Chapter 25
Periwinkle felt like she could’ve been watching herself from outside her own body as she moved through the room, looking at the sleeping fairies scattered across the floor.
There was a group of helping-talents. There was one of the music-talent fairies who’d played icicle pipes at the last prep party.
She found Lord Milori sprawled beside a trio of healing-talents, arms outstretched. Then she went back to the Keeper, bending close to listen to his breathing.
When she looked around the room, at the suffering fairies and the glittering remains of the ball and the bookshelves she and Weaver had searched together, she felt something inside herself wither and crumble.
“It couldn’t all be for this,” Periwinkle said softly.
“What?”
“It couldn’t all be for this. All our work, all this misery, so Dougal could make sure everyone felt his bitterness!” Periwinkle burst out. “I—I found the dream magic. It found me. It means something.” Her voice cracked. Weaver looked at her, expression stricken. “What?” she asked.
Weaver shut his eyes again, like somehow the worst was yet to come.
Periwinkle planted her hands firmly on the ice, trying again to brace herself while dread built inside her like an avalanche.
“You didn’t start dreaming because the dream magic found you,” Weaver finally said. “You started dreaming because of me.”
“No.” Periwinkle shook her head. “No. That evening, near the border—”
“It was just another mistake I made,” Weaver said. “I told you I’d tried to spin my own dreams, but I was never fast enough. By the time I woke up, they were always gone, or too flimsy to work with. I always tried to pick them all up, but…” He trailed off, expression agonized.
Just another mistake I made. Periwinkle could hardly breathe.
“I started seeing your dreams floating over your home, and I told Dougal.” Weaver cleared his throat again. “We decided I would help bend your dreams to nightmares for me to collect, and then we’d use them to get Selene some justice.”
Your nightmares about the storm came from me. He had confessed as much earlier; Periwinkle just hadn’t put everything together.
He’d been manipulating her dreams for months.
“How?” she whispered. “Did you come into my home? Did you sneak into my room at night to steal them?”
Weaver shook his head. “No, never. I waited for them to float outside your house, and then I caught them. Once I’d handled them, the two of us were connected.” He paused. “After that, I was able to create dreams and work them on your mind.”
“Oh, that’s much better.” Periwinkle settled onto the ground beside the Keeper, feeling her mouth take on a strange, crumpled shape as she tried not to cry. “And then you cooked up the story about the root so I wouldn’t leave for the Mainland?”
Weaver nodded. “I didn’t have enough material, and I still needed help finding the tools. So I brought you out to the woods that night—”
“You brought me?” Something wet touched Periwinkle’s cheek.
“—I had you sleepwalk to the woods that night, to tell you the story about the Pixie Dust Root,” he said over top of her words, like he wanted to get it all out.
“That way I could keep you in Pixie Hollow until I’d gotten enough nightmares to spin.
I only did it once.” His voice was thick and he blinked hard, his eyes too bright.
Periwinkle thought of the spider silk that had tied their wrists together the night before in the Sapphire Mine, and how easily it had snapped.
Had she known everything else between them was just as bound to break?
“Is this why you never brought Legs over at night?” she asked. “Because you had to collect my nightmares?”
He blinked. “How…?”
“I saw it,” she added, irrationally offended, despite everything.
Had he really thought she’d never notice?
“I saw Legs collect one of your bad dreams and bind it up. But I didn’t realize until just now that you’d never had Legs do the same for me.
” Periwinkle paused. “When he did that—what did he do with them? Did he destroy them?”
Weaver shook his head. “No. They were just wrapped up, not destroyed. I kept them with the other nightmares in my bag.”
Crouched on the ice, Periwinkle stared at him, anger and shame boiling inside her. “What if I hadn’t believed you that night?” she bit out. “What if I hadn’t agreed to stay?”
Weaver’s voice was so low when he answered that Periwinkle could hardly hear him.
“The thought didn’t even cross my mind. Because I was arrogant, and I assumed it would be easy,” he said.
“You didn’t know who I was before that night in the woods, but I knew who you were.
I didn’t think it would be all that hard to lie to you.
To trick you. And when I realized you were nice, too, you just seemed that much easier to manipulate.
” He swallowed. “I was miserable and alone, apart from Dougal, who was also miserable and alone. And I saw your happiness, and something awful inside me wanted to ruin it.”
Haunted. It was the only word for the look on Weaver’s face. Periwinkle wiped at her eyes, wondering if she could lie down beside the Keeper and sleep until everything stopped hurting.
She thought of the day she’d jumped into the border river between Winter and Spring, of the weight of her wings, the strength of the current.
Here, once again, she was drowning.
Weaver had found that she was kind and then used her like a tool. He had taken her belief and treated it like foolishness.
He had made her a dress the color of dreams and spun her nightmares with his own two hands and the magic they’d found.
Periwinkle felt flushed, almost nauseated. “So the dream magic didn’t find me. I tripped over your mistake, and you used me, because it was easy for you,” she said. “I thought you were just a cynic, Weaver. But what you really are is a manipulator, and that’s much, much worse.”
“But you need to know—” Weaver sounded like he was choking.
“No.” Periwinkle cut him off. “No. I don’t want to hear any more.”
She stared around the Hall of Winter again, at the fairies who’d done nothing wrong, at the dully shining aftermath of the ball. Misery rushed at her, a drowning wave, a rising blizzard. Periwinkle gave Dewey’s forehead one last brush before she lifted into the air.
“Periwinkle.” He called her name like a plea. “Please talk to me. Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
Periwinkle fought to keep her voice from breaking. “I’m thinking about Fletcher,” she said. “About every time you told me I deserved better.”
Weaver drew back, stunned.
“Turns out—” Periwinkle’s eyes welled, and she wiped them furiously. “Turns out being bored feels better than being betrayed.”
Then she pointed herself toward the door to the Hall of Winter, and raced out into the storm.