CHAPTER SIX
Hearts didn’t do things like crack or break. I knew that. It was just a figure of speech, and people said it to express unimaginable pain.
But in that moment, I swore I felt my heart break all over again. I stared up at that hulking silhouette, trying to reconcile the voice of my best friend coming out of it. The boy I’d built sandcastles with and taught to swim, now a thing that could fly, tear, and kill.
“Ollie?” I whispered.
I’d barely uttered his name when he shifted and jumped from the roof. I’d expected him to land forcefully, like thunder shaking the ground. But Oliver used his wings as if he’d had them his entire life, flapping them to temper his weight.
As his feet struck the earth, his movements were startlingly graceful.
Every time I’d imagined Oliver’s monstrous form, or pictured him murdering those people, he’d moved like the stuff of nightmares.
Blurred, abrupt, unnatural. The fact that Oliver seemed so at ease in this body, so right, made my stomach churn.
Then he stepped into the faint light, and every coherent thought left my head.
I’d seen his beastly form once before, when Oliver had broken free of the dreamscape, but my mind had been dim with shock.
Numbed by horror. Now I stared at every detail of the monster I had created so many years ago.
He truly was the stuff of nightmares. A creature that only a child’s mind could create at its most imaginative … or its most frightened.
The only clothing Oliver wore was a pair of dark, faded jeans.
Moonlight gleamed on his bare skin, forcing me to notice how the lines of his body were different than before.
His limbs were sharper than they used to be, the lines harder.
The golden cast to his skin was mostly gone, too, as if he hadn’t spent a moment in the sun since he’d left the small world we once shared.
His wings weren’t reminiscent of angels or fairy tales.
They were dark, almost a deep emerald at certain angles.
Some parts looked like thin, stretched leather.
Similar to a bat’s wings, if bats had feathers, I thought distantly, shifting my focus to the rest of him.
Oliver stood there without a word, enduring my examination.
Long claws grew where his fingernails should have been.
Black veins still crisscrossed his skin wherever I could see it—his wrists, his throat, his jaw.
The only unchanged parts of Oliver were the general shape of his face and that bright hair.
Well, those weren’t the only parts, I thought faintly. There was one other feature, one aspect about this creature that was completely, utterly, and wholly Ollie. A pang of uncertainty went through me, and I reached up without thinking, my hand trembling.
In the barest of touches, my fingers brushed over Oliver’s freckles.
In an instant, the same moment I made contact, the monstrous features melted away.
As if there had been a spell tucked beneath my fingertips, or magic that only worked when we were together.
Within seconds, he was my Ollie again. The black veins melted away, the claws retreated, and his body shifted into the familiar shape I’d known in the dreamscape.
Into the person I’d fallen in love with so very, very long ago.
I stepped back, and my hand fell limply to my side.
Both of us were silent while we waited for the other to speak.
As Oliver looked at me with his sad blue eyes, I told myself to stay focused on what he’d done.
I commanded myself to hold onto my hatred, and remember the vow I’d made.
Oliver would pay for what he had taken from me.
He was a rabid dog that needed to be put down.
But I’d been telling myself these things for months. Standing in front of Oliver now, all I could feel was the pain. And then I heard myself whisper, “Was any of it real?”
I didn’t even try to pretend that I didn’t care.
With anyone else, I would’ve donned the mask of the Unseelie Queen, or built such thick walls around myself that nothing could’ve breached them.
Oliver was different. He’d always been different, and Collith had known that.
I had known that. It was why I’d been doubting myself all these months.
Fearing that when this moment came, I would succumb to these exact feelings.
So I did what I’d told myself to do, and I remembered the moment Finn had died in my arms.
Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, I bent my wrist and began to tug out the holy knife hidden beneath my sleeve.
I hadn’t counted on facing Oliver at this proximity, and stabbing him in the heart would be far more effective than shooting him with a bullet.
Whatever the Beast was, he’d been formed of Fallen magic, and our kind responded to traditional weapons the most.
Oliver searched my expression, his eyebrows knit together. His voice was hoarse when he finally answered, “Yes. God, yes, it was real. Fortuna, you have no idea how badly I want—”
“Ask me if I care what you want,” I spat, my grip curling around the knife’s hilt.
Before Oliver could speak, I barked a laugh and shook my head.
“No, wait. If I have to hear the sound of your voice, then I just want to know why. Why are you slaughtering innocent people? And why was Lucifer torturing you?”
A muscle worked in Oliver’s jaw. “I’ve come here to—”
“Fortuna!”
I jumped at the sound of my name. Shit. We were already out of time. Collith had sounded far away, but he could still sift. He’d probably be here any second. I kept my eyes on Oliver as I shouted back, “I’m here! I’m okay.”
Oliver didn’t look away, either. Those achingly familiar eyes flicked between mine. “Do you love him?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” I didn’t hesitate, and I saw how much this pained Oliver.
Off in the distance, Collith called for me again.
He’d abandoned all caution, apparently. It was sinister how my name echoed through the darkness.
I turned back to Oliver, knowing I had to act now.
But once again, it felt like my mouth had a mind of its own as I added, “If you’re still here when he arrives, he’ll tear you apart. ”
“I’m not scared of your faeries,” Oliver said in a voice I’d never heard him use before. Cold. Deadly. The Beast’s voice.
We sounded eerily similar when I answered, “You should be. And you should be scared of me, too.”
Oliver knew we were out of time, too. He bent his head, his hands forming into fists. He didn’t look up as he spoke, and every word sounded like it caused him pain. “I came back to ask for your help, okay? I’m … I’m bound to him.”
“Bound to him?” I echoed, frowning. “What do you mean?”
When he jerked his head back up, his teeth were bared. They were sharper than before. Teeth meant for tearing through skin and tendon. “I mean, from the moment Lucifer and I laid eyes on each other, I’ve been powerless,” Oliver snarled.
I stared at him as what he was saying sank in. My mind flashed to every crime scene, seeing them in an entirely new light. “You mean … all those people … all those families you killed …”
I trailed off, swallowing. Could Oliver really be telling the truth? Had Lucifer forced him to do everything? God, if it was true, the guilt must’ve been eating him alive …
It didn’t change anything, though. I shook my head slowly, tightening my grip on the holy blade I was still holding. “Lucifer didn’t make you lie about what happened to my parents, Oliver. He didn’t make you kill Finn. I could’ve forgiven you for so much, but not that. Not Finn.”
My voice dropped when I said his name. I tipped my head back and searched Oliver’s expression for the remorse I wanted. It was there, shining amongst the pain. But it wasn’t enough.
So I flicked the blade open, lifted my hand, and finally stabbed Oliver in the heart.
I stared into his eyes, expecting to see them cloud with betrayal.
Instead, Oliver barely reacted. A muscle flexed in his cheek.
He wrapped his fingers around the knife hilt, and his gaze never left mine as he pulled it out of his chest. The entire length of the blade was wet with his blood.
Oliver tossed it down, and the knife made a dull sound against the grass.
“I am made of fear,” he said. “Fear isn’t killed so easily, Fortuna.”
Before I could respond, Oliver flapped his wings and shot into the air. He became a shape against the night sky again, and as I arched my head back, I remembered what he’d wished for when Lucifer had been torturing him. Oliver had wanted to fly amongst the clouds.
My mind chose that moment to remember something else. Something Collith had said to me, once. I thought Nightmares were creatures of pain and darkness. Why, then, are you constantly seeking freedom and light?
I listened to the sound of Oliver’s wingbeats fade, and a breath later, Collith himself was there.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. Blue light streamed from between his clenched fingers, and his features were more pronounced. Otherworldly.
I managed to shake my head. “No. He didn’t touch me.”
It was the truth. Collith must’ve heard it, because the heavenly fire in his palms faded and his breathing gradually quieted. We both stared in the direction Oliver had gone.
“I stabbed him with a holy knife, Collith,” I murmured. “Right in the heart. It didn’t even slow him down.”
Collith was silent. The night crowded close again. The crickets resumed their song, and even the breeze felt like a relieved sigh.
“I’m moving back in,” Collith said finally.
He didn’t say anything else. He was probably waiting for me to argue, or counter with a mocking rejection.
“Okay,” I said.
On Friday night, my Shadow Court gathered for family dinner.