A board creaked deep in the building, and I turned, but the sluagh said, "No, that's not Walter. Did you fail to notice the past tense to my phrasing? He served his purpose." The sluagh stepped toward me. "You've made your point about Gabriel. He rescued Ricky at that balcony, when he could have let him fall. I thought he might have grown a spine since then. Realized exactly how annoying it was, always having Ricky buzzing about."
"I'm not standing over here to rub your face in your mistake. I'm admitting that my aunt was right. Well, my great-great-aunt. I've seen her here in the asylum. Or I thought I did. Was that her? Or you, playing mind games? Doesn't matter. Either way, she was right."
I stepped closer to the edge of the broken balcony. "There's only one way out of this. That's all there's ever been. One way out. One way to stop being a pawn. To take control of my life. Or my death, as the case may be."
I jumped. I didn't hesitate, and that wasn't conviction so much as gut-wrenching terror. I jumped before I could fully process what I was doing.
I dropped, and it was like falling off the bridge, where the moment I hit free fall, I stopped thinking, Oh my God, I'm plummeting to my doom. There was a split second of something like clarity. Yep, I'm falling. Should probably be concerned. Deathly concerned, ha-ha. But I wasn't.
The sluagh let out a shriek, like a human scream, the sort that should have been coming from my throat. A scream of fear. Then a snarl of rage that set the very air vibrating. A swarm of melltithiwyd slammed into me, shrieking themselves, as if enraged by being called to do something other than rend me limb from limb.
They pecked, and they clawed, but they lifted me, too, still attacking, unable to keep from venting their frustration as they deposited me in the belfry.
"Huh," I said. "That didn't end the way I expected."
Which was, of course, a lie. Yet if one is going to threaten self-annihilation for a cause, one has to actually seem willing to do it.
I got to my feet, swatting off the last few melltithiwyd, who couldn't resist one final peck. Then I strode to the balcony.
"If at first you don't succeed--"
My legs buckled, and I pitched to the floor, arms flying out barely in time to catch myself. That now-familiar pain twisted through me, and I closed my eyes, pushing it back and reminding myself it was temporary--the pain, that is. The reversal I did need to accept--that I might survive this but not actually walk away from it. The pain was just my body dealing with the renewed trauma, which would ease, leaving me with the rest. I could live with the rest. People did. I could. I'd have to, wouldn't I? The alternative was...
Well, the alternative was exactly what I needed to attempt, yet again. I dragged myself along the floor, muscle memory returning, back to those infant days when I'd done exactly this.
"Do you really think that will help?" the sluagh spat.
"I don't see how it can't. If I'm removed from play, you three groups have nothing to fight over."
"If you do this, Eden, we will take revenge. You know we will. We'll take your soul. Make you one of them." She swatted a melltithiwyd, still fluttering about. Hit it so hard it exploded in a spray of black blood.
"Yeah, sorry," I said, still dragging myself. "I'm not marked, and I've done nothing to deserve the punishment. I haven't taken part in anything that deserves it. I haven't been found guilty of anything that deserves it. So I won't be joining your flock."
"Then they will. Your lovers. I'll kill them and take their souls."
"Again, same issue. There isn't even a loophole you can exploit with us. We might not be the nicest people around, but we've done nothing that can make us one of the unforgiven."
I moved up onto the balcony, wiggling across it.
She strode into my path. "I can still kill them."
"For revenge? Sure, but once you do, the fae and the Hunt will exact their revenge. They'll join forces to do whatever they can to you, and maybe it won't be much, but will it be worth the few moments of vengeance against me? A dead woman, who'll never know what you've done?"
"Do you really think I'll let you jump?"
I looked up at her, towering over me. "Does it matter? I can find a way to do it. You have no power over me. Take my cure. Take my Arawn. Take my Gwynn. That only means I would never, ever stop trying to do this, and that you will be left with nothing."
"She's right," said a voice as steps crossed the belfry floor. "She's won, heb edifeirwch. In giving up, she wins. That's the hardest thing to do, but it's the one thing you can't fight."
Ida stepped into the moonlight.
"So you're suggesting we cut our losses?" the sluagh said.
"No," Ida said. "I'm insisting on it."
The sluagh laughed. Ida's aged form disappeared, as she struck the sluagh in a flash of light that doubled me over, hands to my eyes. I heard them fighting, and I tried to get to them, pulling myself along, blinded, using the snarls and yowls and curses of their battle to find them.
As I moved, I caught pulses of light, felt the air rippling, smelled a stink as fetid as the grave. But I saw nothing. Then the thumps and grunts of battle stopped for a moment, and the sluagh said, "You know you can't survive this fight, old one."
"True, but neither can you."
More sounds of battle, and as the air vibrated anew, I felt the beating of melltithiwyd wings, and I pulled myself along faster, swatting and grabbing at the ones that passed, trying to fling them away from Ida, but soon I could see enough to realize the melltithiwyd were circling. Not attacking. Just circling.
The thumps of battle stopped, and I squinted hard against the light until I could make out two figures on the floor.
"Do you want to live?" Ida said.
The sluagh snarled.
"I have you," Ida said. "I can destroy you. I will destroy you. But I can set you free, too. Just do the same for her. For Matilda. For Olivia. Return her cure."
More snarling, the sound not even vaguely human now, and when I drew up alongside them, the thing that had been Imogen Seale had blackened and twisted, not unlike the corpses pulled from the burning house.
Ida had her hands around the sluagh's neck, and light pulsed from her fingers, each flash weakening the sluagh.
"Fix her," Ida said.
One black and wizened arm rose and then fell, and the pain in my back evaporated. I rose, tentatively, my vision still blurred.
"I suppose you want me to promise to leave her alone, too," the sluagh said, its voice thick, garbled.
"No, that won't be necessary." Ida began whispering under her breath, her hands still around the sluagh's neck.
The creature began to fight, wildly, rasping, "You promised!"
"I'm fae," Ida said. "We lie."
Ida lit up, her entire body, a live wire that whipped through the air, her hands squeezing the sluagh's neck as it screamed and the melltithiwyd screamed, and I dove out of the way of that lashing rope of energy, feeling it ignite the very air.
The melltithiwyd flapped, frantic, and the sluagh screamed, thrashing itself into a frenzy of shadow, the stench of the long-dead filling the air. The sluagh bucked up under Ida's hands. And then it exploded in sizzling ash.
I ran over to Ida. She crouched on all fours, light pulsing under her translucent skin, the light beginning to fade as she panted for breath, dark hair hanging over her face.
I pushed her hair gently aside and said, "Tell me what I can do."
"There's nothing to be done. She was right. This is the price." Ida lifted her eyes to mine, bright, impossibly violet eyes. "Thank you."
I choked on a half laugh, half sob. "I didn't do anything except get my ass rescued."
Her hand closed around mine, that energy still pulsing. "You did everything," she said. "You pissed it off."
"That's not exactly--"
"You weakened it. I'd never have been able to kill it otherwise. You won. You just needed a fae to make the killing blow. Before I pass, though, I need to ask you for something."
"What?"
She gripped my hand tighter. "Don't turn your back on the fae."
I smiled, my eyes welling up. "Can't stop lobbying for them even now."
"Especially now."
I leaned down and whispered in her ear, and she smiled as her light faded. Then she fell to the floor.
Something struck the floor beside me. I jumped to see a melltithiwyd drop. Another and another, and as they fell, I heard their voices, the trapped souls whispering as they winged past, invisible now, invisible and free, their bodies littering the floor, where I knew they would finally stay, rising no more.
I was crouched there, gripping Ida's hand, blinking back tears, when claws sounded on the steps. I jumped up, thinking, Shit, it's not over.
Lloergan burst through the doorway with another cwn behind her, both of them bloodied from battle. Brenin and Ioan followed, other Huntsmen behind them, rushing in and stopping short as they saw Ida on the floor, atop that pile of ashes, surrounded by the dead melltithiwyd.
"Is that...the sluagh?" Ioan said, gaze on the ash.
"It was," I said. "Now we need to find Gabriel and Ricky."
"Done," said a whispery voice, so weak it was barely audible.
Helia appeared in the doorway, supported by Alexios. Her skin was bark, fingers tapering to twigs.
"We found them," Alexios said. "She insisted."
He lifted Helia in his arms, ignoring her weak protests and Meic's insistence that the Huntsmen could carry his mate. "She's mine. I have her. Now let's get the others. We don't have much time, and we have a favor to ask, before it's too late."
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Helia's favor.
We were home, at my house in Cainsville. Gabriel was with me in the yard, bundled up against the cold dawn. Ricky hung back with Lloergan at the pond, both giving us space as he treated the hound's injuries. Lloergan had fled when the throng of minor sluagh attacked--she'd remembered the first time she'd met its kind, the attack that took so much from her. But she hadn't run far before she circled back and fought, saving her pack sister and making the minor sluagh decide they had better things to do than battle a couple of cwn.
As for Helia...
When Helia and Alexios asked me for a favor, I'd waited for something momentous, like Ida's request. They deserved it, after all, for everything they'd done. But what they asked for...
Gabriel and I stood in the back corner of my yard, in a particularly untended patch, one that had been empty of everything but brambles and weeds. Now there was a tree, a strong young linden. Alexios crouched at its base, his hands against it, whispering to it. Then he rose and turned to us.
"That was Helia's request," he said. "To root here in her death. Now I'll make mine. I'm asking for the same. To root here, with her."
"Absolutely," I said. "Whenever you think the end is close--"
"I'm not waiting for the end. I'm bringing it to me." A faint smile. "Which is why I didn't dare ask while she lived. We'd have argued. We hated it when we argued. But if she's done, so am I. There's no place in this world that won't remind me of her, and I don't want to be anyplace that she isn't. May I go now? Here?"
I opened my mouth to protest. I had to protest, had to try to talk him out of it, but Gabriel said, "Of course," and Alexios nodded, and he stood, one hand on the linden tree, leaning toward it and whispering as we walked away to give him privacy.
When we came back, I had two lindens in my yard, one straight and true, the other leaning toward it, a branch wrapped around its trunk. And I cried. I'd managed to stifle my tears with Ida, but now I cried--for Ida, for the dryads, for everyone we'd lost, everyone who'd given themselves in that final battle.
I stood in that yard with Gabriel's arms around me, holding me against him as I cried.
--
I was back inside the house. Ricky had gone to help Ioan deal with the loss of a Huntsman and hound. Gabriel and I were with Rose in my parlor. Veronica, Grace, and Patrick were there, too. I'd never seen any of them quite as somber as they were that morning. Ida was dead. Walter was also dead, a traitor whose true story would never fully be known.
I thought about that. Mostly, I thought about it in relation to Ida. I remembered those noises on the stairs to the belfry when the sluagh had been talking about Walter's betrayal and his death. That had been Ida, I realized, listening to confirmation of her mate's treachery and his murder. What had that been like for her? He was her lover, her consort, her partner for centuries, and he'd turned on her and on Cainsville, and she would never know why. She died not knowing why.
I think that makes her more "human" to me than anything. It makes me grieve more, and I wonder if her sacrifice was in part to rectify the damage he'd done but also because, like Alexios, she'd lost her life partner. For her sake, I hope that, in those final moments, she was able to tell herself he'd done it for Cainsville--that, in a twisted way, he'd still done it for them.
But we weren't talking about Ida or Walter or what would happen in Cainsville now that they were gone. We were talking about Seanna. We'd found her, sleeping as soundly as when my mother had been poised over her with a knife. All that drama, and she'd never woken. She still hadn't, deep in her fae-induced sleep. Now we had to decide what was to be done with her.
"So what happens with her mark?" I said. "The elder sluagh is dead, but it's still there."
"As it will be, unfortunately," Veronica said. "The death of the sluagh only means that one specifically cannot take her soul. She'll still be collected, by other elder sluagh. However, now that the one who marked her is gone, I can remove it."
"And removing it means she won't be taken?"
Veronica glanced at Patrick. There was a long moment of silence.
"It doesn't mean that?" I said.
"It does," Patrick said. "But if you take away the mark, you give her back what they stole. Give her back her humanity."
"Then that's a no-brainer, right?" I glanced at Gabriel, sitting beside me on the sofa. "Sorry. I shouldn't be the one talking. In fact, I probably shouldn't even be part of this discussion."
Gabriel's hand reached for mine. "No, you should. What happens to her affects you, should she somehow regain her humanity and still decide to hurt you."
"She wouldn't," Veronica said.
"But it does affect you, Liv," Rose said. "If it affects Gabriel..."
She let that one hang, but we all knew what she meant. If this decision affected him, it would affect me. And it definitely affected him.
Gabriel said, "I believe, then, it is, as Olivia called it, a no-brainer. To restore her humanity--and annihilate that part that might seek to harm Olivia, either for petty pleasure or for profit--seems only positive. But the fact you haven't merely told us you're doing so suggests it isn't that simple. I certainly hope you aren't asking because you think I would want her marked, as punishment for what she's done to me."
"No," Veronica said. "We know you wouldn't. The problem..."
When she trailed off, Rose said, "Memories."
I looked over at Rose, seated on a chair, hands wrapped in her lap. She straightened and said, "The problem is memory. If they return her humanity, I'm guessing that means she'll remember everything. How she treated her parents, her family, her friends. All of that would be bad enough. But what she did to her own son...?" She shook her head. "It will break her."
I looked from Veronica to Patrick. "Is she right?"
"About the memories, yes," Patrick said. "About breaking her...I didn't know Seanna as a child. It'll be hard on her, yes, but--"
"It will break her," Rose said firmly.
"Rose is right," Veronica said. "If we restore her soul, we break her mind."
"What kind of a choice is that?" I said. "How the hell is anyone supposed to decide--?"
Gabriel's hand squeezed mine, cutting me short, and he said, evenly, "Is there another option? And, yes, I suppose we could take her mark and then give her a merciful death, but I don't believe we could ever agre
e to that. Is there another choice?"
"We can take the mark and make her comfortable," Veronica said. "Use fae compulsions and such to let her rest and dream pleasant dreams. She'd have periods of lucidity, where she would be calm, but she would never be about to live a normal life. It would be, I fear, a form of institutionalization."
"She'd stay in my building," Grace said. "We'd look after her, Veronica and I. You'd be free to visit if you wanted, but that would be up to you."
"No," Rose said. "She's my kin. My responsibility. If Gabriel agrees to this, I would look after her. In my home."
Grace shook her head. "Our compulsions will work better in my building. She'll be happier there."
"But--"
"If you wish to be her caregiver, I won't stop you," Veronica said. "Yet Grace is correct--Seanna will stay in the apartment building. Under your care, but living there."
Gabriel shook his head. "You did nothing to cause this, Rose. You shouldn't feel obligated--"
"I don't. I want to do this." She met his gaze. "I'm asking you to let me do this, Gabriel."
He nodded, and silence fell.
--
Two days of holing up in my house with Gabriel. Taking the time I needed to recover.
I hadn't been injured--not physically--but I felt more exhausted than the times I'd actually been shot or stabbed. It wasn't even a melancholy exhaustion, but more one of relief. I'd made my choice with the Tylwyth Teg and Cwn Annwn. I had yet to tell anyone other than Gabriel, but it was made, and all I wanted to do now was hole up in my house with him, feel the ground finally steady beneath my feet before I had to finish this. Commit to a choice I'd rather not make.
I had other obligations as well, and after those two days I was ready for one. Time to see Pamela. She was out of the hospital now, having recovered from her mysterious ailment, with no one ever realizing she'd left her hospital bed.
I had something to tell her, something important, but I would have postponed it longer if she hadn't summoned me.
I took my usual place, and she'd barely sat in hers before she said, "I'm confessing."
"What?"
"I'm telling the court it was me. You're getting your father back, Eden. That's what you want. That's what I owe you. What I owe both of you."
I stared at her. "You're offering..."