by M. A. Grant
Smith once said that his mother makes them eat dinner here every night. I glance at the chairs before picking the least worn and settling myself there. Hopefully I didn’t try to claim someone else’s spot. My family’s rare dinners together are always a carefully fought battle of political maneuverings through seat assignments. I can’t bear the thought of disturbing the domestic tranquility of this place.
She sets the glass in front of me and sits to my left. I sip at the water while she examines me. Goddess only knows what she must see. I can’t begin to imagine the stories Smith has shared about me.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I say once I’m halfway through the glass. My stomach churns a little, reminding me that I haven’t eaten for a few days. But it could also be a response to my crushing guilt when I hold her gaze. Her eyes are brown, soft, with flecks of gold sprinkled through them.
The screen door opens and the floor creaks, distracting me from what I’m trying to say.
“Rose?” A man steps into the kitchen, surprised to see me sitting there at the table.
“Tom, this is Roark. Finny’s friend.” She smiles at me, resting her hand lightly on mine. “Roark, this is my husband.”
“Hi,” I say.
He has Finn’s eyes. Stormy blue, short lashes, crinkling at the corners.
“I meant to get here sooner,” I offer, but he waves it off.
Tom goes to the fridge and grabs a pop can. “It’s fine. Not much to do today anyway.”
“Oh. Well, is Smith here?” I ask. “Even if there’s not much work, I’d like to try to help how I can...”
I trail off at their confusion. There’s a sharp twinge of pain in my shoulder when I tense.
“I thought he’d already called you,” Rose says.
The churning in my gut spreads through me until I tremble and grip the edge of the table in an effort to not fall apart.
“What day is it?” I ask.
Don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me.
“Tuesday.” She tilts her head and the movement is so familiar, so Smith, that I have to look away. “He went back to Mathers yesterday.”
“Oh.”
He isn’t here.
I stretch my glamour anyway, ignoring the warning sparks in the edges of my vision that remind me I’m already overtaxed from the failed rescue attempt and traveling here. No warmth, no hum, no Smith.
But at the edges of my reach, something else. Something worse. An emptiness.
“You’re still welcome to stay for dinner,” she’s saying, and Tom’s nodding, but it’s all a dull roar.
I refuse the invitation with all the grace I can muster. Explain that I need to get back to school and how sorry I am for missing the weekend and Smith. Let them walk me to the door, confused by my abrupt departure until I tell them that I think Smith might need me.
And the understanding that flashes over their faces makes me want to punch something because they know who I am now. Know my relationship to their son. Know I’ve betrayed him and need to find a way to earn back his trust.
I wait until they’re back inside to glamour myself into invisibility. I walk through a fog, following that cancerous pull. Pass the hill with its old oak and crosses. I’m bleeding again because I hear Finn’s voice in my head, telling stories about this place, and there’s some kind of vast hollowness waiting for me and I don’t want to see it, can’t see it or it becomes real and—
Oh, Goddess.
Wrong. This is all wrong.
The earth screams at me because I’ve failed him. My broken promise rips me open again, eviscerates me as I stand there and look out over fields of bean pods blackened and charred from the inside out, burned corpses still swaying on the stalks.
Acres of ash.
I drop my glamour and place my hand on the dirt. There’s nothing here. No soul. No magick. Burned away like the harvest, cast to the wind and forgotten. There’s nothing I can work with, nothing I can shape to fix this.
Wrecked. This place and me and Finn.
Finn.
I fall apart. Feathers and wings and beaks and jet eyes flying over hill, over dale toward Mathers. Reaching out for any trace of him. Spreading myself through the air until I feel that prick of light, the energy coiled inside him.
Rage. Pain. Grief. Burning him alive.
Sue and Herman and Sebastian and Gumba jump when I collapse onto the grass of the field on the outskirts of the university grounds. So hard to pull myself back together, to knit the parts into a whole.
Words. So many words in so many voices. All there except his.
He stands apart from them, arms at his sides. Swollen, red eyes. Chest heaving. Staring as if he doesn’t recognize me.
I crawl toward him, staggering to my feet, ignoring the continual itch at the edge of my glamour, the blood leaking its way out of my shoulder.
I’m losing him.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’msorryI’msorryImsorrysorrysorry Oh, Finn, so sorry—
He chuckles, but it’s not his normal laugh. This one’s fragile, bordered with too much pain. “Don’t you dare.”
Another step closer to him.
I should have been there.
“You lied.”
The ley line pulses with that statement and it burns along my skin, vicious and feral.
I did and it nearly killed me.
“You told me to trust that you would choose me over the Court. When I asked for your help, you were too busy torturing an innocent faerie to show. Did you even take the time to wash the blood off your hands before coming to find me?”
He throws another wave of magick forward. I wince when it slams into me. Stronger this time, forcing me to push my weight against it if I want to move closer to him.
The Gorgon’s voice rises and falls, laced with fear. Doesn’t matter.
“It was my home, Roark. We’re losing my home and it’s my fault because I couldn’t make it work alone. I did exactly what you said. I tried to control it, but it was wrong and I ruined everything.”
I know. Finn, I know. I saw the land. Felt it. I understand now how wrong I was. Too late, but I understand now.
Our—no, his—friends shout and I shield us to give us a moment of privacy. This is between him and me, whatever the cost.
“It was wrong. Just like we’re wrong.” The words are mechanical, as if he’s just understanding them for the first time.
“Please.” My lips crack around the word and my mouth fills with copper and regret. “I love you.”
The ley line explodes outward. Traces my nerves with hellfire until they glow under my skin. Heat spills down my cheeks. The drops are black. Blood, not tears.
I want this pain. To take it, as he knows I will. He’s trying to kill me right now because no man could feel this much and live and he’s giving it to me the same way he gave me the ley line.
His fury peels me apart, unmakes me, until only one thing remains, impossible to burn away: I love you.
I choke on air when the heat vanishes and my head rings with the new silence. I cough up blood and smell smoke as my clothes smolder.
He watches me with eyes of stone and a heart of ice. His lip curls. “I guess you were right. We can’t go back to what we were before.”
“Finn—”
His eyes flash. “Never call me that again.” He tilts his head back and pushes—
My glamour shatters and I collapse when the pieces rain down around me. He doesn’t look back when he walks away.
I drag what’s left of this corpse together. Fly home.
I’m the perfect son. The perfect prince.
I enter the sídhe dressed in feathers and blood and a sorrow that makes everyone recoil.
My mother’s in her throne room. I focus on her wide eyes and the flash of real fear in them. She rises and steps toward me; everyone else quickly abandons us.
“Roark?”
I stagger to the foot of her throne and kneel. My knee protests the movement, the subs
ervience of the gesture. The pain is good. Deserved.
“I’ll return to the sídhe as you ordered. Just...” My voice breaks and I don’t know if I’m crying or bleeding; it doesn’t matter anymore because my mother kneels beside me, clutching my face in her hands while my blood drips onto her gown. “His home. Give him back his home.”
“Mo leanbh—”
I am empty. Ravaged. Hollow. “Promise me.”
Her tears shimmer like stars. “I promise.”
I am ash. I blow apart. And she holds me until there is nothing left but an eternity of dust.
Chapter Nineteen
Phineas
He said he loved me.
He knelt there and it would have been so easy to kill him. He couldn’t stop the black blood leaking from his eyes, nose, and ears. His glamour couldn’t do anything but flicker in and out.
Every part of me hurt, even the places I didn’t know existed, and I wanted him to feel it, too. So I threw those words back at him. Words he’d whispered while we lay in bed together and pretended we weren’t doing anything wrong, words he considered true.
I wanted those words to cut him to pieces in front of me.
His head tilted up and he held my gaze, and what I saw was so fucking terrifying because for the first time since I’ve known him, it was all there in his eyes. Nothing but truth, and I knew that if he said a single damn word, I would break.
He said my name. Not Phineas or Finny. He rasped the name only he calls me and in that one word he was laid bare—
I fractured. I gave in and let the ley line take me. Even then, he wouldn’t let me burn out.
It was enough to pull me back from the brink. A final gift. I walked away from him and cut myself off from the ley line, removed the temptation to fall into its energy and let myself slip away from the world. I cost my parents the farm, but couldn’t make them mourn my death on top of that.
Today, I got back from class and discovered Roark had moved out of the apartment while I was gone. It hurt to see that empty space, so I went for a walk. My feet led me here, back to the field on the edge of campus where I turned my back on him and broke both our hearts.
The weeds are tall and dried, ready for winter to come and finish them off completely. It’s easy enough to track our movements across this space. There should be more carnage. It’s eerie that the destruction I feel inside isn’t mirrored out here. I reserved everything for him, apparently. There aren’t even scorch marks on the ground. Just some churned earth from the way he braced himself against the ley line’s power and a few dark spots holding the lingering scent of smoke.
The fluttering in the corner of my eye forces me to pause. There, trapped in the weeds, is a lone black feather. I pick it up and examine it. Black with a blue-and-purple sheen. It’s long, the rachis sturdy and unbroken. I run my finger along its edge and the stupid lump in my throat is so damn heavy I have to sit in the weeds because I can’t carry any more weight right now.
My friends find me soon enough. They huddle around me, watching me watching the field.
It’s Herman who finally offers a hand to help me up and asks, “Ready to talk?”
Surprisingly, I am.
I tell them everything, although I dance around some of the finer details about my relationship with Roark. When I reach the part about him not showing up at the farm to help me with the spell because torturing one of the Seelie mattered more, I stop. There’s no need to reopen the wound. I told them this part already, in this exact spot actually, before Roark arrived and it all went to hell.
“So, that’s what’s going on,” I finish lamely.
Gumba reaches over and pokes my shoulder. I tilt my head toward him and he says seriously, “Sorry, Finny. I know it isn’t easy.” Conciliatory murmurs from the others.
Sharing the weight does make it easier, though. I let them distract me, buoy me along on random conversation, and we begin the trudge back toward the apartments. Sue, Herman, and Gumba get into a heated conversation ahead of me, while Sebastian lingers toward the back, twirling a weed in his hand the way I twirl Roark’s feather in mine.
Once the others are far enough away to not hear our conversation well, he clears his throat. “Finny?”
“Hmm?”
“I know it doesn’t help it hurt any less, but Roark’s probably worse off than you.” He must expect me to react poorly because he holds up a hand. “I’ve never seen him act like that with anyone but you. I think he might have loved you.”
“I know,” I say quietly. “He told me.”
Sebastian’s eyes widen. “Oh.”
Our footfalls are quiet on the paved sidewalk. I kick at a pebble and watch it hit the back of Gumba’s shoe and bounce off to the side.
Seb nudges me with his shoulder. “You’ll get through this,” he promises.
Surrounded by my friends, I allow myself to hope that’s true.
Roark
I stare blankly at the sheets of data spread over Mother’s desk. Lugh relaxes near the fire, the blue light dancing over his chestnut hair. Mother prepares us all tea. The irony of such domestic bliss doesn’t escape me.
“Without Sláine’s power to bolster our magick, we aren’t strong enough to march into the Summer Court.” I run a hand through my hair, the nightmare of logistics spewing uncontrollably through my thoughts. At least these nightmares don’t involve Smith.
I wince. Goddess damn it, every time I realize I haven’t thought about him for a bit, I reopen the fucking wound.
My brother doesn’t notice my misery. He’s too busy flicking droplets of tea at the fire just to hear them hiss. He truly is the Prince of Chaos. “Our numbers are that low even with the Hunt?”
I run my finger down the column, checking the calculations again. I can’t afford any mistakes. My heart couldn’t stand it. I’ve been bleeding over my last mistake since I returned to the sídhe.
“Even with the Hunt,” I confirm.
Lugh huffs. “Did you count Keiran as two? He fights well enough.”
“He counts as one. If he dies, it’s one casualty.”
Lugh glares at me when I say that. I ignore him. He wants to pick a fight. This is the longest in recent memory that he’s stayed at the sídhe and I can see the strain wearing on him. As a child, he had night terrors about the earth crushing him. He managed to escape life in the sídhe, and returns only when necessary; it seems to have helped him balance the chaos of his own mind. However, our failed rescue means reevaluating our strategies and Lugh needs to be present, no matter how uncomfortable it makes him.
I murmur a thanks to Mother when she sets my tea on the edge of the desk and pretend I don’t notice her staring at my shoulder.
Looking for fresh blood, no doubt. The wound isn’t healing well. Being scalded by the ley line and then draining my glamour fully for the second time in months in my effort to return home hasn’t helped the healing process either. I hate this new weakness. I don’t have time for it. I can’t risk her refusing to let me take up the mantle. So I hide it and make sure she doesn’t know how badly I really feel. At least my brother continues to be oblivious.
“What are the numbers with the Sluagh?” Lugh asks.
My brother and his obsession with the unaligned fae. The outcasts of the Courts may be numerous, but the risks that come from making deals with them is too great.
I wave his suggestion off. “We don’t control them.”
“I’m getting close.”
“You almost control the people of the Wylds?” I don’t bother to hide my incredulity. “Since when, brother mine?”
Lugh’s never had much control over his glamour. He tries to hide his angry flush from me now, but isn’t fast enough. “Since almost a year ago,” he says, defiance sharpening his words.
“Impressive. Unfortunate that you haven’t succeeded yet or come home to update us so we can help with the task.”
I don’t mean it cruelly, but that doesn’t matter. My brother puffs, the icy
bite of his magick crawling through the air. “I run the Hunt. If the Sluagh belong to anyone, it’s me, brother mine.” Such animosity in that endearment he flings back at me.
It’s unexpected. I’ve always supported Lugh in my own way. When he chose to abandon us to lead the nightmarish cavalry of the Wild Hunt, I stood beside him and argued his case to Mother. I never once told him that spending time with those barbarians was beneath his birth, like others in the Court did. And I’ve never questioned his goal of brokering an alliance with the Sluagh. Sláine, on the other hand, always has. Their brutal fights are part of the reason they are so rarely in Court at the same time. Lugh’s never before forgotten my trust in him.
My own suffering shortens my temper. “I am not the High Prince,” I snap. “Save your bile for the brother you intend to usurp.”
It’s a low blow. I know that and regret letting it slip out the moment I say it. He stands, teacup falling to the carpet, left arm drawing back as he reaches for his glamour.
“Enough.” Our mother’s voice cracks like a whip and the lights flicker.
I blink ice from my eyelashes. My hand clutches my rapier. Lugh’s frozen, the living shadow creature of the hex he’s cast ready to fly forward toward me. Ah, here’s the family I know and love.
“This is what the Summer Court wants,” she reminds us, pouring herself a cup of tea as if we weren’t just about to rip each other limb from limb. “Have you forgotten the importance of the Triumvirate so easily?”
This time, Lugh and I both flush a dark shade of humiliation. Since Lugh’s birth, the Triumvirate has been used by Mother to remind us of our bond. It’s our gospel. It is preached every time we fight, every time we threaten to never speak to each other again. There is so little holding our Court together now, so little chance that Sláine will come home and restore the balance. If Lugh abandons us, there will be no hope left at all. With only one heir remaining, Mother would refuse to let me take on the Knight’s mantle. She would be forced to hunt down Smith and would kill him. I cannot allow that to come to pass.
Which is why I sheathe my weapon and face my younger brother. “I’m sorry. I was being cruel and petty and you didn’t deserve that. If you are making inroads with the Sluagh, you should be commended.”