Silver Hollow (61 page)

Caught off guard
,
Amie only then noticed the silver energy rushing furiously up and down her forearms. “What?”

“Kill me?
’
Tis what ye want to do, isn’t it? Justice demands it, an eye for an eye, as they say?”

Amie gritted her teeth, enraged he could speak so flippantly
of
life when Henry wasn’t even an hour gone. “I won’t give you the satisfaction of death.”

Letting his arms down to his side
,
he nodded resignedly. “So they told you did they? The truth and nothing but?” Laughing
,
he began to close the space between them. Amie knew the pull he had on her, but only then had the courage to learn why.

“Why don’t you tell me? I think we’ve played enough games. You may have thousands of years over me,
Tuatha
, but I’ve got this.” Holding up her hand she displayed her father’s emerald ring, reminding him of the most recent change in her. The moment Henry was gone Amie felt the fullness of her inheritance settle in her bones. She knew without a doubt she was strong as anything her teacher could throw her way.

“And I see you’ve finally accepted who you are, Jessamiene,” he said through gritted teeth. Only then did she notice the twitching of his limbs, the way he continuously seemed to lurch forward, then hold back. His black eyes were slightly glazed over as well.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked, lifting up a
nixy-
charged hand.

“I am not as I once was, Jessamiene. I have been cursed, made less than I was, so they could control me. I struck a deal for the last of my kind, not knowing we would all eventually fade.
’
Twas the
Sidhe’s
final act of revenge…” He laughed bitterly, eyelids flickering as he clenched his hands again. Shadows were growing and receding between his fingers, pushing against her light with an increasingly oppressive weight.

Amie gasped and looked at him in alarm. “Emrys, what are you doing?”

Tears escaped the corners of his eyes. “I struck a bargain when I promised them entry into Wenderdowne, that they might grant me my freedom. I was never meant to fade away and die. I will live forever, long after the last of you are dead!” His voice had turned deeper, not himself any longer.

Fear clawed at her chest, making her belatedly aware this might not have been the best idea. “Emrys, I don’t know what they did to you, but you have to fight it
.
”

When he opened his eyes they were the shade of emeralds, framed by glimpses into his untarnished soul. “I loved you, Jessamiene. I love ye still as my own flesh
.
” For the first time she saw the creature behind the mask, gray
-
skinned with writhing shadows dancing behind his pupils. All his separately compelling features came together on his true face to uncover his beauty.

“Emrys, what do you need? You’re not acting like yourself. How did they
nix
you? If you tell me what to do I’m sure you’ll be back to normal.” Her voice was trembling, because the shadows had ceased pressing against her and now were draped around her shoulders, laying against her skin, sucking the
nixy
from her soul.

He shuddered, closing his eyes again and an unnatural roar built up in his chest. “K
ill me
! If ye don’t then we’ll never be free, Jessamiene, don’t ye see? They
nixed
me so I would turn against ye!”

Amie shook her head and tried to force her light to grow, tried to shock him with a jolt of her violet energy. Instead of snapping him out of whatever spell he was under, something akin to a snarl and a hiss escaped from deep in his chest.

He was on her faster than she could object, this man who had saved her life time and again, crushing her into his chest. Her skin tingled at the feel of him, the way she molded perfectly into his frame
,
it was effortless and terrifying in its ferocity. Drawing her closer he tucked his chin and lifted hers to meet his abysmal onyx eyes. And so he drained the life from her with his touch, much as he had nourished it. “I will love you till my soul is no more and my body
naught
but ash.”

She gasped when her light began to fade. “What are you doing to me? Emrys, why can’t I see?” She listened to his sobs, felt his tears on her cheek as they sank to their knees on the floor.

“We burned the earth with our lust for war once. It was good that I made them accept the pact. It was the only way we could survive into the coming age, until I could find my revenge.”

“That’s why you killed Drustan
,
isn’t it? Because he wouldn’t break your stupid curse? Didn’t you think he might not have another choice?” She struggled to be free of him but he had already dr
u
nk too much of her inner
nixy
. In all their training he had never done this to her before. Her heart broke and her body filled with dread as she understood the reason.

So he could kill me like this.

“I must do this so the line truly ends and my people are free. Don’t you see how cruel the Creator has been to me? Giving me back the face of the one thing I wanted most, the one thing I must sacrifice to undo all my wrongs!”

“Emrys
,
please!” Tears
slipped
down her cheeks. She tried to connect to the fading light of the ring on her hand, prayed for a way out of this. But a part of her, the lost little girl who had trusted him so implicitly, wondered if it was her time to die
.
Emrys was right at least in this regard. She had cheated death the night he brought her back to life in an alleyway. 

Awareness trickled from
her like the final breath before one’s soul escape
d
its fleshly covering. Death could have been peaceful, almost loving as Emrys’ embrace. But Amie forgot
then
the one thing she wasn’t allowed to ignore. With Henry gone the house needed her to live. And then she remembered her lessons, learning to survive without her five senses. He
had taught her this, but to what purpose? Did he truly want her dead?

No time to think, just do it!

Amie felt in the dark for the light inside of her, grasped onto the flickering flame and blew on it until it fanned brightly. She felt her connection to Dearg flare to life inside of her again and instantly she felt the power behind his fury and pain. He was feeling what she was
feeling right now, crying out to her to hang on, to fight back. Somewhere in the distance they heard his roar. And then her inner
nixy
began to grow and tear back at the shadows, combusted as it connected to Dearg’s dragon fire.

“Myrddin
,
let me go
,
”
s
he warned but he only held her tighter.

“I cannot! Jessamiene, end it
,
”
h
e gasped
,
meeting her gaze again
. It was then s
he saw the fear in him. He feared what he was about to do to her if she didn’t stop him. “Forgive me for everything, Nimue. Make it right.” But his voice was fading already, along with his form until he was the one being drained in her arms. When she pulled back to smile sadly at him his eyes widened in shock.

“Jessamiene?” he intoned.

“I’m sorry
,
Myrddin Emrys, but it’s time for you to fade too.” Her voice broke at the last, for there was a part of her that had loved him too. She suspected she would never forget him as long as she lived, not even if she wanted to.

His relief was evident in his final words, “At last…” until he was nothing more than the outline of his former self.

For a long moment they stared at one another and she clutched her chest, surprised by the sudden loss she felt. And then her eyes were drawn to the sudden illumination of Feather’s library, the candles and hearth revealing the other hidden eyes that had been watching and waiting.

And elsewhere, the long diseased
-
looking, damaged portion of the house was fading too, growing lighter and brighter by the second. Bits and pieces of its former self realigned together, books were returning to their shelves and desks and inventions righting themselves.

Amie gaped at the multitude of wraith-like figures that had suddenly appeared with the breaking of the
w
ight’s curse. They were taller and more dangerous than any Sidhe or Golem or human Amie ha
d ever crossed. Darkness had crafted their beauty, yet
they were
no longer tainted by shadows, simply an absence of light.

As they began to recede and collectively sigh, disappearing forever, Emrys’s sharp smile was filled with the regret she had earlier glimpsed. His eyes burned with agony, with a dark other
which
he must keep secret and never tell her, this other piece of his fractured soul she could never know.

She blinked rapidly past her increasingly blurred vision, felt tears fall over her cheeks and lifted her eyes to meet his. She gasped as his translucent hands caressed either side of her face, energy and pain and heat emanating from his touch, and then his lips hovered above hers.

Amie’s eyes fluttered shut as she sighed, only to open them to an empty room. She stared at the place Emrys and his people had faded, clutching the scar on her chest long after. So she was almost unaware the moment Dearg appeared at her side.
He pl
ac
ed
his warm hand on her shoulder
and
she let him draw her into his embrace.

Epilogue

In the aftermath of the battle, Morcant and Grimwich allied themselves to Wenderdowne and their new Queen. Henry’s body was placed in the ancient hearth fire that same night, as his ancestors had been. Almost instantly it crumbled to golden dust and a fresh breeze filled the air and everyone in attendance could hear the tickle of the Lord’s laughter in their ears.

Amie spent hours going through Henry’s study, learning more about the
Sidhe
who had been her father, remembering the childhood he had made her forget. In a private ceremony she mounted Feather’s head on the wall of the library right above his great father’s, as the old gryphon had wanted.

Faye and Ginuog spent the first few months after trying to learn the truth of what happened to Jo and James. In their infrequent visits, Amie managed to coax
out
pieces of her friend’s old joviality. But they were both marked by sorrow of a different kind. Faye held her tightly before they departed again for the human world.

“You know you’re my family, just as much as Ben is now,” she said.

Pulling back, Amie replied, “
Yo
u’ll always have a home here, no matter where you go, Faye.”

Faye nodded and smiled one of her old smiles. “You’ll be so sick of me eventually you’ll regret you ever said that, Wentworth.” She stepped back and checked over her gear one last time.

Ginuog chuckled behind them, once again in his human guise
,
and with barely any effort snatched the dagger from her belt to rest near her cleavage. “Don’t think I’d say
bored
was the word for how we occupied our time, my little cougar.”

While Faye grunted a muffled retort all the way down the road, Amie watched them leave until her eyes strained to see their silhouettes within the forest.

Dearg was her main source of comfort once her last friend from her human life was gone. While he wasn’t taming his dragons, he had taken to warming her bed, now their binding had been given by Henry. Had she known her father’s intentions in the heat of
that
moment and had he not been on the brink of death, Amie would have been upset. But there was little to be upset about while being married to the Dragon King.

Cook refused to be treated like the potential heir to the estate he was. After all, he insisted, he didn’t have any bloody gifts like Amie. The union of a hobgoblin and
Sidhe w
as forbidden because
their nixies tended
to clash and mutate in other directions. Everyone already knew Cook was more than a head higher than the other hobgoblins and his strength greater than either people’s combined. There was a reason he was such a talented cook after all. But he was happy
-
to take on more responsibility and shel
ve
the majority of the cooking
for
another staff member.

Now that Rachel Elisedd Underhill admitted to having loved Alastair most of her life, she had become the driving force behind his new confidence. Neither one ever intended on spilling the secrets of their recipes to each other or anyone else.

For the first time since the childhood she was slowly remembering, Amie knew she belonged. Even if Grimwich Rumplekin had offered to give back her laptop back she wouldn’t have accepted it this time. She no longer had a need to play make-believe with the world. Now it was her turn to live the adventure so long denied and so fervently craved.