Until I became Hopeless Hope, I was Pinkie Pie Butt. Not very creative, but the kids who had been watching me fall farther into my dreamseeing hell hadn’t been concerned with cleverness, just cruelty.
A part of me could see now how frightening my behavior must have been to them, and I couldn’t really blame ten year olds for lashing out at what they didn’t understand. I could, however, and would blame the adults who saw and heard and still did nothing to stop them or help me.
The turn I had made when I had been wrong about the woman’s presence in the hall had brought me back in the direction of the room where Declan and Lantis still were.
Or at least, I hoped they were.
As I walked by, I lifted the diary to my side and was ready to toss it back into the room. Even if they had left, at least it would be returned to where I had found it, and ideally, would be able to pick it up again.
A hand reached out and took it from me, and Declan’s face appeared around the side of the blanket curtain. He shook his head at me before he disappeared again.
What did he mean by that?
I was still freaked out that he even had the diary in the first place, so maybe he was apologizing for taking it. He hadn’t looked sorry, though.
In all of my imaginings of what my senior year of high school looked like, finding out that I had a fairy stalker was not among them.
Meeting a gorgeous boy on the first day of school was not even on my radar, for that matter.
“Please come along, my lady.”
The woman’s voice called out ahead of me, and I took off after her at a slow run. I was sorry to be moving so fast when the stairs, some of which may have been a natural part of the cave and not cut into it, took a steep turn.
I caught myself before I fell on top of the woman. She didn’t seem to notice, but kept going herself at a very even, clipped pace.
Maybe she could answer some of my questions, if I asked them in a way that didn’t seem too prying.
“I’m new here, and I don’t know a lot about how things work.”
It wasn’t the most brilliant way to open up communications, but my conversational skills were limited to Corrie and my parents. That really doesn’t need too much explanation.
She didn’t say anything, and I wondered if she might have been instructed to limit what she said to me. When she stopped abruptly and turned a corner, I almost fell on top of her. Again.
I didn’t have much time to chastise myself for walking too close to her, or for being too distracted by my own thoughts to pay attention to her movements, because now we stood in a huge cavern, the top bright with a pattern of light that formed a giant five-pointed star.
“Oh!”
My mouth formed the single word and the breath it took for me to speak it was long and full of awe.
A glittering lake of clear water pooled in front of us, perfect white and purple water lillies floating on its surface. The uneven bottom was visible, the huge rocks smooth and varied as they rested beneath the water.
The cavern’s walls sparkled with minerals, but not a gem was in sight. Instead, the whole effect was a natural shimmer that carried through the air like a comforting enchantment.
“My lady?”
The woman wore a satisfied smile, as if she herself was personally responsible for the overwhelming pleasure the room gave me.
I shook my head in astonishment.
“It’s just so incredible.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I have lived here my whole life, and over hundreds of years this blessed place has never lost its charm.”
I didn’t doubt it.
Wait, what had she said? Hundreds of years?
“Is this Hope? Oh, we must hurry. Guests are arriving, and the queen is expecting her to make a grand entrance on her cue.”
A swarm of small fairies much like those who had attended Brielle in her bath earlier approached, their mission undeniable. As they pulled at my arms and tugged me further into the bright space, I kept hearing that phrase over and over.
Hundreds of years.
How long was I going to live now that I was in Faerie?
How long would Brielle?
Chapter Twenty Five
“How long do fairies usually live?”
It was blunt but to the point. As the smaller fairies bustled about, running around to different stone tables either jutting out from the ground and flattened out on the surface or branching out from the cavern walls, I dared to start asking questions of my guide.
She stood by, not so close as to interfere with the others’ movements but close enough for me to speak to.
Her hands were folded neatly together over her heart as she watched the others work. They giggled together like little girls, but my gaze was on the calm woman as I was pushed and prodded, until one of the fairies started to unzip my jeans.
“Hey, hold on. I can do that myself.”
There wasn’t much use for modesty in a cavern of female fairies, I figured in the one moment it took for me to get over any squeamishness I had at undressing in the midst of these strangers.
My jeans weren’t damp with lake water any longer, but a little stiff and I wiggled out of them with some effort. At least I wasn’t wearing cartoon character underwear.
For the first time, since losing my moccasins, I looked at my bare feet, which had never been so filthy. I cringed just as one of the fairies splashed a wooden bowl full of water all over them and smiled. Another stepped up beside her and did the same.
I doubted that water alone would wash away the dirt of my adventures, but if nothing else, the cold water felt wonderful. I glanced over at the lake, wondering if a quick dip was out of the question.
“It varies. Some of us live for hundreds of years, others decades. Some, like our queen . . .”
The woman shrugged as if her words were of little consequence. I was about to ask her to continue when I was unceremoniously shoved to the side, and with a few steps, fell into the lake.
My shirt clung to me again, soaked and grubby now. I stood up on one of the smooth rocks and dragged the fabric over my head. Somehow I caught some of my newly golden hair on the clasp of my bra, which I was ready to get rid of as well.
I wadded my shirt into a ball and tossed it as far as I could, remembering how I had held onto the ice cream covered shirt in the school restroom only hours ago as Tammy and her minions bullied me.
Tiny fingers tugged gently at my hair and I looked around, catching sight of a solitary fairy releasing my hair from the metal hooks on my bra, and I smiled. She covered her face with her small hands and backed away with a gasp.
“Sorry,” I whispered, wondering why a smile would frighten her. I reached behind my back and unfastened my bra, pulled my arms through the straps and threw it in the same direction as my shirt.
As I allowed myself to sink beneath the surface, I closed my eyes and relaxed until I remembered the lake of poison.
I spat and coughed as I pushed myself to the surface, shaking the water from my hair. It should have felt heavy against my shoulder with the weight of the water, but it hovered in a golden cloud around my face instead.
“My lady?”
A rush of pattering feet brought everyone to my side while I clamored up one of the rocks that held the water back into its pool.
“What’s your name?”
I managed to sputter as I stared at the hundreds of years old fairy woman. She dropped her folded hands and frowned.
“Why, it’s Rosalie, my lady.”
A perfectly normal name in a perfectly crazy world.
“Thank you. Rosalie, what’s in this water?”
Rosalie maintained her frown as the smaller fairies stared at her wide-eyed, perhaps looking to her for guidance. How old were they?
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your question, my lady. It’s water, from our well.”
I looked down at myself, buck naked on a rock worryi
ng about the Loch Ness Monster. Did it have green skin, like me?
Maybe I had overreacted a bit. I didn’t feel like I needed to throw up, and I wasn’t coughing. Instead, I had frightened everyone else, and from what I could tell so far, they were only trying to help.
Or only following the queen’s orders.
“Okay. Well, then . . .”
I slid back into the water slowly, the coolness of the damp rock soothing my concerns as if it was a living thing meant to reassure me.
Instead of ducking under the water, I kept my eyes and nose above the surface and watched them move in a concerted effort through the cavern. Rosalie pointed and spoke, patted small backs and smiled gently.
She seemed so motherly to them all, and I wondered if they were actually her children.
My mother didn’t sew, and neither did I, or at least not as a habit. What I saw, though, were basic sewing supplies that anyone would recognize. Even in Faerie, it looked like clothes were crafted much the same as in the human realm.
Except there was no machine.
Flat wooden trays were piled with tiny implements, which I couldn’t see too clearly from my lake position but must have been needles and pins. Several large pairs of scissors were added to the trays, and one of the fairies ran her fingers through a bowl of shiny golden buttons.
Rosalie clapped her hands, and the fairy quickly put the bowl of buttons down beside a tray, hanging her head as she hid her hands behind her back.
A new group of fairies marched in from around the corner, appearing like magic from behind the large rock I had been resting on earlier. I pushed myself further away in the lake, grateful that the depth didn’t reach over my head, as I saw what they carried between them.
The glaring white gown was gigantic, like a huge meringue, with frothy tulle sticking out of the bottom that made the whole bottom half stick out. Or up, as they carried it flat, with the shoulders at one end of their formation and the hem at the other.
Like someone would carry a body.
With that lovely thought, I stood up, allowing the water to continue to cover me from the chest down. I wanted to shake my head, but I thought it might be better to voice my opinion and maybe talk some sense into Rosalie.
“Rosalie?”
She turned to me with a huge smile, her pleasure so evident that I wanted to close my mouth against the words I wanted to say.
“I don’t think I can wear something like that. It’s not really my, uh, style.”
Giggles echoed through the cavern, and Rosalie clapped her hands again before she was overcome by a gasp that sent her into a deep bow.
The smaller fairies scrunched together in a huge crowd, and ducked their heads just as Rosalie did. The dress smashed up between them, but no one seemed to care about it in light of the figure that stood in the space where they had only just arrived.
“Now, now, Hope. You’ve only just realized who, and what, you are. Let’s not start taking on airs just yet, shall we?”
My toes curled on the rock at my feet and I fought to keep my expression placid.
Queen Acanthe ignored the fairies offering her their respect, allowing them to remain in their positions without relief.
“You must have a wedding dress for your wedding. Is white not traditional in human culture, or at least the culture in which you were raised?”
I stared, unable to find the words to answer her clearly rhetorical question.
Wasn’t this a dinner? Had I missed a reference to a wedding at some point?
“Wait!”
A voice I not only recognized but was relieved to hear Declan’s appearance behind Rosalie’s bowed head. How many ways to enter this cavern were there?
I remembered that I was completely naked, and the lake was completely clear. Declan wasn’t looking at me as he ran around the fairy cluster, though. His eyes were on my mother, and his glare was furious.
“You can’t . . .”
He started to speak, but her hand whipped forward and shoved him backwards hard enough to push him into the small fairies and they toppled into each other with a series of cries.
Declan’s eyes met mine as his body turned, and I remembered my dream of the pale green woman shoving the beautiful, dark-haired boy. Was it only just last night that my mind had warned me that this would happen?
“Insolent failure! How dare you interrupt me!”
Failure. This wasn’t the first time someone had mentioned Declan’s failure. What had he done so wrong that merited this sort of treatment? Hadn’t he brought me back to Faerie, as she had instructed so long ago?
Had she found out that his time in Castle Heights had been longer than she wanted it to?
His eyes closed and he turned away from me. Before I could call out to him, the queen shot a look at me, as if she only just now remembered that I was there.
“My plans for you will no longer be disrupted.”
Was she talking about this sudden wedding?
“Your moony-eyed affection for this one is misplaced. His failure had resulted in your survival, and now I must deal with it the only way I possibly can.”
Declan’s head shot up.
“Hope, please!”
The queen slapped him hard and I couldn’t help the cry that escaped my lips. Her smile was cold and terrifying, and I slid down into the water to my chin as if the lake could protect me from it.
“I sent him to kill you, child. Your heart was to be my meal, but his failure, his weakness, bring us to this.”
Her gestures encompassed the entire cavern, and as if from a far-off distance, I heard childlike weeping.
“Silence!”
The cries stopped abruptly, and I covered my face with my hands. She had me cornered, literally, and my choices now would have to be made without the guidance of the boy who led me to Faerie in the first place.
The boy who was sent to murder me when I was only a baby.
THE END
Hope and Declan's story concludes in What Dreams May Come, available now!
The riveting and romantic trilogy conclusion!
I’ve survived in Faerie along with – or in spite of – the two boys at my side, but a final foe threatens the realm’s and my own survival.
My own strength and commitment to my birthright will determine if my fairy tale ends with life and love . . . or devastation and death.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Molly Lavenza is a 2020 high school graduate headed to Kent State University. She loves her home state of Ohio, her cats, younger sister, and her boyfriend, whose dark, curly hair and obsession with Converse sneakers was the inspiration for Declan.
OTHER BOOKS BY MOLLY LAVENZA
HEIR OF CHARMS (ARDA ACADEMY, BOOK ONE)
Destruction.
In a family of healers who save, all I do is destroy. My enforced solitude is for my own safety as well as that of the world, or so my mother tells me.
When the boy next door beckons, I can't help but sneak out to forge a friendship with him. Loneliness leads me to defy my family, but desperation prevails when I discover that the grounds of his private academy hold a secret that could help me learn why my ability is so disastrous . . . or push me to create a catastrophe that will bring only death and destruction.
Merith Leigh has decided to give herself the best sixteenth birthday present ever: freedom. She's spent the last two years in silent communication with Taran, the boy next door, and his encouragement to meet him beyond their bedroom window views has tempted her to finally break free of her family's bonds. With a leap of faith, she trusts Taran with her future, and he takes her to meet his friends at his private academy, where a secret society that studies magic lurks with secrets of their own. Can Taran and his classmates help her discover why she carries the gift of destruction rather than her family's skill at healing, or will their association prove deadly?
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The Weight of Dreams Page 12