He knocked on the wall again. “Go check on Reth. But be careful. I haven’t slept on purpose in way too long, so I’m going to bed. And since I’ll be asleep anyway, come sleep next to me when you get back in, okay?”
I forced my voice to come out light and teasing. “Only if you’re wearing footie pajamas.”
He laughed. “I’ll see if I can find a pair.
I rolled my eyes in aggravation and glared at the ceiling, hating what I had to confess. Lend knew how much it affected me, taking souls, and I always felt guilty and dirty, like he was judging me even though he tried not to. “The faerie came after me when Reth was down and I sucked out some of her soul.”
“Good.”
“I—Good?”
“Yes. Good.”
I shuddered. “You don’t have the creepy, ice thing in you. It’s not good.”
“You here, safe and alive? Good.”
I smiled sadly and knocked on the wall three times. “I”—knock—“love”—knock—“you”—knock.
He knocked three times back.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. What do I have to do?”
“Unless you plan on creating a door and walking the Paths alone, you really ought to take my hand.”
“I mean when we get there, you jerk.
Raquel? You coming?”
“I honestly never thought I would see the light of day again.”
“Aww, come on. With me on your side? Of course things worked out.”
She tried to smile, but her eyes filled with tears. Thank you, Evie.”
I threw my arms around her in a hug. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“I really do. You wonderful girl. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Well, now that we’re both unemployed fugitives, think of how much time we’ll have to hang out!”
She laughed drily, and we walked with our arms around each other to the house. I opened the door and yelled, “Evie alert! Coming into the family room!”
“You made it!” Lend shouted back. “Just a sex, I’ll go to the kitchen. Raquel’s with you?”
“Yup!”
“Good job! Jack and Arianna got back a couple of minutes ago.”
I walked into the family room to find Arianna and Jack sitting on the couch, arguing. “But here would have been no point to you being there if it hadn’t been for my computer prowess.”
“But your computer prowess wouldn’t have mattered if you couldn’t have gotten into the Center in the first place.”
“Being a glorified taxi does not make you the bigger hero.”
“Being a nerd who can tap on a keyboard or being able to navigate the dark eternities of the Faerie Paths . . . hmmm . . . which is a rarer and more valuable skill . . .”
I put my hands on my hips. “Okay, kids, take it elsewhere. Raquel and I have work to do.”
“Evie,” Raquel said. She was staring at Jack in horror.
“Oh, that.” I waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all good. Jack’s been helping us.”
“Don’t you remember how he tried to kill you?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Boring. We’ve all moved on.”
“Really?”
“Not really,” I said. “But he’s behaving. And everyone needs a glorified taxi now and then.”
“Admit it: you all adore me.” Jack bowed dramatically as he left the room. Arianna smiled tightly at Raquel and left after him.
Raquel collapsed onto the couch and closed her eyes. “You’re working with Reth and Jack? Have you lost your mind?”
“Oh, that happened ages ago. But I’ve had to do a lot of rescuing lately, and those two come in handy.”
“Do you trust them?”
“No, we don’t,” Lend called from the kitchen.
Raquel laughed, and David joined her. They sounded slightly manic. “You’re free now,” he said.
“Of all of it,” she answered, and I looked up to see them locked in a gaze I’d previously only observed between actors on Easton Heights—one filled with all the things unspoken over the years, all the betrayals and fears and pain left behind in favor of overwhelming love. It was beautiful.
Oh, who am I kidding, it was awkward as all heck and I didn’t have time for it. “Okay! So, you may have noticed Lend is in the kitchen.”
“Mmm hmm,” Raquel answered, reaching up to smooth down a stray piece of David’s hair.
“Yeah, that’d be the big faerie curse.”
“Farie curse?” She actually turned toward me; David took both her hands in his.
“Yup. Really funny one, too. See, any time Lend and I are in the same room or can see each other or could actually, you know, touch, he falls fast asleep.”
“Oh,” Raquel frowned.
“So I need your help. You know all the names of the IPCA controlled faeries, right?”
She nodded, her frown deepening.
“Well, it was a dark faerie curse, so I figure we need a dark faerie to undo it. So you call an Unseelie faerie, we give him or her a named command to break the curse, ta-da, we can double-date!”
“Wait, who can double-date?” Lend asked.
“I’ll let your dad tell you. So. Faerie?”
Raquel heaved a sigh, along the lines of her famous things never get easier, do they? sign, and, boy, I agreed with her.
“To be honest, I don’t know which court most of the faeries belong to.”
“You don’t? How can you not know? It seems like pretty vital information to me. You know, ‘Are you a member of the evil court kidnapping humans and plotting world domination, or a member of the moderately less evil court who just wants to get the crap off the planet?’ sort of a survey when you get them.
What if—” I stopped, swallowing hard. Nope. I couldn’t even say it aloud. We’d figure something else out because we had to. Time for a subject change before I lost it. “What did your mom say?”
“Mostly that she thinks my hair is getting too long and I should cut it.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“That’s my mom for you.” He was trying for humor but his voice caught, and I wondered if he was thinking about how if she left and he didn’t, he’d never ever see her again.
“So,” I said, sitting on the floor against the wall as close to the kitchen doorway as I could get without Lend dropping like a rock, “do you want your Christmas present?”
“You got me something?” He sounded surprised.
“I’ve been working on it for a while.”
“I, uh, didn’t find you anything yet. I was actually setting up for your party, not Christmas shopping like I said.”
“Being kidnapped by the Dark Queen and then cursed gets you off the hook for a lot. Besides, my birthday party totally counted.”
“This isn’t how I wanted our first Christmas to go. We were going to go all out, pick out a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, decorate it, watch cheesy holiday movies, drink hot chocolate, let my dad make his eggnog and then complain about how disgusting it was, then I was going to deck out my entire room in mistletoe . . .”
“Wait, you mean you didn’t plan for us to be stuck in different rooms for the holidays?”
“Well, that part’s kind of nice.” I heard his head bang against the wall where he was sitting right on the other side of it from me. “I mean, who wants to actually be able to touch their super hot girlfriend? Overrated.”
“I know, right?” I tried to laugh, but it came out choked. I swallowed, forcing my one to come out light. “And I totally dig watching people sleep. It’s so sexy.
We’ll have to manage this very carefully, Evie. From what I saw, it would appear that entire court wants you dead.”
“Yeah, well, you know. Stopping their custom-made Empty One, stabbing their queen in the neck, breaking their mirror forest, I’m not really Miss Popularity there.”
“Stabbing—You what?”
“Long story. Faerie? I’d really like to hang out with my boyfriend while he’s, you know, conscious.”
“Seconded,” Lend shouted.
We were both quiet for a bit. With my last brilliant idea a failure, the reality that maybe we could never fix this hung like a chain around my neck, cutting off the air. I’d fought so hard to get—really get—Lend. From escaping the Center to stopping Vivian to overcoming my own stupid issues, I’d been fighting for this relationship since the day I first saw water eyes. I couldn’t have come this far just to lose him physically forever. It wasn’t fair. And I was sick and tired of things not being fair.
“So, where’s my present?”
I wiped under my eyes. “Oh, right. You have your laptop in there?”
“Yeah.”
Smiling, I grabbed my laptop off the coffee table and emailed him the link, then waited.
“Ooh, I’ve got mail.” After a few seconds I heard the video playing, and Lend laughed. “How long did this take you?”
“I had a lot of time on my hands while you were in finals.” I leaned my head against the wall as I heard the soundtrack to the clips. I’d gone through all four seasons of Easton Heights and found every single time any of the characters said “I love you,” then (with copious amounts of help from Arianna) pieced them all together back to back, with one of Lend’s favorite songs as the soundtrack.
“I love you!” “I love you. “I LOVE YOU, idiot!” “You are so—I hate you! I love you!” “Shut up and tell me you love me.” “Te amo!” Ah, yes, the quest arc of the Spanish hottie. That was a good season.
Given the number of relationships that show cycled through, the video lasted several minutes. When it ended, I heard Lend’s laptop closing.
“Well?” I asked.
“I love you,” he answered.
“I love you, too.” I put my palm against the wall, fingers splayed out.
There was a pause. “I thought—I thought you were going to try to open the gate. Not that I want to push you, but . . . I don’t know, I think it’s the right thing to do.”
I scowled up at the ceiling, picking at the rug under my fingers. “Well, yeah, it probably is, but is pisses me off that they’re just assuming I will.”
Lend laughed, the sound making some of the tension in my shoulders relax. “Yeah, that’s paranormals for you. Always bossing people around. Prophecies this, prophecies that.”
“And do any of their prophecies say please? No, not a single one.
I have never returned to the mortal realms. Those who make frequent trips do so at great personal sacrifice.” I looked at Reth, who still stood next to me, had been standing next to me this entire time, silent and watching. Reth who never needed to come back to Earth after I freed him from IPCA. Reth who was looking dimmer by the hour after taking the midnight faerie’s attack in my place.
The Light Queen followed my gaze. “My golden son has given much because of his love for you and his devotion to me. He may yet give up all.”
Well, bleep. It was so much simpler to hate him.
“I know you hold depths of anger and bitterness toward the fey, child, but please understand our desperation. And please know my deep respect for humans and human life. Such beautiful, fragile animals, so fleeting and easily broken yet powerful beyond anything faeries can ever hope to be. We cannot create but live forever, unchanging. You change with every breath, dying even as you live, but your thread to eternity and immortality is reborn with every new generation.”
I was bust avoiding Reth’s eyes, not wanting to think that, as someone who was nobly sacrificing to be around me and protect me. Not wanting to accept that he really loved me the way he was always saying he did.
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