“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“Yes you do,” she shouted, because he was moving away, into the trees. “You have to hear it. If you keep shutting people out you’ll always feel useless, because no one will know all the wonderful things about you.”
But it was too late to placate him with compliments. Keegan was gone.
Now the wind had gone out of Kylie. Now she was crying. “Damn it,” she said to her hands, covering her face so we couldn’t see. “Why did he have to do this? Why did he have to take this away from me?”
I knelt beside her. Alexia did the same. Taylor stepped up behind us, and we all tried to console her, but we didn’t know how to make things right. I think we were all coming to the same conclusion, realizing what Keegan had kept hidden: he didn’t protect his sister so fiercely because she needed him. He did it because he needed her.
Now everyone knew it. I knew it, and she knew it, and he must’ve known she knew. There was no undoing this revelation, no putting back what had been pulled away. I could only hope that, in his desperation, Keegan wouldn’t seek an audience with the Seelie Queen. She might allow what I had forbidden.
Then Keegan would find his purpose and seal his fate.
17
TayloR
Elora went off in search of the Queen, and I didn’t try to stop her. I didn’t want her to know that I’d overheard her talking with Keegan in the woods. Besides, at this point, finding him was the most important thing. So splitting up made sense.
Still, I didn’t exactly love being away from her this close to the battle, and I found myself making up ridiculous scenarios as Kylie, Alexia, and I pushed through the underbrush. I envisioned the Queen covering Elora in vines until she looked like a part of the forest. I envisioned Elora sneaking into the Dark Court without me. The longer we looked, screaming Keegan’s name, the more I was convinced things were about to get ugly.
And I was right. I just had the reasons completely wrong.
We came across Keegan on the outside of a thicket: something so covered with vines that it was impossible to see inside. We were on a bit of a hill, so I could see the location of our camp from up here. I could also see how close we’d come to the border between the Bright and Dark Courts.
I shuddered, wanting to get Keegan away from here as soon as possible.
I crouched down in front of him. “Hey. Let’s get you out of here,” I said. I wasn’t even sure why I was treating him like a frightened deer. Then I saw the look in his eyes, and I understood why my instinct was taking over. Keegan was sitting on the ground, his back up against a tree, and his eyes were completely blank.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kylie asked, coming to a stop before him. She reached out for his hand, but he didn’t take it. Probably for the first time in their lives, he didn’t take it.
He didn’t even acknowledge her.
He was rocking a little, and I started to get really freaked out. We had no idea what kind of creatures lurked in this forest. Sure, the Queen and her ladies seemed protective of us, but they were four faeries out of what? Thousands? Millions?
Probably thousands, at this point, I thought as Alexia started poking around the space. Because of human expansion. Because of human destructiveness.
Which meant they had a right to be upset with us, which meant we never should have trusted them in the first place. Yeah, the longer Keegan went without saying a word, the worse I felt about this entire place. We’d turned our backs for one second, and something had gotten ahold of him.
But what?
Kylie reached down to brush the slick sheen from Keegan’s forehead, and he jerked away. When he moaned, I actually jumped, because his mouth hadn’t even shifted. Then I realized why: he wasn’t moaning. The moaning was coming from inside the circle of trees.
Kylie and I looked at each other. Alexia was already circling around the back and couldn’t be seen.
“I’m going in,” we said at the same time.
“No, you stay here, and I’ll check it out,” I said.
Kylie shook her head. When it came down to it, she was as stubborn as me.
“Fine,” I said, helping her out of her chair. Then I knelt down and crawled under a patch of vines. I could feel them scraping against my back, drawing blood with the slightest bit of effort. When all was said and done, my clothes would be torn to shreds.
Thanks a lot, Seelie Court.
Still, I’d had it pretty good since I’d arrived. I mean, things could’ve been worse. For example, I could’ve been tied to a tree by my wrists, half-starved and half-clothed, moaning like I hadn’t moved in weeks.
I could’ve been like him.
“Brad?”
I stepped up to him slowly. I thought maybe if I moved slowly enough, he’d disappear before my eyes like a mirage. Like a simple creation of smoke and mirrors, here one minute and gone the next. A glamour.
Not a person, made up of flesh and blood.
A lot of blood, I thought, my eyes trailing to his wrists. Thin red lines crept down his arms. The blood was dried, which meant he hadn’t been struggling in a while. God, had he been here the entire time?
“Who did this to you?” I asked, while Kylie called to me from the outside. I actually considered ignoring her. Sure, she’d be mad, but she’d be spared the sight of … this. I wished I’d been spared. I already wanted to gouge out my eyes.
“Taylor? Can you pull me through? This branch is sticking in my back.”
I could see Kylie’s hand poking through the branches. For a second I was frozen. Trapped between staring at Brad, still in the black jeans he’d worn to the prom, and Kylie’s hand, poking through the branches into hell.
“Can you hear me?” I whispered to him.
He wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me. But he was talking to himself, mumbling like the air was filled with faeries. And it wasn’t, this time.
“Taylor? ” Kylie called.
“Fuck.” I knelt down and took hold of her hands. Pulling her through to the other side, I didn’t even say anything as I set her beside a tree, three feet from Brad. I just waited for her to see.
“What took you so long?” she asked. “And where did Alexia—”
She froze, trailing off in mid-sentence. Her eyes fell over the mess that was Brad. The body that remained of him. I mean, sure, he was alive, but how much now?
“What have they done to him?” Kylie breathed.
I shook my head, then realized she couldn’t read my thoughts. Still, speaking was taking an incredible amount of effort. My tongue felt heavy. All of me did. “I don’t know.”
“Who—”
“I don’t know.”
Kylie pushed a hand through her hair, but it fell right back in her face. It was probably better that way. Better to see the world through dirty lenses, through clouds, through smoke.
Better not to see it at all.
“I didn’t think Faerie would be like this,” she said, so softly, as she stared at Brad. Her greatest tormentor, back home. The boy who’d taunted her and drugged her and tried to photograph her naked.
At least photograph her.
When Kylie reached up to set Brad free, the word just slipped out of my mouth: “Wait.”
She turned, hand on the vines. “What?” she asked. “God, I should’ve brought one of my knives.”
“I have to ask you something,” I said. From the other side of the thicket, Alexia was calling, “How did you guys get in?” but we could barely hear her, and it didn’t matter anymore. The only people in this space were the people who were supposed to be in this space. Just me, Kylie, and the boy who’d made her life a living hell. The boy who’d made my life hell too, before Elora came along and convinced us to take him down.
I lowered my voice. “That night you went over to Brad’s … ”
Kylie huffed, struggling to slice the vines with her fingernails. “Taylor, I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“I need to talk about it right now,” I said as Brad squirmed. I thought maybe he could tell we were talking about him but couldn’t find the words to respond.
I closed my eyes, blocking out the sight of him.
“Okay, well, I guess I’ll just stay with Keegan,” Alexia called from another dimension. That’s how it felt, like she was in a made-up world and we were in the real one, where terrible things happened for no reason. Unless …
“You told us Brad wanted to take your picture,” I said, keeping the rest to myself. How Brad had told everyone at school that Kylie had “boy and girl parts,” because she was bi. How the photo was going to “prove” it.
The first vine broke free, and Kylie turned to look at me. “So?”
“So, is that really true?” I asked, and she narrowed her eyes. I’d never seen her look so mad before. “I mean, is that all he did? I’m not questioning that he would do that to you. I know he would. But I always thought … ” Again, I had to look away from him in order to say these things. I had to separate the guy in front of me from the guy he’d been. “I just wondered if maybe he’d tried to do something more.”
Kylie stared at me a long minute, her hand frozen in the air. She’d managed to slice the second vine, and now she’d only have to pull on it to set him free.
But should he be free?
I hated myself for thinking it, but I couldn’t get away from this thought that if Brad had tried to do more than take her picture, if he’d tried to touch her, or …
“What are you doing, Taylor?” Kylie was staring into my eyes, and hers were so bright. Like she could see into the depths of me. See the darkness there.
“I just need to know,” I said softly.
“Because why? Because then you’ll feel justified in leaving him here? Are you really using me as an excuse for that?”
“No! I wasn’t—”
“Yes you are.” She shook her head in disgust. “You did the same thing back home. You used what Brad did to me, or tried to do, as an excuse to hurt him, but you want to know the truth of it? You wanted to hurt him all along. Long before I came into your life, you hated him, like so many people did, but you wouldn’t retaliate.”
“Maybe that’s true. But—”
“Maybe you didn’t think you were worth the effort. Maybe you even thought he was right to torment you.”
“Kylie … ” I’d never heard her talk like this. It scared me. But here we were, three feet from a boy being kept as a slave, and I was trying to justify it. Maybe it was the only way to keep myself from going completely insane. I needed to believe there was some reason for all of this, that the universe was exacting its vengeance, unleashing karma on the boy who’d hurt so many people. Because if it wasn’t, if life was just one bad thing happening after another, one more person hurting someone for no reason, who could live in a world like that?
Who could fight for a world like that without contributing to the problem? Without perpetuating it?
“You know I’m right,” Kylie said, still staring into my eyes. “Until I came along, you mostly just put up with his abuse. You told yourself it was better to not fight back, because it would only get worse. Trust me, I know the mentality.” She reached out to touch my arm. “But do not convince yourself that hurting someone for me makes it okay. Because if he did something to me … if he hurt me, then it already happened. You didn’t stop it, and he didn’t stop it. It’s over. That moment is gone. Do you understand?”
I slid my hands over my face, trying to hold myself together that way. “No. I don’t. Are you saying something did happen?”
She shook her head. “I’m saying that if it had, you didn’t protect me, or save me, or whatever you think I needed at the time. So if you go after him after the fact, you aren’t doing it for me. You’re doing it to appease your own guilt, and using me as an excuse. And I’m not going to be used for that, or anything.”
She moved back from the vines, and from Brad. One of his wrists was still tied in place. “So do what you’re going to do, Taylor. But don’t use me as an excuse.”
She watched me, and Brad watched me too, his eyes struggling to stay on my face. Barely coherent, but not entirely gone.
We could still save him, I thought, and relief rushed over me. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. I’d hated Brad for so long. But I guess the truth of it was, I didn’t want to hurt him the way he’d hurt us. I’d just wanted him gone.
No, I’d wanted him to not be cruel in the first place. To choose to do the right thing, instead of putting more evil into the world.
In one swift movement, I unsnapped the vine that held him.
“I loosened it for you,” Kylie said with a smile.
I smiled back, but it was shaky. Brad was just slumped there, staring at his wrists. I crouched in front of him. “Who did this to you?”
He narrowed his eyes, like he could hear me but I wasn’t speaking the right language. “Taylor,” he said finally.
I jerked back, affronted. “No. I’m Taylor.”
Brad started to laugh. “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head.
“What’s going on?” Kylie asked.
“I don’t know.” I peered at Brad. “Who tied you up? Was it the Queen? Tall, curvy, kind of … tree-like?”
“Like a mother oak,” Kylie supplied. “But also a person.”
“Taylor,” Brad said.
“What about the faerie with twigs for teeth? She looks like she sprouted up from the ground? Kinda scary looking?” I asked.
“I know the name,” Brad murmured. “Taylor. Taylor. Taylor.”
“We need to get him out of here,” Kylie said. “He needs help.”
“That’s the thing,” I said, as Brad poked at his wrists. “We don’t know who can help him, because we don’t know who did this to him. I don’t even think he can walk.”
At that, Brad started shifting his legs, just a little. Bending his knees, as if testing them.
“What about horns? Did she have horns?” Kylie said, but I could tell she was just humoring me. She probably thought I was a fool for thinking Brad would tell us anything.
Brad shook his head.
“Was it even a she?” I asked.
Brad huffed at that.
“Most of the faeries here are girls,” Kylie said. “I mean, Keegan found some satyrs. But I haven’t seen many.”
“Maybe the Queen prefers girls in her court.”
“Maybe the Queen prefers girls.”
She let the statement hang, and I couldn’t help but think of the Bright Queen’s story. After all, Naiad and Dryad had been “close” for many years. Maybe the Bright Queen hated the Dark Lady because Elora’s mother had rejected her. Possibly for Elora’s father.
Then again, if the Bright Queen had set Elora’s parents up, that didn’t make sense. Unless she and the Dark Lady had been estranged for so long …
I shook my head, telling myself it wasn’t important. But behind all the pondering, a single thought floated into my head: if the Bright Queen did prefer girls, she wasn’t keeping me to be her lover.
Me or Brad. Which meant someone else must’ve done this to him.
“Taylor, we have to go,” Kylie said as Alexia’s hand appeared under the brambles. “We’ll get Elora, and not tell anyone else until he’s taken care of.”
The thought of Elora tending to Brad made me feel sick. But the thought of abandoning him here made me feel sicker. Just as we were about to slip back under the branches, I noticed a streak in his hair that didn’t match the rest. It looked blond.
I turned, my heart pounding. “There’s one more faerie we should ask him about,” I said. The faerie who’d bee
n the nicest to me. The one who’d promised to free me from the Bright Queen’s grasp. But how could she, unless she had someone to take my place?
“Her wings are like a dragonfly’s, but bigger,” I said.
Brad’s head snapped up.
“She wears this tight green dress that looks like it’s clinging to her.”
He started to shake. I thought he might pass out. We needed to get him some food.
Still, I had one last description. “Her hair is made of light. I mean, it looks like it’s made of light. I don’t know for certain … Brad?”
“Taylor.” He stumbled to his feet. I hadn’t even expected him to sit up. But now he was standing, taking one shaky step. His eyes were so wide, I thought they would fall out of his head. “I know the name.”
“Is it Maya de Lyre?” I asked. “Is that the name?”
Brad took one look at me and bolted. He moved so fast, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. But I guess when you’re scared for your life, and your freedom, you’ll do anything to get away. You’ll push your body to its limit. Crawl under thorny vines.
I heard Alexia say, “Ow! Holy shit.” Then, “Where did you come from?”
And then she didn’t say anything, because Brad must’ve run past her, into the forest. I could hear him heading west.
I hoped I was wrong about that.
“We have to go,” I said to Kylie. She nodded, eyes wide. And together, we crawled out of the thicket, me first, and her on my heels. I helped her back into her chair.
“What the hell just happened?” Alexia said as Keegan pushed himself to his knees. “Did I just imagine that?”
Keegan said, “No. No, that happened.” He still looked dazed, but he sounded coherent.
“I think he’s heading to the border,” I said, dread washing over me like darkness.
“Let’s go.” Alexia nodded at me. “You can fill me in on the details after we’ve saved his ass.”
We bolted through the trees. Keegan and Kylie followed more slowly, her chair weaving around the rocks, and his legs stumbling as he tried to get them to work.
The Last Faerie Queen Page 14