chapter SIXTY-EIGHT
THE RED
Jacob lived.
The moth was gone and he lived.
How?
The Red Fairy yelled her rage across the water that had borne her.
Nothing could break the most powerful curse of the Fairies. It brought death to any mortal. Eradicated them as though they never existed. Nothing else could ever bring her peace. She wanted her only memory of him to be that of his death.
Yet he lived.
The lake turned as black as the night sky, and the water showed her the weapon that had broken her sister’s curse like a brittle twig.
The Red flinched.
Alder wood.
A string of flexible glass.
An engraved pattern on the gilded shaft.
No.
They were gone. For a long, long time.
All of them.
Banished into the trees that had given them their name. Not one had escaped.
The Red wanted to turn away, but there was something drifting among the lilies. She knelt down and reached for it.
It was a card.
A wilted leaf was stuck to the white paper. Startled, the Fairy pulled back her hand.
Only once before had winter come to her island.
No.
They were gone.
All of them.