67. September 19, 2202 Winchester, Massachusetts
The metallic scent of cold air and wet pavement gives way to rotting leaves. The earth is cool and damp beneath Beatrix’s palms. Familiar. She pulls herself to her feet, brushes the dirt from her hands. She is in her clearing.
“Hello, Beatrix. It’s been such a very long time, hasn’t it?”
She spins to find the faerie sitting on the low bough of an ancient oak, just like that first night. Her deep red hair hangs loose to her waist, and her dress flows around her like a river of stars. Her eyes glow, triumphant.
Beatrix’s heart pounds against her ribs. “I didn’t think time was something you bothered with.”
“I could say the same about you,” she replies.
Beatrix smirks at her. “No. Time doesn’t bother with me.”
The faerie stands in front of her now. Beatrix gasps at her sudden closeness, stumbles back. “My condolences,” the faerie says. Her two-toned gaze rakes over Beatrix. “I am ever so sorry for your loss.”
Her loss.
How could the faerie know anything of her loss?
His eyes, shining with that familiar spark every time he returned to her. The only eyes that saw her. Really saw her, as she truly was.
The curve of his mouth, tilted into a smile whenever he looked at her. The ghost of it remaining on his lips, even as he slept. Those lips on hers.
His touch against the hollow of her back as they danced, as if the space were made for his hand. The soft depth of his voice whispering in her ear. The feel of dark curls slipping through her fingers.
Her body pulled into his. Wrapped in him. Tangled with him.
That is her loss.
“Just say the word, and you can rest,” the faerie says, as if Beatrix will merely be going to sleep instead of forfeiting her soul. It’s a striking impersonation of kindness. Beatrix almost believes it. But there’s a sickly sweetness in the faerie’s tone, hiding something rotten underneath.
“What are you so smug about?” Beatrix asks.
The faerie leans close. Her eyes gleam in the darkness. “Tell me, what were the chances you’d find him again, in a different century, in a different country, without even searching for him?”
An icy dread settles in the pit of Beatrix’s stomach, somehow heavy and hollow all at once. “Impossible.”
The realization cascades through her. It was impossible. Oliver said it himself, walking with her along the canal in Venice. She didn’t listen, because she was impossible, too. She only smiled up at him and said—
“Nearly.”
Beatrix’s heart plummets. “You?”
The faerie grins, a proud and wicked thing.
“You brought us together?” She feels hot, queasy. “Why would you do that?”
“You refused me, Beatrix. Threw away a perfect immortal existence for a miserable human life. I had to show you the truth. So, I gave you what you wanted. Exactly what you asked for. Love. Joy. Sorrow.”
Beatrix’s blood runs cold. Her words did this. “Did you kill him?”
The faerie laughs. “My methods are not so crude. He was already dying when he crossed your path in London. I only ensured you met him again.”
Beatrix stares at the faerie, a question in her heart she is so afraid to ask she considers swallowing the words and burying it deep. But she could never bury it deep enough. “Did he love me? Or was that all your doing, too?”
The faerie scoffs. “Love. Is that all you care about? Yes, the pathetic thing loved you, until his last breath.”
Bile rises in Beatrix’s throat. Oliver is gone.
The faerie leans close. “Are you ready to end this?”
Beatrix looks to the river, as still and dark as ebony glass.
I take it back.
Those four little words have brought her to the Wye, brought her to this decision. Four little words that mean so much more than they say.
I regret my wish.
I regret my life.
I regret loving him.
“I made a mistake,” Beatrix says.
The faerie smiles, wide and feral. A wolf’s smile.
“I don’t take it back. My love. My life. I don’t regret them.” The words send warmth surging through her, as if the realization has thawed something inside her.
The faerie’s smile falters.
“I don’t regret choosing this existence.” It has been a hard life. It has been work. But it has been real and it has been hers and more than she could have ever hoped for.
The satisfaction in the faerie’s gaze vanishes, replaced by something Beatrix has never seen there before. Shock. Her vision swims, and a tingling warmth blooms through her chest, spreads through her limbs. “What are you doing to me?”
“This is your doing,” the faerie spits.
The warmth turns to pinpricks, as if her entire body is waking from sleep. “I didn’t agree!”
But the faerie doesn’t need her permission.
The pinpricks turn to knives, stabbing through her.
She collapses on the forest floor, her voice lost. The earth under her cheek smells like rotting leaves and moss, but the cool damp offers no comfort.
She is burning alive. It’s like Barnbow.
Worse than Barnbow. There is no one here to help her now.
A shadow falls over Beatrix. The faerie leans close and hisses in her ear, her breath a cool, cruel breeze on her cheek. “You will live to regret this moment. And then you will keep on living.”
Until she didn’t regret it anymore.
The pain burns itself out in a blaze that leaves her breathless, her curse consumed by flame. The deep night is unsettled around her, charged against her skin. Changed. Or maybe that is her.
She pulls herself off the ground. She feels hollow, an empty shell of the person who used to be Beatrix. Maybe she is. She has lived so long with Oliver’s love and the faerie’s curse, maybe she is nothing without them.
The faerie kneels at the edge of the Wye, staring into the dark water. Beatrix approaches her, but the faerie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She glances at the faerie’s moonlit reflection. Her eyes don’t look like hers when she looks into the river, either.
“Am I free?” Beatrix asks.
“You’re mortal.” The faerie spits the word, as if it tastes foul on her tongue.
Her heart leaps. Mortal. Human. Real.
The faerie draws her mismatched gaze from the water to meet Beatrix’s own. A gasp escapes her. The glow has dimmed, the triumph gone, and she can see every one of the faerie’s years there. Too many.
The faerie sighs. “Are you ready to return to your human life, Beatrix?”
But her heart sinks. It isn’t a return to her human life. It can’t be. That life was stolen from her. That life is gone.
She’ll have to start over.
“No.”
The faerie’s gaze flares brighter. “No?”
Beatrix has known intimate love, soaring joy, and profound sorrow.
She has grieved for the state of the world and has been awestruck by its beauty.
Stood in wonder of its people. Stood in fear of them.
Has made too many memories to count. There can be no life more human than the ones she has already lived.
Her heart skips. “I want to strike a new bargain.”
The faerie sneers at her. “I thought you would have learned your lesson by now.”
Beatrix has learned her lesson. Has played the night she died over and over in her mind, wondering where she went wrong—what she could have done, could have said, differently.
What turn of phrase would have brought her back to her husband and her daughter and her life, instead of damning her to an eternity alone.
It has taken her nearly seven hundred years to understand: There was never a way back.
The faerie was never going to return her to that life—not when it stood in the way of what she so desperately wanted.
Now, the only thing standing in her way is Beatrix.
“Bring Oliver back.”
The faerie scoffs at her. “I’m not in the business of mercy.”
“I know,” Beatrix says. “But you want my soul, and this is how you get it. Save Oliver, and it’s yours.”
The faerie tilts her head. Her face is like a porcelain mask, pale and unreadable, beautiful yet terrifying, human but not. “Your soul for his life?”
“No tricks? No curse?” Beatrix warns.
The faerie shrugs. “He could drop dead tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be my doing.”
“Then yes.” Her soul for his soul, her heart for his heart, her life for his life. All her love to save him.
Like his love saved her.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” the faerie asks. Smug. Satisfied.
Beatrix peers into the black waters of the Wye, and her fear—everything—falls away. A quiet, heavy peace settles over her, chases that cold and aching loneliness from her bones.
She looks into the faerie’s expectant eyes. “Do it.”
“Done.” The faerie latches onto her arm, her grip so fierce Beatrix fears her bones are breaking.
And then she gives her to the river.