A Faerie's Curse (Creepy Hollow #6) (31 page)

But I still have Ryn.

My tears soak the pillow as I drift gradually toward sleep, filled again with that odd combination of pain and peace.

C
HAPTER

T
HIRTY-
F
OUR

CALLA

I knew I'd reached the end of my strength with that final illusion. I knelt on the ground, my fingers digging into the earth as I poured every bit of my remaining magic and focus into that illusion. And not only projecting the illusion itself as far across the island as possible, but trying to
keep
it from my team so they wouldn't be horribly confused. My body begged me to let go, but I refused until I felt hands on me, heard voices saying we'd done it. We saved Chase while everyone thought he was burning. Only then did I let go of the illusion and allow my teammates to become visible around me. Only then did I fall into the welcoming arms of darkness and rest.

* * *

Soft light caresses my eyelids. I open them and find the first hints of sunrise appearing in my enchanted painted windows. I rub my eyes and slowly push myself up, and for the first time in days, I feel rested. A single, simple thought comes to mind:
I'm not dead.
I smile as I let the thought sink in properly. I'm not dead, despite the fact that I was convinced the witch's curse was about to consume me. I'm not dead—but I am horribly thirsty. I reach for the glass of water beside my bed and down it. Then I notice the second glass. A glass filled with layers of green and gold. I don't remember telling anyone here at the mountain that I like honey apple, but I must have. I take a few sips before returning the glass to the table.

I push my hair away from my face, noticing that it's blonde and gold, no longer black. Someone must have bathed me. As awkward a thought as that is, it's probably a good thing considering how long ago my previous shower was. I look around—and find someone lying beside me. Chase. So quiet I wasn't aware of him there. A slight frown creases his brow despite the fact that he's asleep. His face is clean-shaven, and his hair is properly free of the blood and dirt that caked it when I first found him at the Seelie Palace. His hand is stretched out toward me, as if perhaps he was holding mine before he fell asleep.

I place my fingers over his. As his eyelids flutter and open, I push every worrying thought aside—the tear in the sky, Ryn's spear wound, Mom and Dad in prison; my ever-present guilt—and appreciate this moment: we're both alive, safe and together. His frown vanishes the moment he sees me. He sits up, moves closer, and pulls me into his arms. “I thought the curse had taken you,” he murmurs.

My arms come up around his body. I press my head against his chest. “So did I,” I whisper. “Why didn't it?”

“One of the witches was killed in the fight yesterday. Gaius confirmed it with someone from the Guild. But we had no way of knowing if it was the witch who cursed you. The fact that you weren't gone yet gave me hope, though. And now that you're awake … well, it must have been her.”

“I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I just wanted to be able to help.”

He kisses the top of my head. “I know.”

I pull back suddenly. “Is Ryn—”

“He's fine.”

“And the tear in the sky? It was getting bigger when—”

“It stopped when it met the monument.”

My eyes slide shut and my shoulders droop beneath the relief. “Thank goodness.”

“From what I've heard, guardians have been trying to seal the gap, but they've had no luck. It sounds like there's a group of them guarding it with a glamour, keeping humans away. Not a permanent solution, but it'll work for now. What's interesting is that Velazar Island has stopped moving.”

“Oh. I suppose the monument and the tear are keeping it in place.”

“Yes.” Chase lifts his hand to my face, and his thumb caresses my cheek. “Do you remember everything else that happened?”

My smile returns. “I remember you telling me you love me.” As his lips stretch into a smile wider than mine, I add, “But you ran away before I could respond.”

He tilts forward and kisses my nose. “What would you have responded with?”

I lean past him and whisper into his ear, “I love you too. Just as fiercely and desperately and with everything inside me.”

His lips brush my jaw, but I push him gently back. “Wait. Tell me what you meant just before that. When you said, ‘That was it.'”

His eyes crinkle at the edges as he grins. “I think you know.”

“I think I know too. But tell me anyway.”

Chase pulls me toward him. I shift around so that my back is pressed against his chest. He wraps his arms around me, and our fingers lace together. “This is what Luna said to me: ‘I see you with a woman in gold. The background is filled with one of your storms. She doesn't say it, but I can see in her eyes that she loves you. She loves you so much that she doesn't want you to go. But because she has faith in you, she tells you to go. She tells you to go and save the world so that everyone will know what she knows: that you're fighting for the right side now.'”

“Amazing,” I murmur. Amazing that someone could know almost exactly what I would say so many years ago.

“I didn't believe her,” Chase says. “It wasn't the first vision she'd Seen of me, but mostly they were little things in the near future. Some never came to pass, and I dismissed this as one of those. How unlikely, I thought. How could anyone know all the things I've done and still love me?”

I lift our entwined hands and kiss his fingers. “Now you know how.”

“Do you understand why I didn't mention it when I first remembered it? We barely knew each other then. What would you have thought if I told you that you were one day supposed to love me? And even after the golden river, after you kissed me and told me that what I'd done in the past didn't matter to you, I didn't want to say anything. If you grew to love me, I wanted it to come from
you
, not from a vision you might have felt you had to fulfill.”

I nod. “I understand. I'm glad you didn't tell me, and I'm glad I didn't force it out of you.” I twist around to face him again. “And I want you to know that these words come from
me
.” I place both hands on either side of his face and look into his eyes. “I love you.” I kiss one eyelid and then the other. “I love you.” I kiss his nose. “I love you.” And I want to move to his lips. I want to kiss him the way we kissed in the golden river. But in this exact moment, Gaius walks past my open bedroom door and realizes I'm awake. His joyful cry is loud, and in the next few minutes, all the members of our team, all the people I didn't realize were waiting anxiously for me to wake up, begin crowding into my bedroom.

* * *

Later in the day, I come out of the faerie paths inside the lake house. Chase gave the house to Vi and Ryn to use for a while. They can't go home unless they want to submit themselves to the Guild for questioning, tagging and deactivation of their guardian markings. They were welcome at the mountain, of course, but Chase felt they might need their own space. Their own time. Time to grieve and time to figure things out.

He moved the faerie door to Lumethon's home Underground so Vi and Ryn wouldn't have to deal with people traipsing through their living room in order to get to the mountain. Not so great for Lumethon, but apparently she offered.

I cross the open living area and look out the kitchen window. On the grass just beyond the porch steps is a blanket. Vi is curled up on her side, and Ryn sits next to her, writing in a notebook. The scene is so peaceful that I almost turn away and leave. But the longer I wait to speak to them, the harder it will be.

I open the front door and step outside. Terrified, my heart pounding painfully in my chest and the guilt-beast circling at the edge of my thoughts, I walk down the steps and stop on the grass. “Ryn?” He lowers his notebook and looks around as Vi pushes herself up. “I—I don't want to disturb you, but I just wanted to say that—”

He's up in a heartbeat, running toward me, his arms around me before I can move. A second later, Vi joins us, her arms encircling us both. “I'm so, so sorry,” I sob, weak with relief and utterly overcome by the fact that they can still love me after the pain I've caused them. I hear Ryn crying in my ear. Vi's arms shudder around me. Their tears only make me cry harder, and it's a long time—a long, long time—before any of us is able to speak.

“You almost got killed trying to stop those witches,” Ryn says, his voice wobbling and his arms tightening around me as he speaks.

“
You
almost got killed trying to save me,” I say with a sniff. “And I owe you so much already. Can you imagine if you'd … if you'd …” I shake my head against his shoulder. “I wouldn't have been able to live with that guilt added onto all the other guilt.”

Ryn pulls back, widening our little circle. “You don't have to carry any of that guilt around.”

“I do! If I hadn't—”

“I don't blame you,” he says. “I was hurting—hurting so, so much—and all that hurt and anger spewed out on you, because you were there and because I could feel your immense guilt. But I don't blame you.”

I shake my head as more tears wet my cheeks. “You should blame me. She … she wouldn't have died if I hadn't let Zed go free.”

“And The Destruction wouldn't have happened if I hadn't saved the life of a boy named Nate,” Vi says, her voice thick with tears. “Or maybe it would have. Maybe someone else would have caused it, just as some other guardian-hater who was locked in Zell's dungeon might have come after us and Victoria.” She pulls me closer and presses her tear-stained cheek against mine. “We can't do this to ourselves. We can't look back and say ‘what if.' It changes nothing. And yes, this still hurts more than anything I've ever endured, and I don't understand how it can ever
stop
hurting. But … I'm not alone. Ryn's here and you're here, and none of us is hurting alone. We hurt together because we love each other.”

And just like that, the guilt-beast's existence is snuffed out like a flame in a breeze.

We move to the blanket then and I sit with the two of them for a while. Vi keeps hold of my hand, and we talk about the mountain and Chase's team and the investigation on Dad. We speak of where Ryn and Vi might go now and what they might do. We cry some more, and we even end up half-laughing when Ryn suggests he and Vi live in the human realm and start a circus as their new profession. Filigree hops over the grass as a rabbit and joins us. I scoop him up and snuggle against his soft white hair, whispering thank you over and over again. He's the reason I'm still here. He's the reason the curse was broken.

As the afternoon sun sinks toward the horizon and the mirror in my pocket lights up with a familiar mischievous face, I stand and say goodbye to Ryn and Vi.

“Come back later,” Vi says, sniffing and wiping away yet more tears. “We can have dinner together. Bring Chase.” Ryn looks at her with raised eyebrows. “What? I sense many family dinners together in our future. We should start getting used to it.”

I nod, appreciating that she's making an effort when it would be so much easier for her to curl into a depressed ball and stay that way. “I think dinner time here lines up around about lunchtime at the mountain, so we can make that work.”

I leave the lake house and head through the paths to the old Guild ruins. I step out to find Perry already there. “You called?” I say to him with a smile.

“Holy moly.” He pushes away from a vine-encircled tree trunk. “That was one heck of a fight last night. I thought you were dead after that witch threw you down on the monument. Then I thought your brother was dead. Then Draven … well, thank goodness he's gone for real now.”

“Yeah.” I smile down at my feet, knowing I can't tell Perry the truth about that last bit. “I heard you teamed up with the gargoyles and helped my brother and his wife get away. She didn't know who you were, but when she explained what happened and what this mysterious young gargoyle rider looked like, I knew it was you.”

“Yeah, people always tend to remember my good looks.”

I smile and, since Gemma isn't here to do it, smack his arm. “Seriously, though,” I add. “I'm very grateful, and so are they.”