Chapter 27
Weaver could hardly breathe.
Again, he told himself. Pick it up, and try it again.
His head pounded, and his hands burned with a terrible, freezing fire that intensified when he touched the scraps of nightmare-thread. Legs had tried to bind up the fragments when Weaver had first gathered them up, but they’d burned through his spider silk, and he’d gone to hide in Weaver’s pocket.
Nothing was working.
“I can’t,” he panted, dropping the threads again. No one was awake to hear but himself, but the words spilled out anyway. “I—” But he broke off with a shout of pain.
Weaver turned his hands over. His palms were red and blistered. When he pressed them to the icy hall floor, hoping the cold would help, he had to stifle another shout.
The night had gone so wrong.
As his head pulsed again, Weaver thought back to the day he’d first staggered into the apothecary for help. The first time he’d met Dougal, his first friend in the Winter Woods.
The fairies out in Snowlight Square that day had stared at him in curiosity, some even in disdain. But when Weaver had pushed inside the apothecary, clutching his throbbing temples, Selene and Dougal had rushed to help him. No one had asked what was wrong with him before that.
Selene, of course, had become his second friend.
Weaver had been lost from the day of his Arrival.
He hadn’t understood why none of the talent symbols had really responded to him during his talent-choosing ceremony—why he didn’t fit anywhere in this place, and why he dreamed when no one else did.
But he’d been able to trust Dougal and Selene with the truth about his talent just days after he’d met them.
After that, there had been no secrets among the three of them. He’d moved near the apothecary in Snowlight Square so they could all be closer, and even then they’d suggested he just move into one of the rooms above the apothecary.
They’d been his best friends. But when Selene had died, she’d taken the best of Dougal with her. Weaver had told himself he’d do anything to get even one of the two of them back, but he’d been wrong.
Because anything had gone farther than he’d ever intended. And anyway, the old Dougal still hadn’t come back.
Weaver sat back onto his heels and scooped up the ugly little pile of nightmare-thread snippets. Then he put his hands together and pushed.
With the thread between his palms, with everything he had, Weaver did his best to crush the nightmare-thread into nothing. If he could, maybe it would destroy the nightmares slithering through the hall.
But nothing happened.
As the fairies slept on, their cries puncturing the night like needles, Weaver thought of the night Selene hadn’t come home. Of the guilt that had threatened to break his heart, because he’d known she had gone away for him.
It had been terrible. But this? This was no better.
The whole night, he thought again—it had all gone so, so wrong.
Dougal had told him how their plan would work weeks ago, how they would trap the winter fairies with Periwinkle’s nightmares. And since all of this was really Weaver’s fault, he’d told himself that was how it had to be.
People had to understand how Dougal had suffered. If they did, maybe he could finally start to heal.
They’d all deserved it, anyway. Or at least—he’d thought so.
Then Periwinkle had challenged him, and he’d been forced to consider that maybe he really did push other people’s kindness away.
Just as she’d forced him to really see the Keeper and Lord Milori tonight. All their regrets, all their efforts.
Maybe they weren’t enough for Dougal. Maybe they weren’t enough, period. But it didn’t sound like they didn’t care about Selene. It sounded like they cared a lot.
It sounded like Dougal and Weaver weren’t the only ones with limitations, and that for a long time, he’d been choosing resentment and shame because it was easier than reckoning with the truth.
And it meant that they’d gone too far, trying to make everyone understand.
It was agony. Missing Selene, who was gone forever. Feeling guilty, knowing it was in part because of him. Getting better as the fairy flu left him, while Dougal got worse.
They’d both completely failed to see that the winter fairies’ suffering wouldn’t undo their own. Because the fairies’ being trapped in nightmares wouldn’t bring Selene back.
Worst of all, Weaver would never forgive himself for the pain he’d caused Periwinkle. He’d burn with the shame of what he’d done forever. It was why he’d held Dougal back, just for a moment, while she’d cut the nightmare-thread—only to reveal that their plan had spiraled completely out of control.
And now, Weaver was getting nowhere. He cried out in pain again, dropping the snarled pile of thread onto the floor, hands shaking and sizzling with icy heat.
He knew this was pointless, just as he’d known that he’d wrecked things with Periwinkle once and for all when she’d flown away. But he had to try to undo the damage he’d done.
Weaver was a dream-talent. If he couldn’t end the winter fairies’ nightmares, then no one could.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he put his still-burning palms against the heap of nightmare-thread again. A scream tore through his gritted teeth, but he didn’t pull away.
Just then, a shout—not his own—came from the doorway. Weaver turned, shoulders heaving, tears in his eyes as he crouched on the ice.
It couldn’t be her. But—it was her.
“Periwinkle?” He could hardly believe it. He could hardly speak.
She was on a sled harnessed to a huge wolf pup, gripping its reins for dear life as her dream-colored dress swayed around her and the sled moved through the wreckage of the ball.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “There was—I could see the nightmare magic moving through the walls. Pulsing, like it was fading and then reappearing.” Then she noticed his hands, red and blistered, the air smoking around them. “What are you doing?”
Weaver swallowed hard and looked away. His pain wasn’t her problem, on top of everything he’d done. “I was trying to destroy the nightmare-thread.”
“Where are your gloves?” she demanded. “Your hands—”
He hid them behind his back. “The gloves were more hole than fabric pretty soon after I started trying. The nightmares are stronger now that they’re spun, and there were so many of them…
” Weaver let his voice trail off, shaking his head.
Periwinkle fluttered around him, trying to look over his shoulder behind his back, but she drew up short when she came to the end of the pup’s reins.
“Let me see your hands,” she insisted. When Weaver finally produced them, she choked on a sob.
“Weaver—” Periwinkle clapped a hand to her mouth. “How will you—your work—?”
“Don’t,” he interrupted, voice breaking. “They’ll heal, and I deserve it. Everyone here in this hall is suffering worse than this, and it’s entirely my fault.”
Her pale blue eyes searched his face a moment. She was beautiful, soft as starlight.
She’d never forgive him. But it quieted him, just for that moment, just having her there.
“I need you to know that I didn’t know,” he said suddenly.
Periwinkle frowned. “What?”
“I didn’t know,” he repeated. “When Dougal and I were figuring out how to make them understand what we were going through, when I was sending you nightmares, I didn’t know how bad it would be inside them.
Some of my dreams were sad or lonely, but they were never as terrible as yours, and I…
” He hesitated. “It was really me in your nightmare last night, Periwinkle. I went in, and I was shocked. I recognized the dream, because I’d conjured the whole thing up, but I hadn’t understood how awful it would feel to be inside it.
Just like I didn’t know Lord Milori and the Keeper felt guilty or regretful about Selene. ” He paused, finally meeting her eyes.
“And I didn’t know how wrong I was about you,” he said.
“I didn’t know someone could be as kind as you are and still be sharp and bright and capable.
I was the fool here, never you. And the funny thing was what a failure I was at hating you.
” He swallowed. “The second I let you show me who you were, you won me over, like you do everyone else.”
Fear. Embarrassment. Guilt. Relief. Loneliness. Confusion. Longing. A hundred feelings churned inside Weaver as he waited for her to answer, and the longing was the worst of all. “Please say something.”
Periwinkle knelt beside him. In the center of the destroyed party, all the light in the room seemed to gather around her.
“Here,” she said quietly, reaching for his ruined hands. Weaver’s stomach bottomed out at her touch.
She’d reached for him before, of course. He’d kissed her, held her. But Weaver had been lying to her then.
Her gentleness now that the truth had come out was more than he could stand.
Frost, cold and soothing, spread softly across his palms, and his wings trembled at the relief.
“Our frost’s like a little blanket,” she said quietly. Legs, seeming to recognize her presence, peered out the top of Weaver’s pocket, and Periwinkle brushed a soft finger over his head. While a smile crossed her face, Weaver granted himself one easy breath.
She was perfect. It was just a shame he’d spent so long pretending he despised her for it.
Then he reached for the pile of thread again.
“Stop!” Periwinkle gripped his wrist. “By the second star, what are you doing?”
“What do you think? This can’t go on,” he said, gesturing at the snarl of thread. He ached with regret when she let go of his arm. “None of them deserve this, and I have to stop it.”
Not that he knew how. Weaver had done his job too well.
Periwinkle took a long breath. “I have another plan.”
“Another plan?” He frowned.
Periwinkle explained. “The spindle and the scissors were tools to shape the dreams, but they couldn’t create or destroy them—which is why the scissors could cut the nightmare-thread, but not break its power.” She paused. “But maybe dreams can.”