Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Water cascaded out of my lungs faster than a spigot the second I regained consciousness.
A pro at drowning by this point, I bent forward, angling myself to allow gravity to do its job, waiting for the end of the eruption so I could breathe.
Once my lungs decided they’d had enough of dying for today, I fell on my side, curling into a tight ball, my body battered.
“It’s a shame we keep meeting this way.”
The soft feminine voice trickled through my consciousness like a honeybee, soothing and mellow in all the right ways. I knew who spoke before I opened my eyes, and decided maybe it would be a good idea to have some humility in front of a goddess.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any.
“Maybe we can find a different way? One where I don’t die?” I croaked.
“It’s more a matter of allowing yourself to soften to hear the voice around you. It’s a shame most people are unable to do so long enough to listen.”
Faerie—the goddess, not the land—spoke from directly beside me. When I pried my eyes open, sunlight pierced my corneas.
I sat up and my gaze landed on Faerie perched on a smooth flat stone a few feet away. Meadow flowers reached for the sunlight, their petals open, the muted glow of sunlight brushing gold strokes over a canvas of clover.
Sweet fragrance perfumed the air, and at the edge of the meadow a willow bent in a lazy dance, swaying in a breeze I didn’t feel.
I pushed soggy hair out of my face. “I like this place better than the last.”
Faerie offered a grin that was like the sunrise itself. “It’s one of my favorites as well.”
An intense blue sky stretched above us, dotted with an afterthought of thin clouds. I’d thought the colors sharper, the scents richer when I first came to the Fae world from the mortal plane. But wherever Faerie called home made both worlds look like a washed-out TV signal.
“The Meadow of the Arised. It’s an in-between, a place where souls go if they are not quite ready for the Summerlands,” Faerie explained. She brushed a hand down the front of a gown the color of fresh purple clover buds and starlight. “It’s a comfort.”
“So…I’m actually dead this time?” I asked.
Her smile wavered. “Almost.”
My heart thundered, the slight sorrow narrowing her eyes murdering the last of my hope.
“The Sylphs are trying to save your life.”
“Will they succeed?”
“Even I don’t know the answer to that.”
Goddesses deserved a healthy dose of bowing and scraping along with humility, didn’t they? But this was the second time I’d seen Faerie, the goddess who spoke to my mother and put us all on this path against our will, and…fuck.
I didn’t want to be here.
Fissures of anger opened up inside me, the first cracking before the volcano blew. Rage curled my fingers in the meadow greenery, but the crushed grass sprang back good as new.
“What the hell was the point of all of this if I’m going to die?” I demanded.
Faerie blinked at me, indulgent, as I pushed up to my knees and stood. The motion brought us roughly face to face although she hadn’t moved from her perch on the stone.
“All this trouble, hurting people I care about and putting them in danger, practically killing myself to undo the damage I’ve done, only to die?”
“You may not die.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted or needed to hear and sliced through me like a honed blade.
“And if you don’t, then you will live to do what I hoped from you from the moment you were a thought in your mother’s head, Octavia. You will unite my world.”
The blade turned into a sledgehammer and cracked every bone it encountered on the way to the pit beneath my feet. “You say that like it isn’t impossible.”
Faerie rose from the stone, a flutter of controlled emotion, but her eyes were storms. They thundered across the valley, and for the first time since I’d met her, I knew this being wasn’t one to mess with.
She’d burn the Meadow of the Arised to ash and any dead who happened to wander through it.
“When your mother and father chose to love each other, they put the wheels into motion. I clearly saw a path forward in how to unite my realm. Out of all the possible options, the timelines and eventualities, you were the only one who made sense. Only your birth, your soul, gave me the necessary components to make the impossible possible.”
“So this was all put into motion by my parents.” Unwillingly—and unknowingly, I’d bet. Faerie was enterprising. “Why can’t you fix this? Why did it have to be me? You’re a goddess. It’s your realm.”
If a goddess or a god couldn’t do those mystical, magical realm-saving things, then how did anyone expect me to do it?
I was a nobody. A half-breed who shouldn’t even exist.
I’d made enemies from the second I took my first breath.
Why did it have to be me?
The willow tree bent closer, fine strands brushing against my shoulders in a comforting gesture. Or maybe it was my imagination.
“I have little control over the realm now, because I operate on a separate plane of existence. With the people’s lack of interest, my tether disconnected, but my love has never waned.
Nor has my hope for a better future for my people.
I am woven together with its fabric but I cannot touch it anymore. Not like a mortal can.”
Both times I’d seen Faerie, I’d been on the brink of death. Was she dead, too?
She read the expressions my face refused to hide and one half of her mouth arched higher. “In a way, yes, I am dead. My physical form has long since returned to the darkness between stars though my essence remains.”
I shivered. A being as powerful as Faerie had once lived and thrived. Maybe not mortal but something other than what she was now.
“I used to be worshiped as a goddess.” Her arms stretched wide.
“In those days, I was real. I existed on the plane you know as Faerie. I had more control then. But as my people forgot and turned away from worship and ceremony, I faded.” Her hand traveled up her flat abdomen to rest above her heart.
“Now I’m here, in a strange limbo state between worlds, no body, no movement back to your plane of existence.
I’m only able to control the weather and keep the land healthy. Nothing else.”
The breeze bound us together and the longer I watched, the easier it was to actually feel it on my skin. Was that a good thing? Or bad?
“Wait… Are you the one who set off the disasters? To have such awful things happen to the Fevar, the Encantado…”
“No. Of course not. It was, I’m sorry to say, the unfortunate side effect of unlocking your magic.”
I winced, wrapping my arms around myself. The temperature hadn’t changed but the chill in my blood wasn’t unexpected. Truth revealed what I’d already known.
“Power cannot simply exist. It must be balanced somehow—” Faerie cut off abruptly, stared into the distance for a moment, and then smiled. Her shoulders dropped, posture eased. “You’re safe now.”
My chin lifted. “I’ll live?”
“When it’s all said and done, Octavia, and you have reunited the realm, will you remember me? Will you bring back my people to me?”
The meadow behind her grew clearer as Faerie faded.
Before I had a chance to answer, I blacked out, yanked from the meadow and thrown back into a world of cold and pain and terrible things.
I woke up with a gasp and rolled over, coughing and spitting out the rest of the flood water. It was like an entire fucking ocean came out of me. My tongue tasted of debris and I plucked bits of plants from between my teeth.
Strong cool bodies kept me stabilized until I finished coughing. A film of tears covered my eyes.
“Tavi, breathe. You’re all right.”
Veylan held me, touched me, so I saw him and half a dozen other Sylphs. Magic glowed around their ethereal hands as with the last dregs of power they’d worked to save me from drowning.
My body burned. Small rivulets of water cut through the city alleyways, trickling into something soft and easy to handle.
I sensed it without having to see it.
There it was. Proof of what I’d done.
I was alive. So were the Sylph. Veylan kept his arm around my shoulder as the Sylph dedicated themselves to me for my service.
But this time…no, they were not warriors.
“We are monks,” Veylan explained, rocking me as gently as any father. “A dying race who worship Faerie. That’s why we had gathered. Our annual celebration of Faerie brought Sylph from across the land to our capital for worship.”
The others dropped to their knees with murmured prayers for me to the goddess who sent me back to this world of density and pain.
“Wait.” I blinked and pushed up from Veylan. “You pray to Faerie?”
Once again the tugging of strings, the maneuvering of an unseen force beyond rationality moved events and people like game board pieces and brought me here.
To them.
“We do,” a young Sylph supplied. “We’ve preserved the faith for centuries. Faerie is our earth, our air, our water. I believe she is similar to your Gaia? That’s the name you call her in your mortal world, right?”
Throat raw, I managed a nod.
“We keep her worship alive. We offer ourselves to our goddess and to our land. She is the force binding us.” The rune on Veylan’s forehead gave another low pulse, like a heartbeat, and I finally understood.
Sloshing, I faced him.
“Then I don’t want your thanks. Instead, go out and build temples to the Faerie goddess. Everywhere. Not just in your cities but throughout the land. Share the worship of your goddess in places you’ve never gone before. That’s what I ask.”
The young Sylph beamed at me. “It would be our honor, goddess.”
I wasn’t on Faerie’s level and we all knew it. But it felt harder, more work and effort, to correct her. Especially when the other supplicants on their knees chanted a low murmuring song. It swelled in volume and I swore the earth reacted.
Fresh blossoms spread from the muddied banks where streets had been. The flood had deposited all manner of debris and detritus. They had their work cut out for them, but this was what Faerie had asked of me without saying it outright.