“So, in the end,” my mother continues, “we won. Here you are, alone on Avalon.” My mother’s eyes turn hard upon me. She is not smiling now. She is the most terrifying I have ever seen her. “Centuries ago, William Blaxton founded Parsymeon as a refuge for those who refuse to submit to the will of the Courts. Today, Parsymeon falls. Today, we ensure the harmonious ruling of the Courts forever.”
My mother and Ben’s mother clink their wineglasses together. It is a sound like a chiming jingle bell. I sit in dread.
“What is it?” my mother snaps, surprising me, and I realize she is talking to a small creature who has come bounding up to us.
“It’s an Urisk!” I exclaim, unable to help myself.
“I am the only Urisk,” he tells me mournfully. “There are no other Urisks in existence.”
“Yes, yes,” my mother interrupts impatiently. “What have you come in for?”
The Urisk hesitates, bouncing on the soles of his feet, and then he leans up and whispers in my mother’s ear.
Her entire expression changes. She lights up. “Really?” she drawls. “Well, that is excellent news.” She smiles at the Urisk, and then she says lightly, “Urisk.”
The Urisk gives a little cry and disintegrates on the spot into dandelion fluff that drifts away through the room.
And the awful thing is that I see it, and it’s horrifying, but I also feel the burst of power that comes from it, warm, like sinking into a hot bath. There is a piece of me I can feel that would bask in that, that understands why the Seelies do such things, because if I reached out and let myself grab it, it would feel heavenly.
My mother and Ben’s mother both breathe deep and smile, satisfied, drinking in the little burst of power.
“Why did you do that?” I manage to choke out.
My mother looks at me, her hard eyes glittering. “Why not?” Then she gets to her feet. “Shall we go for a stroll?”
CHAPTER 26
We leave the castle, because I don’t know what else to do, and anyway I want to get out of that room with its leftover naming power making me feel itchy. We walk down steps roughly carved into the cliff until we come to an expanse of beautiful white sand beach. The waves curl and lick over the sand, coaxing it into ripples under the weight of the water. The beach stretches around us in either direction, as far as I can see, uninterrupted except for a bundle of something a few hundred feet away from us, noteworthy as the only blemish on the postcard nature of the scene. I know I should be focused on it, but I can’t; I am mostly focused on the fact that I have ruined everything. Me. After spending all of this time trying to set the prophecy into motion, I have been the one to destroy it.
My mother strides confidently over the sand to the bundle, followed by Ben’s mother. I struggle to keep up with them, keeping my hand firmly in my father’s. Now that I’ve found him, now that I have effectively given up everything else for him, I’m not going to let anything take him away from me.
The bundle takes on a shape. It’s a person, I can see that now. A person sprawled on his or her side, the waves still sliding at their legs. A man, I realize, as we get closer. A man with a tumble of dark, thick curls…I draw to a slow halt, my feet dragging in the sand, as I stare at the form in the sand. His face is turned away, but I would know him anywhere, of course I would.
Anxious with fear, I drop my father’s hand and dash over the sand, past Ben’s mother and my mother, dropping to my knees in the sand beside Ben and pushing him over onto his back. He is very still, his pale skin tinged with blue, his eyelashes stark against his cheekbones.
“Ben,” I say desperately, my mind a panicked maelstrom of Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die.
He doesn’t respond.
His jacket is sodden, sticking to his skin with wetness. I tug clumsily at the zipper, finally forcing it down, and struggle to pull it off of him. He is heavy and limp and reacts not at all to the poking and prodding and shoving I am doing.
“Ben,” I say again. “Benedict.” I look in dismay at the soaked shirts he’s still wearing and curl my hand into his. “Come on, Ben.” I lean my forehead down onto his shoulder. “Come on,” I whisper.
Ben does not move. He does not breathe.
“Ben,” I beg, and I tell myself that the sound I make is not a sob.
“Look at that,” I hear my mother drawl behind me. “True devotion. That’s what that is.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, and I lift my head and shout at her. “What happened to him? What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him. He swam to you, my dear.”
This doesn’t make any sense. “What do you mean? He knows how to swim?”
“No,” she answers. “Obviously not.”
“Then why did he do it?” I know the answer even before I ask the question: he did it for me.
My mother must reach the same conclusion—that I already know the answer—because she doesn’t bother to reply to me. She walks over and drops a blanket unceremoniously next to me. I look at it, blinking through my tears, wondering where it came from. “Dry him off.”
“But—”
“Get him dry, Selkie. He’ll be fine. And then I can name him. It’s no fun naming a half-dead faerie. You get barely any charge out of it at all.” She walks away through the sand to the castle.
I look at Ben’s mother, who gazes inscrutably at Ben’s body on the sand, and then turns and follows my mother. I look at my father for a moment, and then I swipe at my tears and concentrate on getting Ben dry.
After a bit of struggle, I eventually get Ben out of his soaked shirts. My father sits in the sand near me, watching and biting his thumbnail nervously. I can tell that he is concerned for me, but that he doesn’t understand why or what I am doing.
I consider taking off Ben’s jeans. I had ideas about the first time I would take off Ben’s jeans. These ideas did not go like this. I fret about it, and then I decide that I have to save him and I have to get him dry to do it, and the jeans aren’t helping.
So I take off his jeans.
Not as easy as it sounds, since the jeans are wet and difficult to work with. Ben remains unresponsive, but I manage to get them over his bare feet and toss them aside. I steadfastly do not gape at the sight of Ben in his underwear, because now is not the time for such things. Although I look enough to know that he’s wearing underwear, which is a relief. I wasn’t sure if faeries believed in such things, and I can barely take the intimacy of seeing Ben’s bare feet, never mind Ben completely naked.
I spread the blanket over him and rub at him briskly.
When I’ve gotten Ben as dry as I think I can get him, I flip the blanket over so that the driest side is touching him, and I lie down next to him and curl my hand into his. And I wait.
She said he wasn’t dead. I have to trust that he’s not dead. But he stays still and cold next to me, while the sun dips into the ocean stretched beside us and the stars come out overhead. Dusk glows around us, and I stare at the rhythm of the waves as they push and pull at the shore, half-mesmerized by it. I think about the battle in Boston, and whether they’ve already lost it, and whether everyone has been named.
Ben takes a sudden, deep, shuddering breath beside me and then rolls over away from me, choking and sputtering. I sit up in alarm, watching, uncertain what I can do to help, and eventually he catches his breath and rolls back toward me. He looks exhausted and unwell, half in twilight shadow, and I can’t even tell what color his eyes are as they gaze up at me.
“Selkie Stewart,” he says thickly, as if his tongue is swollen.
“Did that help?” I ask anxiously. “Use my middle name. I’ll give you both of them.”
He shakes his head against the sand. “It helped.” His voice does sound clearer. “I’m naked,” he remarks.
I probably blush. “Not quite.�
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“Were you taking advantage of me? Because I wanted to be conscious for that.”
“Shut up,” I tell him. “My father’s here.”
“Your father?” He shifts his head a bit, looking beyond me to where my father sits in the sand. “Good. Your father. I’m glad you found him. Is he okay?”
“Yes. He seems to be.”
He looks back at me. “Tell me how you are.”
“I’ve ruined everything,” I blurt out to him. “I’m a fay on Avalon, and that will fulfill the warring prophecy, the one that your mother mentioned, about how the Seelie Court power will be cemented forever—”
“That’s why I’m here: to help you stop that.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late.”
“Why do you think that? When I left, we were still in the middle of the battle.”
“But we’ve been here for hours,” I tell him. “It’s nighttime now. The battle must be over and—”
“You’re keeping the wrong time,” Ben interrupts me calmly. “You can still save the battle.”
“How?”
“Leave.” Ben says it like it’s so simple.
I blink at him, annoyed now. “How?”
“You can leave anytime you like. You’re a Seelie. Seelies can come and go from Avalon as they please.”
“What about Dad? And you?”
“How do you think they’re going to get you to fulfill their prophecy and stay?”
I pause, thinking things over, thinking of how I was lured here in the first place, thinking of my fatal flaw of loving too much. I look out at the ocean. I think of all the lives I ruined because I wanted to save just one. I wonder how selfish I can be. I look at Ben. “How do I leave?”
“I have no idea. That’s Seelie knowledge.”
That’s no help at all. I shake my head and tangle my fingers into my hair. “Your mother’s here,” I tell him.
“I figured. She’s been playing the long game, my mother. Your mother too.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I have no idea. I don’t really have a plan. Then again, I usually don’t. I thought it was a faerie trait, but this entire situation is making me reconsider.”
“My mother said that Parsymeon would fall today.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” Ben’s gaze has shifted beyond me again, and I look over my shoulder. Beyond my father, a figure is approaching. An Urisk.
He hops up to us and peers down at Ben. “Can you walk?” he asks, a little rudely.
“Why?” retorts Ben.
“If you can walk, your presence is requested.”
“I bet it is,” mutters Ben and sits up with what I can see is obvious effort. He even winces a bit.
“We don’t have to go,” I tell him.
“Yes, we do.”
“We could…make a run for it.”
“I can’t run anywhere right now. And, anyway, there’s nowhere to go. This is an island, and the Seelies control every inch of it. You can go.”
“But I don’t know how to yet.” I look back at the ocean and wonder if I really should just start swimming. I wonder if the reason I haven’t tried it is because I really can’t bear to leave Ben and my father behind.
Ben stands up slowly, weaving a bit on his feet, keeping the blanket wrapped around him. “We’ll go then. I want to see how this ends, finally.”
“Ben…” My protest is halfhearted. I know, in a way, that he’s right. All of this time on the beach, this stolen time with him, is just delaying the inevitable.
He walks over to my father and pauses, looking down at him. “Etherington,” he says in greeting, with a graveness belied a bit by his state of undress.
“Benedict,” my father says in response, his head tipped back to look up at him. “You promised to keep her safe,” he accuses.
“I know,” Ben replies. He glances at me. “I’m trying.” And then he starts limping toward the castle, holding the blanket close to him.
I pick myself up off the sand, gather my father, and we follow.
CHAPTER 27
Ben’s progress up the staircase in the cliff is slow and agonizing, but eventually we reach the castle’s promenade along the ocean. My mother and his mother stand at the opposite end, watching our approach. No one says a word except for the named faeries murmuring constantly, their pleas for leniency intermingling with the crash of the waves far below the window.
“It was very foolish of you to come,” my mother finally says to Ben as we draw to a halt a few paces away from them. “We had everything we needed with her father. You are extraneous.”
“Do I normally do intelligent things?” Ben inquires cheerfully.
“You’re in a very good mood for a faerie about to be named,” she replies coldly, and then she says meaningfully, “Or are you?” My mother looks at me, anti-smile firmly in place.
I don’t know what’s coming next, but I know I’m not going to like it. My hand in my father’s, I can’t help but shrink away from her a bit. Cowardly, I know, and it leaves Ben two steps in front of us, alone. But I know Ben can defend himself, at least better than my father can.
“You see, Selkie, this is your choice. Your final choice, here at the end, which I give to you out of sentimentality. We are going to kill the other three fays today. The prophecy is broken. You will stay here, on Avalon. Because so long as you stay here, you may keep one of them. But you may not keep both.”
At first, I don’t understand. “Keep one of what?” I ask, and I know my confusion is evident.
Ben is not confused. Ben looks at me immediately. In the glow of the candles of the candelabra lining the promenade, his eyes are as clear as the starlight outside. “Choose him,” he tells me.
This doesn’t help my confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Etherington Stewart,” says my mother, and my father cries out in pain, leaning more heavily on me in obvious agony.
“Stop it!” I shout at my mother desperately.
“Or Benedict Le Fay,” she continues.
Ben staggers, catching himself on the nearest archway to keep himself upright. I stand supporting my father and stare at Ben in horror as he gasps for breath.
Even my mother seems surprised. “My, you’re very weak,” she remarks to him.
“I just went for a swim,” he reminds her through clenched teeth.
“You’ll just require the merest of nudges,” my mother says and looks at me. “So it’s your choice. I’m going to name one of them, now. You tell me which one.”
“Let her name me,” Ben insists from over by the archway. “Save your father.”
I look from him to my mother. “What does it matter what I say? You’re just going to name them both anyway.”
My mother laughs like I am the funniest creature she has ever met. “My, Selkie.” My skin crawls. “You have learned, haven’t you? Finally. Never trust a faerie. You don’t have to believe me. But I tell you the truth. It is your reward for staying here, with us, forever.”
“What if I refuse? What if I just leave?” I ask with bravado I don’t feel. But Ben said I could leave this island anytime I want.
“You can leave. But you will leave with neither of them. I will name them both right now. This way, you can be assured of the continued existence of one of these creatures you so foolishly love. Tell me which one.”
I cannot think. I keep trying to form thoughts—to think—but I can’t. Is she really asking me to…? I can’t even comprehend it. My father leans on my shoulder, gasping for breath, and I think how all he’s ever done wrong was to give me life, to want a child enough to ask for one, to sacrifice everything for me. I’ve loved him, always—he’s my father—and I would do anything to protect him. I look at Ben, leaning on the archway, his ridiculous blanket as
kew and his sand-scattered hair creased into salty cowlicks all over his head. Ben, who I have loved for nearly as long. And we may have had our issues, he and I, but I am in love with him. I think I will never not be in love with Ben, with everything about him, even the strange, odd otherness that I think I will never be able to fully capture, and I cannot imagine ever hurting him, never mind ending him. I want to make him laugh at me, I want to cuddle him and kiss him, I want his smiles and his whispers in my ear. I want to make him happy, and I want it for the rest of our lives, for whatever length of time that might be.
And I shouldn’t even be thinking these things at all, because I should be leaving. I should be saving everyone else that I condemned when I foolishly chose to come here.
I hear a noise like a squeak escape me, and I lift a hand and press it to my mouth, willing myself not to burst into tears, because I know this is what my mother wants. I feel like I am breaking inside, like the shards of me will fall onto the floor if I open my mouth.
Ben’s eyes are steady on mine. “Tell her to name me, Selkie.” His voice is so even, so calm.
And surely he should know that I should just be leaving. Isn’t that why he came back to get me? I shake my head helplessly. “I can’t…I can’t…” I feel on the verge of hysteria, like I can do nothing more than hiccup my breaths. Here, at the end, I think I am finally going to lose it.
“Listen to me,” Ben continues. “He’s your father. You’d never forgive yourself.”
Something occurs to me suddenly. I look at my mother, composure building inside of me as I reach the realization. “But you can’t name him,” I point out. “You don’t know his whole name.”
My mother smiles her chilling smile at me, and it sends ice drifting through me.
“Benedict Le Fay will betray you,” she says, “and then he will die. Isn’t that the prophecy? He betrayed you, didn’t he? He betrayed you, and he led you to the Unseelie Court, and there was put upon you…a curse.” My mother moves forward, toward me, and I cannot move away from her. I have forgotten how to do anything except feel the cold panic consuming me. She reaches out a hand and lays it against my cheek, in what would be a caress from any other mother. I flinch. “You should be dead,” she coos to me. “Do you know why you’re not?”
The Boy with the Hidden Name Page 21