Page 66 of Beltane

My prince of darkness was truly gone, and I slumped in the grass to cry.

“You deserve to be happy. So be happy.”

How was I supposed to do that without him? Perhaps the gift was gone, but my love for him started long before that. Memories of the first time I’d met Lex floated to the front of my mind, when he’d been an eighteen-year-old blue blood with a chip on his shoulder and everything to prove. He’d want to give the finger to the world, and in his own way, I supposed he’d never stopped doing that…not even now.

Sometime later, Carter and Ivy found me, tears staining their cheeks, eyes red and swollen.

“It’s not there,” Ivy said as she kneeled in front of me, her voice hoarse and cracked. “The veil is gone.”

“I know, my love.” I grabbed her face to kiss her, but even in our despair, I sensed the end approaching. We could spend our lives searching these woods and never have anything to show for it. If we did that, Lex’s sacrifice would be a waste. He didn’t want that.

We went back to our room, but we didn’t have much to say. Whatwasthere to say? We’d each lost a love of our life, and while we still had each other, it wasn’t the same without our king.

* * *

We stayedin Killwater as long as we could. Kit, Lizzie, Jon, and Edward went home, but my beloveds and I threw ourselves into research. Ivy held her mother off by simply not answering the phone, and Carter had figured out how to circumvent the rest of his tour. Edward made my excuses to our grandmother, but over the last few days, she’d gotten quite insistent that I return to Kensington presently.

I sat in the Killwater College library, staring at Ivy while she flipped through pages of some dusty old tome. She hadn’t showered in days, her hair fraying out at all angles from a messy bun on the back of her head. She never slept. She barely ate. She’d lost weight in the four weeks since Midsummer, and she didn’t have it to lose at the beginning. This wasn’t because of a magical separation like Solstice. No, this was from losing Lex…her counterpart…her companion since birth. Not that I could blame her. It was all I could do to bring myself to get out of bed every morning.

But I couldn’t go on like this.Wecouldn’t go on like this.

“Here,” Ivy said, pointing to tiny words that had long since faded to time. “To bestow her gratitude is to show her favor. A kindness done is a kindness earned.”

“What do you think it means?” Carter ran a hand over his face and took a sip of coffee. He, too, looked terrible. Bags hung under his eyes, and his hair had grown unkempt. He’d also hardly slept in days, and when he did, he’d wake up shouting for our husband like his nightmares were worse than reality. If he dreamed about Lex, I imagined they were. At least in unconsciousness, they were reunited. In this reality, Lex was a gaping hole in our hearts that would never heal, never scar over, never go away.

We were hardly taking care of ourselves. How in the world did we think we would find him like this? We were running on fumes.

“Don’t spend your life looking for me, okay?”

His voice haunted me. I heard it on repeat in my head. I heard it on the wind, when the warmth of the sun faded into the chill of the moon and the nighttime animals made themselves vocal. My prince of darkness had wanted us to move on. He’d wanted us to be happy.

We weren’t happy.

And what exactly were we looking for? A way into a realm we had permanently shut off? We could search until we were dead and never find anything substantial. To most of the world, fairies were myth. Legends. Bloody hell, we had researched for two years between Midsummer and Samhain, and it wasn’t until Siobhan showed up that we understood anything at all.

We were so utterly fucked and rolling in denial. But to stop would admit defeat, and Ivy had never been defeated by anyone. She wouldn’t stop now, and she’d drag both Carter and me down with her if she had to.

“I think it means that the queen only gives her thanks when she knows she owes the other person something,” Ivy said. “To show her favor.”

“It could mean favor as in favorite,” Carter said, scratching his stubble. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, and even if I liked a man with facial hair, I’d never known Carter to have any. It showed a carelessness he’d never before exuded. We were stretched at the seams.

“Or it could mean favor as in…owing someone a favor,” Ivy said, hope filling her voice.

I scoffed and shook my head, letting out a sad laugh. Both of them looked at me.

“What?” Ivy said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

“This is pointless, my darling,” I said, slamming my book closed. “All of this is pointless.”

“How so?” Her eyes turned molten, equal parts furious and wounded. “Do you think trying to get Lex back is pointless? That his sacrifice for us was pointless?”

She was goading me. She wanted me to fight back, to argue with her the way Lex would have. But I didn’t have the energy. We weren’t complete without him, and it was time we stopped trying to be. There we were, on the wrong side of a war that had nothing to do with us. We’d ended it for humankind, and given I’d reset the king to his default setting, I suspected we wouldn’t have to deal with him again.

That was the end, and there was nothing more to fix. I had died and come back to life, and because of that, we’d never see Lex again. That type of magic always required a sacrifice, all the lore had been quite sure about that. I didn’t remember dying. I barely remembered being stabbed through the chest, which made me question my life in ways I’d never considered before. I’d spend the rest of my breathing days trying to unravel it.

But I’d never do that if I never moved on. It hurt me to think about it, but Ihadbeen thinking about it for days…maybe longer. We were wasting our time here. Lex would never be free from the fairy queen unless she wanted him to be, and we’d never get into Faerie again.

“Okay, enough for today,” Carter said, shutting his book before grabbing Ivy’s hand. “Let’s go back to Bill’s. It’s getting late. We could use some sleep.”

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