He shook his head. “You’d be using this as an excuse to do what you’ve wanted to do all along.”
It was a preposterous thing to say. The power of flight, a mere excuse? I looked into his eyes, wanting to protest. I looked down at his hands, ready to pull myself from his grip. But eyes and hands, lips and skin, drew me in without even trying. I realized something right then.
“You’re right,” I said, and brought my lips to his. He tasted of mint and berries. I wanted more. “Come with me into the forest.”
11
TayloR
She led me, or rather, I led her, through the trees. I tripped over more branches than I could count. I couldn’t wait to touch her, kiss her, taste her. I wanted to memorize every inch of her skin.
We came to a stop in a clearing filled with silvery light. I was unlacing her dress before we’d even touched the ground. “Come here,” I said, pulling her close to me. And I kissed her, slowly, sweetly, as her body curved into me.
“I missed you,” I said, pulling back to look into her eyes.
“And I, you,” she murmured, brushing the hair from my face. The intensity in her gaze surprised me. Every time she looked at me like that, I couldn’t believe it. Then I was kissing her cheeks, her neck, her throat; everything I could reach before I managed to take off her dress. And when it fell away, and I saw her without anything between us, I was struck with a funny thought.
When Elora had come to the human world, she must’ve thought it was strange that people wore so many layers of clothes. I don’t mean the way we dress in the winter—I mean the way we keep our private areas bound up even on the most sweltering days. I still remember that shame I felt, as a kid, when I realized the other guys would see me in the locker room showers. I knew how dangerous it was to let them see me.
But here in Faerie, they must not have worried about those types of things. Underneath her dress, Elora was naked.
“Oh my God.”
“You say that a lot,” she said, staring at me unashamed. “Do you believe in God?”
“I do right now.”
She laughed. And she pulled my head back to her neck, so that I could kiss some more. It was all the reassurance I needed. I’d been afraid, leading her clumsily through the forest, that she’d take one look at me up close and change her mind. She’d pulled away from me so many times before. But something was different now. She was different now. I didn’t have to wonder every second if she wanted me.
I knew she did. I could feel it.
When she lifted my chin and kissed me, I started to lose control of my limbs. My legs shook as we sank to our knees. There were so many places I wanted to touch, my hands were completely overwhelmed. I started at her shoulders—they seemed a safe-enough place—and trailed my hands down her arms. I couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of touching even the least erotic places. I wanted to feel everything, no matter how innocent. I wanted to make her shake just by breathing on her neck.
And I did.
It happened when I slid my hand into her hair, just at the nape of her neck. I leaned in and took her earlobe between my teeth, kissing her softly. “I love you,” I said, whispering the words I’d been practicing in my head. “I’ve never loved anybody as much as I love you. And honestly, I want to make love to you so badly, but … ”
“But?”
“I think we should go slow,” I said. I mean, sure, I wanted to do everything, but we’d hardly done anything before this, and we needed to be careful. I could hurt her with the brush of my hand. I could humiliate myself with my lack of experience. Better to take things slowly, and figure it out as we went.
“I can kiss every inch of your body,” I whispered, “until you feel better than you’ve ever felt. Will you let me do that for you?”
Her whole body was shaking when she said, “Only if you let me do the same for you.”
“Come here, baby.” I guided her onto my lap, so that she was straddling me. I wanted to keep her safe as much as I wanted to make her feel good. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything hurting her, even though I knew my touch could hurt her. But she was here, in my lap, in my hands, kissing me like she would die if we broke apart. And I really believed what I’d said, about helping her wings grow. I’d seen something when I’d looked at them. I knew, in the deepest parts of me, that I was right about this. But could I hurt her to prove it?
“Is this okay?” I asked, gliding my hands down to her waist.
“Yes,” she breathed as I reached her hips. It was incredibly difficult to keep my hands from traveling to her most private places. But I’d waited this long for her, and I wouldn’t mess things up by moving too fast. I waited for her to guide me, each second, to show me what she wanted, when she wasn’t saying it.
The word “yes” on her lips was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.
I wanted to hear it again. I slid my hands back up her waist, over her stomach, rising, rising. “Can I touch you?” I asked, my lips still close to her ear.
“Yes.”
Oh, God, I was in heaven. I hadn’t been kidding about believing in God. Or gods. Everything, maybe. Ever since we’d met, I’d thought anything and everything was possible. And as my fingertips grazed the skin over her heart, and spread outward, I felt like I was worshipping her.
She inhaled sharply. For a brief second, I felt exceedingly pleased with myself. She liked me. I was making her feel good. But when she bit her bottom lip, I pulled back.
“Am I hurting you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Elora. Please tell me.”
She turned, looking into the darkness. “Yes.”
Funny how a minute can change the power of a word. This time, her “yes” was a knife in my chest. But I’d known this could happen. I’d encouraged her to do this, knowing full well it might hurt her. Was I so selfish that I’d compromise her well-being for my own pleasure?
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling back. “I’m so sorry. We should stop this.”
“What? No.” She took my hands and put them back on her thighs. I knew I should pull away but I couldn’t. There was power in her touch that I couldn’t fight.
Didn’t want to.
Couldn’t.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
“It’s not so bad.” Her lips found mine, and lingered.
My resolve weakened. Pretty soon it would dissipate into the air. “Even a little is too much,” I managed.
She shook her head. “It’s all right, if you’re careful. Because … ”
“What?”
“I think you’re right.”
I inhaled slowly, trying to steady my spinning head, but it backfired. Her scent filled my head, woodsy and sharp like the forest after the rain. Flowers and fruit and something spicy, like cinnamon. I ran my tongue from her throat to her neck.
She giggled a little, like maybe it tickled.
“Is this okay?” I asked.
“Better than.”
“Good.” I trailed little kisses around her throat. “This?”
“Yes. Mmm.” Her body shuddered, and I realized my hands had been slipping toward the center of her. She was warm there, and I wanted to move closer, to touch her at her core. I’d never felt like this before, never felt this urgency. Even when I’d wanted to get closer to someone, it had been a purely physical desire. But as her lips touched mine, pressing into me, the whole of her pressing into me, I felt every part of me drawn to her. I felt my body rise and reach out for her. I felt my heart straining against my chest. And my spirit too—I felt clearly what I’d only just suspected before. Maybe it was this place. Maybe it was Elora. Or maybe it was because I was completely and totally in love with her.
My hands slid farther up her thighs and she wrapped her arms around me, pulling me close with an urgency I recognized in
myself. I was kissing her mouth now—couldn’t tear myself away from her lips—and I couldn’t see or smell or taste anything but her. When she murmured the words, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.
“Hmmm?” I said, thinking that if I hadn’t heard her right I could pass it off as a moan rather than a question. But she looked up at me, right into my eyes, and said, “I’m in love with you.”
Every part of me froze.
“I’m so in love with you,” she whispered, like the words held power. Or danger. I guess for her, they did. They erased everything she’d ever believed about humans. But they built something new in its place. Something terrifying, yes, but beautiful too.
I wrapped my arms around her waist, down low where it wouldn’t hurt her. The skin was burning up there. All of her was burning up; a sudden heat went searing through her. I loosened my grip, letting cool air rush in between us, but she pulled me back, almost violently. She held onto me, nails digging into my shirt and I held her there, trying to protect her from whatever was hurting her. When she pulled away, to look at me, I expected to see a pained expression on her face. But the look she wore was awe.
“Kiss me,” she said.
I did.
Her breathing quickened and she ran her fingers through my hair. The look of awe hadn’t lessened. But a slow smile cut into it. “Taylor.”
“What is it?”
She grinned, kissing me once, twice, three times. “It doesn’t hurt so badly anymore.”
“What—really?”
She nodded.
“That’s amazing. Your own love helped the magic to work.”
“Not mine.” She shook her head. “Ours,” she said, pressing into me until I was lying on my back. Now she crawled over me and she was the animal, the wild thing, the goddess. She led my hand up her thigh, her face so close to mine, holding onto my gaze with ferocity. Maybe memorizing me the way I always tried to memorize her. But this, I would never forget.
The image was burned into my memory.
When she said, “Heal me,” I did as she asked.
12
ElorA
In the morning, I awoke to a gasp, but it didn’t sound like Taylor’s. I reached for my dress, which was covering me like a blanket. As my eyes tried to adjust to the hideous light, I caught flashes of the person peering down at me: her dark hair was tangled, and her brown eyes were narrowed into slits. That crystalline chair sparkled in the light.
“Kylie,” I said, scanning the space for Taylor. He was nowhere to be seen. “Where did—”
“He needed to take care of something,” she said. “And I offered to watch over you, because … ” She paused, studying my back. Studying whatever growth Taylor had seen the previous night. Or maybe there was more, considering …
“He told you?” I pushed myself to a sitting position. My limbs ached, but it was less of an all-consuming pain and more the feeling you get after a long night of flying. A welcome soreness in the muscles.
“He didn’t have to. The whole forest is talking about it.” Kylie scoffed, a short, scalding sound. “I thought you’d already got them back, you know? Thought the Queen had sewed them on. But this … this is much more magical, isn’t it?”
I was having trouble lacing up the low back of my corset, and suddenly I didn’t want to use magic in front of Kylie. So I just held onto it, looking up at her as she blinked in the early morning light. Her hair was tufting up in the back, like perhaps she and Alexia had slipped away last night when Taylor and I did, but any joy it might’ve brought was gone now.
“You’re angry with me,” I said.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head and just kept shaking it. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just angry.”
“What can I do?”
“What can’t you do?” she responded, not really answering me. “What can’t the Dark Princess do? You get love. You get your wings. You get everything you want. And I get nothing.”
“You have Alexia,” I said before I could stop myself. “You have us.”
“Oh, good. I guess I’m set then.” She made a move to leave, but I stopped her with my hand.
I took it back when she glared at me. “But that doesn’t change things, does it?” I asked. “Nothing you have changes what you don’t have. Just like Taylor’s love didn’t make up for the loss of my wings.”
“But it does, that’s the point.” She ran her hands through her hair. “You’re going to get back your wings. You’re going to get back everything they stupidly told me I could get back, if I just prayed for it. Or made up for what I’d done to anger God. Someone actually said that to me, do you believe that?” She looked up at the trees. “And I knew they were wrong, but they wouldn’t let it go. If God didn’t fix me, science would. There are so many new advances to science! They kept me locked in a fairy tale. Locked in a tower.”
“Kylie. I’m sorry. I—”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want to be able to be myself without having my differences thrown in my face.” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I mean, honestly, is that asking so much? I feel normal. I am normal. The only time I feel different is around other people, you know?”
I do, I thought, studying her eyes. When I was a child, I realized there was something very different about my wings. Unlike my mother’s, which were grand and full, mine appeared to have been sliced along their curves. They looked tattered, and the courtiers called me the Tattered Princess behind my mother’s back.
Still, through it all, I had been able to fly. As for Kylie …
“I am truly sorry,” I said, reaching for her hand. “Honestly, if we could trade places—”
“Don’t do that.” She pushed away my hand. “I don’t want your pity. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m happy for you. I am. I just … ”
“What is it?” I said softly, worried the worst of it was yet to come. Worried she’d never forgive me, or she’d do something rash.
“I’m just sick to death of waiting for the slightest bit of decency from the world, and being disappointed,” she said, wiping away the tears. “I’m sick of being forced to live in a universe where the logic doesn’t make sense to me, and when I finally get to a place where magic exists, the same stupid logic applies.”
“But—”
“Not for everybody. Just for me.”
“It isn’t just you.”
“Okay, well, anybody who isn’t a faerie. God, maybe I’ll sew your old wings into my back, so that I have faerie blood running through my veins, and then I can be magical too.”
“Kylie—”
“But that wouldn’t work, would it? The world changes, and you change with it. Only I stay the same. And I’m just done … ”
I knelt before her. I didn’t even realize I was crying until my tears fell onto her knees. And when I reached up to touch her face, she didn’t pull away. She just looked at me.
“I’m not making threats,” she said. “I just can’t carry everyone anymore. It’s too much weight.”
My thumb trailed across her cheek, catching a tear as it fell. “That is the secret, isn’t it? Everyone sees you as the sweetest among us, and that is true. But beyond that lies something different. You are the strongest. Not because of what you’ve endured, but because you insist that we will win, even when none of us dares to believe it. You make it true, with that insistence.”
“Kylie the insufferable optimist.” She snorted. “Good riddance.”
“We all wear masks, and Faerie will strip them from our faces. That is the danger of bringing you here.”
“The danger and the power,” she said softly. “And what about those who’ve always been here? What about you?”
I laughed. “I had to go to the human world to shed my mask.”
“Which was … ?”
Elora the singular ent
ity, never depending on anyone but herself. Denying the possibility of love to survive.
“The untouchable princess,” I said.
To my surprise, she laughed. Her eyes trailed to the place where my top threatened to fall away. “Not so untouchable anymore, huh?”
I blushed, looking down. “I’ve been … working on it,” I said. “Sometimes it’s hard for me. To trust him. I keep thinking the moment I do, he will disappear. Or betray me.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, as if we were discussing algebra equations or the process for making jam. “It’s what I know.”
She was quiet a minute, studying my eyes with an intensity that made me nervous. Finally, she said, “Your parents?”
“Well, I only know my mother, but that’s enough.” I huffed, a sharp sound. “It’s more than enough.”
“That bad, huh?”
“She’s the Queen of the Dark Faeries,” I said, as if that explained it. And I suppose it did, if you knew the slightest bit about her.
“And you never met your dad?”
“Plenty of faeries grow up only knowing one of their parents, or none. We’re all related, all connected by the same earth, which is our original body, and so we raise each other. The specifics of our parentage aren’t fussed over like in the mortal world.”
“So not knowing your dad is normal.”
“It would’ve been normal if we hadn’t been forbidden to speak about him. That made his absence clearer than anything else. That made me wonder why he’d left. If I’d simply had a bit of information, I could’ve let it go.”
Instead I’d obsessed over it. Obsessed over the coldness of my mother. Obsessed over the idea that my father would save me from her. From being alone.
“It makes you hate yourself, doesn’t it?” Kylie asked softly. “Or, at the very least, you question your worth. If you can even be loved.”
“Yes.”
“My parents are jerks too. I mean, maybe not jerks-with-magic, but still. They made me hate myself for a long time.” Her gaze shifted down. At first, I thought she was looking at the grass, but then I realized she was looking at herself. “You’re never going to ask me, are you?”
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