Chapter Thirty-Nine
Trapped beneath deep, dark waters, I sway in and out of consciousness, voices blurring in my ears. Nothing feels real. I am heavy as stone, sinking through relentless darkness. I have fallen over the edge of the world into a starless void.
“You have to do something!” Conrad is shouting. “We’re losing her!”
“She gave too much. I can’t—”
“Save her, Morgaine. You saw what she did! She saved your life!”
“I know what she did. Bring her, quickly!”
I’m being carried, I think, feeling vaguely jostled against something warm and soft. Conrad? No, his arm . . . it must be Morgaine. Voices rush around me; I cannot tell up from down.
“Is she—? Can you find a pulse?” Conrad’s tone is frantic and full of dread.
I want to call to him, but I cannot control my tongue. I am lost in my own body, unmoored from myself. Trying to recall what it feels like to bend my fingers, I find I cannot.
“Rose, Rose, can you hear me? Hold fast. Don’t give up now. Don’t leave me.”
Conrad murmurs my name again and again; I feel I am trapped beneath a layer of ice, swimming desperately, searching for him, but he is no more than a vague shadow above, out of reach. I scream for him, but he cannot hear; only silent bubbles burst from my lips.
“She’s fading fast.” Morgaine’s voice is low. “It may be too late.”
Hands smooth back my hair. The faerie queen kisses my forehead, and at her touch, a steady rush of magic shoots to the tips of my fingers and toes and curls in the ends of my hair. Her breath warms the dying embers of my soul, and I grow warm.
“Live, Rose Pryor,” she whispers.
The initial tingle of her magic fades slowly, sinking into me. I feel soft inside, my heart pleasantly light. Her hands are warm on my skin, and the energy filling me is strange.
She is channeling her own essence into me.
She is giving me her life, as I gave her mine.
Between the worlds of waking and sleep, I waver.
Conrad is there every moment, murmuring to me; even when I cannot make out the words, the patterns of his voice are enough to soothe my restlessness.
I follow his voice like it is a lamp and I a traveler lost in a mire.
I do not care how long the journey takes, as long as he is beside me.
An hour may pass, or a year. Voices come to me in flashes like lightning, there and gone, and I have no way of knowing how long the darkness between them endures.
I can only drift and wait, always feeling as if I am sinking.
When I manage to surface, I cast about for him, and he is there, my name honey on his lips.
Sometimes, I hear him singing in a warm baritone the traveling songs of his mother’s people, some of them in a vibrant language I do not know.
And then, finally, I wake.
It’s morning, and I am in the queen’s grand bed in Elfhame.
Conrad is sitting beside me, slumped over it in sleep.
His head rests on one hand, while the other lies over mine, a bandage wrapped from his wrist to his elbow.
With a flutter of alarm, I recall the sword he blocked to protect his little sister, taking the bite of steel into his own flesh.
I am very weak, but for now I am content to stare at him. The glow of the Dwirra’s light turns his skin gold. He looks worried, even in his sleep.
How much time has passed? How long has he been at my side?
His hair is a mess, his jaw unshaven, and he wears a loose white shirt, half unbuttoned.
The smooth planes of his chest rise and fall with deep sleep.
My eyes trace the curve of his throat, the hollow of his collarbone, the small white scars on his shoulder from the battle against the fire-bears.
“He has barely left your side for a moment,” says a voice.
I stir, shifting my head just enough to see the faerie queen in the doorway. She wears a gown of black, the bodice studded with dark sapphires, the sleeves like dark snakeskin hugging her wrists. In her hair, her spiders weave between the spikes of her silver crown.
I tense all over, but she raises a hand.
“I am not here to hurt you,” she says. “The opposite, rather.”
I remember her breathing life into me, filling me with her magic. “What happened?”
“You committed the greatest sin a Weaver could. You touched the threads of fate, rewove the fabric of reality that is no one’s right to alter—mortal or immortal.
” She steps closer, and I see how thin and exhausted she is, though being fae, she hides it well.
“But you healed the Dwirra Tree. And you saved Conrad’s life.
My brother’s last blow would have killed him, and he’d have slaughtered me and my daughter next, if you had not stolen his strength from him. ”
“I hardly knew what I was doing,” I whisper.
“I know.” She arches a brow. “It was madness, to touch those threads. If your life energy had not been bound to my brother’s, you would surely be dead.”
“How am I still alive?”
“Because another paid the price. And because for all your faults, mortal maid, your heart is strong.” She gives me a strange look, almost—if I can dare imagine it—respectful. “I’d thought I’d seen the last of the moorwitches centuries ago. It seems I was wrong.”
“Another?” I ask, my heart dropping. My eyes dart to Conrad, to assure myself that he is in fact breathing.
For a moment, she simply looks at me, her expression bemused.
Then she sniffs and adds, “Conrad is well, save for the arm. And you have him to thank, for he would not let you die.” Her lips twist. “Or rather, he would not let me let you die. I was able to draw a little of your life back out of the tree, just a thimble’s worth of you, but it was enough.
I helped nurture that remnant back to strength.
You may feel strangely for a while, and it would be best to touch no iron until the effects of my and my brother’s energy fades.
A bit of us both still courses through you, supplementing your system until your own essence is fully restored. ”
Judging by her gaunt form and tired eyes, she’s been healing me at great cost to herself.
“Lachlan?” I ask. “I felt him, at the end. That is, the link between us . . .”
Her face darkens; she looks away, out the window. “My brother is dead.”
She goes on to explain that Lachlan had spoken true: to touch the Fate’s threads is to pay with one’s life.
But my life was not my own anymore. It was Lachlan’s, thanks to our twisted bargain.
My thread and his, tied together, our fates bound in that final moment.
And when the Fates’ price was exacted, it was his thread that was cut.
And the only reason I still breathe is because Morgaine pulled me back at the last minute.
I shudder, thinking of any part of Lachlan’s soul being tied to mine.
I recall the thread of him running through me, like the wrong blood in my veins.
How strange that it was his cursed bond with me that saved my life, like a rope tethering me to the world of the living after I’d thrown myself off a cliff.
How strange to think of him gone, so suddenly and completely. My terrifying phantom who has haunted me since I was a child, part protector, part tormentor.
In a warped way, he saved me twice.
With Lachlan fallen, Morgaine and all her fae—fueled with a surge of energy from the restored Dwirra tree—had quickly turned the tide and beaten back Lachlan’s forces.
Of the scores he brought with him into Elfhame, nearly all the survivors bowed the knee then and there, their appetite for war lost along with their leader.
“And what about Sylvie? And the MacDougals? How long has it been since—?”
She lifts a hand, stopping me. “He will wake soon, and he can fill you in on the rest. Conserve your strength.”
She places her hand on my shoulder, and I feel a tingling current flow from her into me. When it’s done, her cheeks seem slightly hollower, her skin a shade paler.
“Cherish him for me,” she says softly, her gaze moving to Conrad. Her fingers brush his hair, almost hesitantly. Regret is heavy in her eyes. “I have loved him, you know.”
She leaves soundlessly, her willow-thin form still regal despite her emaciated appearance.
I am left feeling strangely awed; I wonder if I could ever begin to understand her; how long she has lived, how much pain she has sown, and how much joy she has lost. I wonder if in all the world there exists another creature like her.
Moments later, Conrad rouses with a groan. He looks at me, then sits up quickly, sucking in a breath.
“Rose!”
I smile.
“You’re—you’re awake.”
“Thanks to you, I believe.”
“For a while there, I wasn’t sure . . .” He swallows, his eyes blinking away shadows. “It doesn’t matter now. You’re here and alive. Fates, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear your voice.”
“I really don’t,” I say. “How long has it been? How is your arm?”
“Two weeks. And it is healing just fine.”
Longer than it felt, shorter than I feared. “Sylvie—?”
“She’s all right, thanks to you. She’s at home, with Mrs. MacDougal.” He gives me a curious look. “I saw you did some more rearranging while I was away. Though I must say, you got a little carried away with the vines. I couldn’t even get into my bedroom.”
I groan, letting my head fall back on my pillow. “Is the manor even standing?”
“Barely. We’ve set up house in the stable for now, though Sylvie spends most of her time here.” He laughs ruefully. “She’s more fae than human these days.”
“So it’s true. She’s really Morgaine’s daughter.”
Conrad drops his gaze, his thumb gently rubbing my palm. “I couldn’t tell you, Rose, even though I wanted to. Sylvie’s secret was not mine to give, and I swore to my father I would never put her in danger by revealing it.”
“I understand now why you kept her magic from her. It was so Lachlan would never know about her, wasn’t it?”
“Aye. Morgaine told me if Sylvie never accessed her fae energy, it would eventually fade away, leaving her fully human. It was what we all wanted for her, because if she’d grown up here in Elfhame, she’d have always been surrounded by possible assassins.
Lachlan has long had loyalists in this court, and any one of them could have killed Sylvie in an attempt to weaken the queen. ”
“And then I came along and exposed her anyway.”
He waves that aside with a frown. “In truth, Rose, even if I was too stubborn a bastard to admit it to myself, I think a part of me wanted her to learn. I should never have withheld her own heritage from her.”
“So what happens now? Does she remain in Elfhame?”
It is a moment before he answers. “Now that all the exiled fae have returned home, Morgaine has decided to seal off Elfhame. For good.”
My eyebrows rise. “What . . . what does that mean?”
“It means no more traveling between the worlds, not even by threadwalking. She only held it open this long because so many of her people still lingered in our world. She refused to abandon them, despite their treason toward her. But with the Briar King defeated and the fae reunited, there is no more reason for her to keep the ways between the worlds open.”
“So what does that mean for you and Sylvie, as the last of the North line?”
“It means as soon as you’re well enough to leave and we say farewell to this place for the last time . . .” He sits back, looking around the room with something almost like regret, but there’s no denying the excitement in his eyes. “Our duty to the fae will be done.”
“You’ll be free? Well and truly free, Conrad?”
He nods, his eyes sparking.
“And Sylvie?”
“Sylvie will be allowed to choose.” His jaw tenses. “This world, or ours.”
“Ah.” I can see he’s worried what choice she’ll make, but I’m not. I know what Sylvie loves more than anything else in the world. But I can see Conrad will not be convinced until the time comes and she tells him herself.
“But that’s weeks away still,” he says. “All you need to worry about is getting better. No more of this tedious balancing on death’s doorstep.
It is quite aggravating, you know.” His eyes tease, though the worried lines do not leave the skin around them.
“Do make up your mind about whether you’d rather live or die, will you, so the rest of us can plan accordingly. ”
“Well, it does seem every time you try to get rid of me, I just pop up again. My tenth fault is, after all, rebelliousness.”
“Rose.” He wraps his hand around mine, an exasperated smile softening his features.
Fates, how lovely he is, his hair tossed and his eyes bright and his skin washed in gold.
“I’m trying to say thank you. Though I could spend the rest of my life trying to say thank you and never come close to expressing what I feel.
I owe you everything, do you realize that? ”
The rest of my life.
Those words drift around us like down, settling in the core of my soul.
I try to squeeze his hand, but do not have the strength even for that. “You don’t owe anyone anything now. You’re free.”
He stares at me for a long while, and I capture this image of him, pulling it deep into my heart, so that I can forget what he looked like kneeling before the Dwirra, his chest heaving and his eyes full of despair.
I hope, suddenly and fiercely, for a thousand more such moments, of him content and near and beautiful.
I curse my weak state, for I want, more than anything, to sit up and grab hold of his hair and bring his mouth to mine.
“We are both free,” I whisper, falling asleep again before the words have fully left my lips.