they crossed the threshold, Abigail turned back.
“Take care of them, Weaver,” she said. “All of them. The dreams, the nightmares, the impossible ones who choose to love despite everything.”
“I will,” Ava promised, though her voice broke on the words.
And then they were gone, disappearing into the Web like figures stepping into a mirror. The portal closed behind them with a sound like distant thunder, leaving only the echo of their presence and the memory of their sacrifice.
In that moment, the great and terrible tree simply…ceased to exist. One second there, one second gone, like a magic trick. It was taken with Valroy into the Web. The Maze was him, after all.
Alex stood alone now, her purple hair darkened with blood, her body trembling with exhaustion. She looked around at the others—at Ava with her book of power, at Serrik struggling to stay on his feet but stalwart in his support of Ava—and squared her shoulders.
“Well,” she said with forced lightness, “I suppose this is goodbye.” She looked at the hole in the ground where the great tree with all its rusted swords and weaponry had been a few moments prior.
“Can’t help but feel like I got the shit end of all this…
but I’ll try not to let Puck burn down all of Tir n'Aill in the first week.
I'd hate for this sacrifice to be meaningless.”
“Goodbye, Alex. I…wish we could have been better friends.”
“Yeah. Me too.” She smiled faintly at Ava. “Hopefully you can still send letters, yeah?” Her expression fell. She wiped at tears that gathered at the corner of her eyes. “You and Izzy would have really gotten along.”
Her heart broke. Absolutely shattered in her chest. Ava might have gotten to leave this with Serrik alive…which seemed impossible—she hadn’t wrapped her head around it. Abigail and Valroy both survived. Somehow.
But Alex? Izael was still dead.
She was still alone. Doomed to a slow death of the mind over the centuries as she simply became a function and not a person.
“Yeah…I—”
“Just finish it.” Alex shut her eyes. “Just finish it and be done with this. I want to go home.”
Home. What a stupid, silly word. A word that had no meaning to her anymore. Nodding, she swallowed the rock in her throat and resumed chanting, tears streaming down her face as she spoke the final words of the ritual.
The worlds screamed as they tore apart.
They separated with a sound that made her ears ring, three realities that had been pressed together in unnatural fusion finally finding their proper places in the cosmic order. The pain of it was indescribable—like having pieces of her soul ripped away and scattered to the winds.
But it was done.
It was finished.
When it was over, Ava found herself standing in a field of ordinary grass under an ordinary sky, clutching Book to her chest like a lifeline. Beside her, Serrik swayed, staggered, but somehow stayed standing, his golden eyes dim with exhaustion.
“Is it…done?” he asked quietly.
Ava looked around at the world that was once again simply Earth—no floating buildings, no singing trees, no impossible fusion of realities. In the distance, she could see the Boston skyline, solid and real and exactly where it was supposed to be.
“It's done,” she confirmed.
They stood together in the field, alone. The weight of what they had lost echoed in the silence—friends who had returned to dreams, lovers who had sacrificed themselves to save the worlds, the simple joy of a reality where anything was possible.
But they had each other. And perhaps, in the end, that was enough.
Serrik's hand found hers, solid and warm and real. “What happens now?”
Ava looked down at the golden bracelet around her wrist, at the tome in her other hand, at the spider she loved standing beside her in a world that was theirs to protect.
“Now? We…find our meaning and we stand guard to make sure their sacrifices meant something.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind—somewhere in a presence in her soul she couldn’t quite feel but just knew, between what was and what could be—the Web hummed with the presence of two lovers who had chosen eternity together over the destruction of everything they held dear.
It was not the ending any of them had wanted.
But it was the ending they had chosen.
And in the end, perhaps that was what made all the difference.