“You caused it.”
“The original purpose of the fey bombs was to hook our substance into you so we had an entrance to slip into your dead forms and use them. By accident we discovered that the living maimed made more suitable, if more disgusting, bodies. Once we figured out how to attach small bits of our substance to you without killing you, we understood we could take you over alive.” She swirled. “Of course, there was still the problem of taste. My people wouldn’t wish to live a deformed life like you had. Hideous, disgusting … a half-life.”
“It was still a better life than you’ll ever have,” said Jane softly, for here at the last she knew it. “Mine was real.” It was real and I fought for every piece of it, she thought, and those other Janes that didn’t happen wavered in her sight.
“Do you think we like taking over your forms?” said the Queen. “All we want is our fair share of the land again. We lived in peace until you started to ruin the world. We gave you pieces of ourselves to get you to stop—but you humans never stay satisfied for long. Soon enough the factories were blazing once more, as if we had done wrong by granting you all your wishes. We were forced to fight.” The orange light was red now, and a thrumming crackled through the air which made it hard to think.
“Not forced,” said Jane. “You and I, we chose to fight.” She had chosen to make a stand for her village. She had chosen to stand with Charlie. And that Jane who had not been touched by war, that Jane who had never understood what it was to stand up and fight for herself, thinned out, turned insubstantial.
There was roaring in her ears, and the Fey Queen’s words seemed to enter by the base of her skull.
“The first step was infiltration, which Edward solved for us. The second, to get rid of all of you. Oh, you ridiculous thing, see how you stand, so frail, against me. If you think your tiny bit of fey can stop me, you’re a fool.”
And then the Fey Queen reared back and attacked again, and this time it was like a wave crashing over Jane, thick and hot and thrumming with power, and her slim defenses crumbled as the Fey Queen rushed into her body.
From a far-off distance the door opened. She was dimly aware of her own voice crying “Edward!”—but whether it was her or the Fey Queen calling through her lips she did not know.
“Edward, my love, my thanks,” said her voice again, and now she knew that was the Fey Queen, crackling through Jane, erasing her like a sponge crossing a chalkboard, rewriting the slate with the Queen’s thoughts, words, ideas.
From a long way off she saw terror on Edward’s face, despair. He was losing someone he loved, but Jane couldn’t bear to hope that person was her. If he had to make a choice between Jane and the Fey Queen, Jane shouldn’t give a fig for her own chances. That was what the Fey Queen, laughing, was telling her now, deep inside and all through her marrow.
It was up to her. The warrior.
The Jane who had chosen to be here.
Jane sent all her will into her fingers, still her own fingers, and dug her fingernails into the red line that surrounded her face. The Queen recoiled in surprise, and Jane used that tiny moment to summon all her internal strength, to compress the crackling, questing tendrils of the Queen back into the fey substance that Jane wore. With the lesser fey, Jane had been strong enough to shut it out completely. The Queen was far too powerful; but if Jane could just push her past a certain point, just into the mask only …
Push and shove, till her will met the Queen’s at the razor-thin line where the fey-infused mask met her blood and bone. Jane was all Jane; the mask was all fey.
And then Jane tore.
The mask wanted to adhere, but she pulled on all its edges, ripping the attack away. Surely it must hurt, but her adrenaline and fear were too high to notice. The new face peeled off, popping away from her eyelids, nostrils, lips. Slowly the fey was torn from her body.
And as she tore she lost all her strange fey sense. All knowledge of Edward’s feelings died away. Jane threw the fey-ridden mask from her and as it hit the floor it shattered into a million pieces.
“Jane!” Edward cried. He fell on his knees before her, cupped her face with his blue-lit hands, healing her. “Jane, stay with me, Jane, Jane…”
But using his gift was his undoing, because the disoriented Fey Queen went rushing from the mask into Edward, Edward who had fey thrumming in his fingertips, and Edward stiffened and lurched, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Edward!” cried Jane. Time slowed for her then, and she saw everything through a blue-and-white haze of fey light.
He was putting up a fight, she realized. For the first time.