Page 84 of The Unseelie War
“Then it is up to you to ensure that will never happen. You will have what you've always wanted,” Abigail replied calmly. “My complete and undivided attention. Forever.”
That seemed to intrigue him. He paused long enough for someone else to voice their concern.
“But we still need someone to rule Tir n'Aill,” Alex said weakly as she picked herself up off the ground. “Someone has to guide the courts in your combined absence.”
“I am still King.” Valroy snarled. “No one shall take that from me.”
Abigail was quiet for a moment, considering. “No. He is right. No more kings or queens. As we are not dead and gone, merely…dreaming, it would be wrong to give away the crown.” She smiled slightly. “Perhaps what Tir n'Aill needs is not a ruler, but a councilor. Someone to guide both Seelie and Unseelie, to help them find balance.”
“Who?” Valroy asked, though his tone suggested he already suspected the answer. And he was already dreading it.
“Who better than the only soul to be of both? The only one who understands both courts intimately? And the only one with the humor to suffer their cruelty without flinching?” Abigail's smile widened. “Puck.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Then Valroy began to laugh.
It started as a chuckle, then grew into full-throated laughter that echoed across the clearing.“Puck,”he gasped between fits of mirth. “Robin Goodfellow, that obnoxious little botfly. You want to puthimin charge of both courts?”
“It is quite perfect if you think of it.” There was a wicked humor Abigail’s voice now. “He is too insane to be corruptible by power, too clever to be manipulated by the nobles, and too fundamentally decent to let either court dominate the other.”
“And a perfect punishment for the fae that I have come to abhor,” Valroy agreed, his laughter tapering off into delighted chuckles. “Yes. Yes, I approve. Let them try to manage their careful politics and ancient grudges withPuckas their guide. It's beautifully cruel.”
He rose to his feet, groaning in pain. “Very well, my beloved wife. I accept your terms. But know this—the moment you cease to be yourself, the moment you become nothing more than an echo of who you were, I will return to this world. And I will have my revenge upon everyone who forced us to this choice.” He offered her a hand.
“With you by my side,” Abigail rose to meet him, “haunting my dreams and nightmares, that day will never come to pass.”
Valroy kissed the back of her hand, and together they turned to face Ava. “Do it,” he said simply.
Ava looked at them—at the forces of creation and destruction choosing love over duty, choosing each other over the very purposes for which they had been made—and felt her heart break for them.
Serrik walked over to Ava, a weak and weary smile threatening to hold purchase on his face before it faded. He placed a hand on her shoulder before moving to stand behind her.
Taking a deep breath, she let it out, and resumed her chanting, her voice growing stronger as the ritual neared its conclusion. The cracks in reality widened, revealing the silver threads and infinite libraries of the Web.
A portal opened before them, swirling with silver light and the whisper of a million dreams. Valroy and Abigail stepped toward it hand in hand, and just before they crossed the threshold, Abigail turned back.
“Take care of them, Weaver,” she said. “All of them. The dreams, the nightmares, the impossible ones who choose to love despite everything.”
“I will,” Ava promised, though her voice broke on the words.
And then they were gone, disappearing into the Web like figures stepping into a mirror. The portal closed behind them with a sound like distant thunder, leaving only the echo of their presence and the memory of their sacrifice.
In that moment, the great and terrible tree simply…ceased to exist. One second there, one second gone, like a magic trick. It was taken with Valroy into the Web. The Mazewashim, after all.
Alex stood alone now, her purple hair darkened with blood, her body trembling with exhaustion. She looked around at the others—at Ava with her book of power, at Serrik struggling to stay on his feet but stalwart in his support of Ava—and squared her shoulders.
“Well,” she said with forced lightness, “I suppose this is goodbye.” She looked at the hole in the ground where the great tree with all its rusted swords and weaponry had been a few moments prior. “Can’t help but feel like I got the shit end of all this…but I’ll try not to let Puck burn down all of Tir n'Aill in the first week. I'd hate for this sacrifice to be meaningless.”
“Goodbye, Alex. I…wish we could have been better friends.”
“Yeah. Me too.” She smiled faintly at Ava. “Hopefully you can still send letters, yeah?” Her expression fell. She wiped at tears that gathered at the corner of her eyes. “You and Izzy would have really gotten along.”
Her heart broke. Absolutely shattered in her chest. Ava might have gotten to leave this with Serrik alive…which seemed impossible—she hadn’t wrapped her head around it. Abigail and Valroy both survived. Somehow.
But Alex? Izael was still dead.
She was still alone. Doomed to a slow death of the mind over the centuries as she simply became afunctionand not aperson.
“Yeah…I?—”
