She Dies at the End (November Snow Book 1)

by A. M. Manay

  “We’ve never left you alone. Everyone’s been by to see you, too, to check on you and pay their respects. There are even more flowers downstairs that wouldn’t fit,” Zinnia began, as November slowly began to eat her breakfast.

  She reacted to that information with a hint of surprise. Humans usually didn’t rate much respect with fairies and vampires. The courtiers certainly had never shown her any consideration before.

  “You saved a lot of vampire and fairy lives the other night,” Pine explained further. “They want to show their appreciation. More importantly, they want to ensure that you’re on their side when things hit the fan. Also, there’s a certain degree of sucking up to the King going on, since everyone knows you have his favor.”

  November didn’t know quite what to make of any of that. “Speaking of the King, he’s been checking on you every hour on the hour,” Zinnia reported. “He stayed the whole day yesterday. Slept on the floor holding your hand, with half a dozen fairies guarding you both. Every time he tried to leave, your vitals went haywire. Dr. Cedar says that with all the fairy magic you absorbed, you seem to have bonded to him like fairies do when they’re born. You seemed more stable by nightfall last night, so he’s been able to come and go. He’d probably be here right now, but he told us to open the shutters. Thought some sunlight would do you good.”

  “His security detail freaked. As did Lord William, when he found out last night. Vampires who survive for thousands of years don’t tend to take such chances,” Pine elaborated. The mention of Ilyn seemed to catch November’s attention for a moment, but then she returned to her food.

  From Zinnia and Pine, November learned that Ben’s execution had been postponed in the midst of all the excitement. After she’d finished interrogating Lilith, Savita had been sent to Luka’s mansion in Arizona in command of a large contingent of federal knights. They’d found the place deserted and were currently searching for clues to where they might have gone.

  “Hey, why are people so afraid of Savita, anyhow?” Zinnia interrupted.

  “Well, there’s the mind reading, for starters. Scheming people like their privacy,” Pine began.

  “And?” Zinnia asked when Pine hesitated to continue.

  “They say she has the ability to enthrall supernaturals, event to the point of forcing them to commit murder or suicide.” Pine accentuated this tidbit of information with spooky hand gestures. “Blood kin are immune, they say. I’ve never seen her do it, myself, but my grandmother tells stories.”

  “For real? Wow. She could be seriously powerful if she wanted to be. Like, rule-the-world-as-a despot powerful.” Zinnia’s eyes were wide.

  “Yep. Lucky thing she’s not a monster like Luka. She avoids using both her gifts as much as she can. She wishes she didn’t have either one of them, I think. Anyhow, as for Lilith, she’s going to be dead pretty soon, I imagine,” Pine continued, getting back on topic. “They must be about through asking her questions if they sent Savita to Arizona. Quickie trial and execution, I expect. Unless they wait to try her at the Assembly of Lords, so everyone sees proof of what Luka’s been up to. Though I suspect that those who refuse to believe it have already chosen Luka’s side, or are well compensated for staying neutral.”

  “Is that a lot of people?” Zinnia asked.

  “Enough for trouble, I’m afraid.”

  “So what will the king do next? Will he go back to Nevada?”

  “You’ll have to ask him when he comes.”

  Darkness was falling, and Zinnia turned on some lamps as she replied. “I’m surprised he isn’t here right now.”

  The conversation trailed off as the fairies looked with concern at their silent friend. She had finished eating and was just sitting there, stating at the wall.

  “I wonder if she saw bad things, when she was . . .” Zinnia said quietly to Pine, unsure if November was even listening.

  “It certainly seemed like she did,” Pine replied. “From what little I could make out of what she was saying. For a while there, I would swear she was speaking Old Fairy.”

  “Do you think it would make her feel better to draw?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Pine replied, grabbing a notebook and pencil and placing them in November’s lap. The girl registered their presence, looked up at Pine, and grinned her thanks before taking up the pencil and returning to her own world. “At least she seems to know who we are. That mean’s she’s still in there, right?” her bodyguard asked her best friend.

  “She’s in there," the empath replied with assurance. “It’s just going to take time for her to get back to normal. She’s kind of blank right now. I don’t think she’s ready to feel much yet. Every so often, something gets through, but I think she put up some walls that night, to protect herself. She’s just not ready to take them down yet.” Zinnia seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as Pine. “I really wonder where the king is,” she added, watching November begin to sketch.

  November wondered, too. As she turned her thoughts to him, she could see him clearly. Ilyn had gone out to feed. He was sitting in the back of a limo, drinking from a woman in a business suit. He didn’t seem that into it, which somehow pleased her. It wasn’t like most of her visions, which felt like trespassers. This one was comfortable and reassuring, like when you hear your grandmother cooking in the next room and you know that it means you're both okay.

  It was strange. She’d never been able to just think of a person and see where they were and what they were doing. She needed something of theirs: hair, jewelry, a piece of clothing, and even then, it was hit or miss. Now, however, she seemed somehow linked with the King. She tried to remember what her friends had been saying earlier about her vital signs worsening when Ilyn tried to leave. It was so hard to pay attention to details; her focus seemed so fragmented.

  For a moment, she hoped he would come see her when he returned. But that hope came with the pain of possible disappointment, so she cut it off and went back to drawing, letting her mind wander and drift. Her last coherent thought before letting go was that she probably shouldn’t tell anyone that she could see him.

  She spent the night like this, filling sheets of paper with disjointed images, tearing them off, dropping them to the floor, and beginning again. She stopped only when someone took the pencil out of her hand and placed food in front of her. Several people came by to check her progress: William, Hazel, Cedar. She heard worried whispers but didn’t bother listening to them. William tried to talk to her for a moment. He was determined to explain his behavior the other night, when he'd threatened to turn her himself. She managed to give him a reassuring smile. She didn’t really remember why she was supposed to be mad at him.

  The person who did not come was Ilyn: not that night, not the next, not the one after that. She knew he was still in the house. In one of her more lucid moments, she’d heard Willow and Pine discussing the fact that Hazel and most of the court had returned to Las Vegas to plan for the upcoming Assembly, but Ilyn had stayed to make war plans with William.

  She tried not to wonder why he didn’t come. Perhaps he didn’t care about her as much as he had seemed to. Perhaps now that she was out of danger, he had more important uses for his time. Perhaps he had seen so much of her human weakness that she now repelled him. Whatever the reason, part of her wanted to despair. Part of her was angry. After all, she’d suffered because she was protecting him and his people. The rest of her was still numb and was willing to wait to see how things played out.

  Ilyn certainly featured prominently in the fragments of vision she could recall from her ordeal, as well as her few actual memories from that night. She remembered being curled up against his chest as he sang to her. She remembered him holding her in ice cold water. She remembered clutching his hand for dear life. She had never held anyone’s hand like that. With humans, the contact led to visions she didn’t want. With vampires, she didn’t see much unless she chose to look. With Ilyn in particular, when the visions did come, they weren’t
disorienting and painful and nauseating like everyone else’s. They were somehow comfortable and familiar, even when they were upsetting. She couldn’t understand it.

  She kept making the same drawings over and over: Ilyn dying, Ilyn as a young human throwing his dead son on pyre, Ilyn with his wives, Savita’s rebirth, William’s human death. A number of her visions featured the knife that had caused her such damage: Marisha killing a fairy and taking his knife, Luka killing a number of people with that same knife.

  One vision of Luka stuck out in her mind, because it seemed so strangely gentle. He was using the same knife, that cruel weapon, to cut ropes that were binding an injured young girl. She’d obviously been badly abused, but apparently not by him, as she looked at him as though he were an angel. November wondered who she was.

  The most disturbing visions were those of the knife’s manufacture, which involved quenching the hot metal by plunging it into terrified fairy captives, who proceeded to die screaming. The wooden inlay was carved from a stake used to execute vampires. Those particular images haunted November for some time.

  Sleep did not come easily during her recovery. Visions, nightmares, night terrors, panic attacks – these all conspired to wake her every few hours. Pine or Zinnia would come running and sit with her until she fell back asleep, as though she were a frightened child.

  Even so, she made quick progress. She began talking in her sleep. One morning, Zinnia put some music on, and November began singing along without seeming to realize she was doing it. Excited to see improvement, Pine and Zinnia kept up a constant soundtrack of November’s favorite musicians: Florence Welsh, Regina Spektor, the Devil Makes Three, Adele, Josh White, Lily Allen, Ingrid Michaelson, Son House, Bob Dylan, Pink, the Be Good Tanyas, Catey Shaw.

  As she grew physically stronger, they took her on longer and longer walks outside. They watched a movie in the theatre. She picked up her guitar again. She spent less time drawing in trances. She began communicating more, writing out some of her messages, and yet, no conscious words passed her lips.

  One early afternoon, she woke up to find a few drops of blood on her pillow. She reached out to touch them, thinking she must have had a nosebleed in her sleep. Instead, she plunged into a vision of the night before.

  The king kneels by her bed, studying her as she sleeps. Zinnia and Pine quietly sneak through the door. Ilyn’s eyes turn cold. “I believe I told the two of you to wait in the hallway,” he says without turning his head.

  “Why are you doing this to her? Staying away while she is awake? Why are you doing it to yourself?” Zinnia asks, practically distraught.

  “My decisions are none of your concern, child,” he replies.

  “She asks for you in her sleep. Every day,” Pine says with quiet seriousness. "It's the only time she talks."

  “Every time she hears a footstep in the hallway, she looks for you. For a moment she brims with love and hope, and when you don’t appear, it curdles to pain. And then she pretends she doesn’t care. She’d be recovering so much faster from her trauma if only you would help her.” The empath is wringing her hands. “How can you do this to her? You feel something for her! I can sense it.”

  “A vampire does not love a human. It’s like loving a butterfly. They’re pretty and fragile and understand nothing and then they die. Now get out,” he growls with fangs bared, finally turning to face his tormentors, “before I do something you’ll regret.” Having said their piece, they flee their king’s wrath.

  As soon as he is alone, he drops his forehead down to rest on November’s bed. An hour later, when he finally rises to leave, he leaves behind two tears of blood on her pillowcase.

  November looked around her room as she came back to the present. Something thawed inside of her. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. So, she got in the shower to muffle the sound, and that’s exactly what she did. When she finally emerged, she felt clean and raw and renewed. She felt like herself again, just sharper and harder somehow, with the softness all burned away by the pain of Lilith’s attack.

  She stood for a long while, examining herself in the mirror, reflecting on the previous days. She had been hiding from her pain. She could see that now. She had been afraid of feeling, so she had walled her heart up and felt nothing. It was a coping mechanism she had used many times before, but this time, she’d nearly lost herself in it altogether. She had survived New Years Eve only to refuse to live, and regardless of how the rest of her day played out, she was determined not to continue that mistake any longer.

  She got dressed in an embroidered white tunic and leggings, a Christmas gift from Savita called a kameez and churidar. With long white sleeves and a smattering of gold embroidery, combined with her shorn scalp and illness-heightened cheekbones, she looked like some kind of avenging angel or warrior monk. She briefly considered wearing some makeup to cover up her pale skin and dark circles but quickly rejected the notion. She wanted to be herself, the way she really was.

  Zinnia's classes were back in session, so only Pine was waiting for her in the hallway. “Let’s take a walk,” she said to him nonchalantly. She didn’t wait for his reaction to hearing her voice before she headed purposefully down the hallway.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied after a shocked pause and leapt up to follow her. “Where are we headed?”

  “The copy room in the office wing.”

  “Okey-dokey,” he said as they took the stairs two at a time.

  “It’s where he hides until the other vampires wake up, when he wants to be alone.” Pine raised a questioning eyebrow, but she did not elaborate on how she had come up with that tidbit of information. They entered the government wing, passing a few busy fairies who widened their eyes but did not question the human they now called the Oracle.

  When they entered the cavernous supply room, Pine turned to her and asked, “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.” November lifted herself up to sit on a scarred wooden desk hidden in a remote corner of the room. This was where the King spent his solitary hours these days, reading or working on his laptop or staring off in thought. She’d tried not to spy on him over the previous days, both out of respect and out of her fear of feeling things, but she hadn’t been able to resist the occasional peek. There was something strangely endearing about a king hiding out amongst the highlighters and paper clips.

  They did not have to wait too long. The king must have smelled her and heard her breathing from out in the hallway, as he already looked guarded when he caught sight of her sitting on the desk. He looked accusingly at Pine, who quickly spoke to defend himself. “I said nothing to her. This was all her idea.” The king cocked his head toward the door, sending November’s bodyguard into the hallway.

  He looked at the seer, sitting on top of his desk, her arms wrapped around her shins, her chin resting on her knees. To his shock and relief, she spoke. “I’ve missed you.” Happiness and relief skipped across his face for an instant before his customary hauteur returned.

  He fought with himself before responding frostily, “I’m quite busy. If I wished to see you, I would have summoned you.”

  She smirked at him a little. “Not too busy to spend an hour leaving vampire tears on my pillow last night.” He closed his eyes for a moment, horrified that his weakness had been witnessed. She continued more gently, “I’m sure you have your reasons for wanting to keep your feelings secret. I can hardly blame you if you’re trying not to feel anything. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I woke up. I’ve spent whole years of my life like that. Not as many as you have, I suppose. I’ve screwed up the courage to choose to live again. I’m pretty sure that if I can do it, so can you.”

  “Are you calling me a coward?” he asked with some heat. “You understand nothing.” He looked like he wanted to break something, or a lot of somethings. He brought his face very close to hers, his fangs gleaming and sharp. She supposed she should be frightened, but she wasn’t.

  “Like a butterfly?” He had the good
grace to step back and look slightly abashed. “Look, I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to be you. Objectively, us having any kind of romantic relationship would be pretty inappropriate. I’m not asking you to declare your eternal love for me. I don’t want to jump into bed with you. You’ve known me about two weeks, and you’re about a million years old. That would just be stupid.

  "But the fact is, I’m happier when you’re around, and I think the same goes for you. You earned my loyalty the way you took care of me the other night. Bloodthirsty vampire you may be, but you’ve been nothing but kind to me. You stayed when I needed you even though you barely know me. I’ve never had anyone take care of me the way you and Pine and Esther did. I’ve always suffered all alone, but you stayed. Without your help, your care, I would never have survived Lilith’s attack. You were my anchor. I would have chosen oblivion without your voice to lead me back. Even if my body had survived, the rest of me might not have.

  "And then there’s what I know of the future, a future when you will spend a day buried in a grave so that I won’t be afraid when I wake up to a new life in the dark.” She took a deep breath. “I just feel safer when I’m near you.”

  “You’re not,” he replied darkly. “You are a fool if you love me, and the more fool to trust me.”

  “Look, I feel secure with you and uneasy when you’re gone. I feel like I’m at home, like you’re some kind of sanctuary. The fairies seem to think magic from the knife and from the healing has something to do with that, that it bonded us somehow, like fairy children bond with their kin.”

  “So it isn’t real,” he concluded starkly, “what we – what you’re feeling.”

  “That’s not what I said. Of course it’s real. I mean, fairies really love their families, right? They said that the magic can’t make something grow if the seeds aren’t already there. They think it just speeded up something that was already beginning,” she replied, and reached out tentatively to touch the scar on his cheek, so similar to the one on her own arm. He pulled away. “Now, if you didn’t want me at all, that would be one thing. If you thought I was ugly or stupid or weak, I would be sad, but I would get over it. But knowing that you feel something that you’re trying to suppress out of some need to protect me or you or both of us – that I have trouble accepting. After what I just survived, I don’t want to waste any time or any chance to be happy.”