“I can’t.”
Silence fell over the field. Puck stiffened; I could feel his shock. Biting my lip, I turned back, hardly daring to believe. Ash faced Mab calmly, the queen staring at him with a terrible, blank expression on her face. “Forgive me,” Ash murmured, and I heard the faintest of tremors beneath his voice. “But I can’t…I won’t…give her up. Not now, when I’ve just found her.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. Breaking away from Puck, I started toward Ash. I couldn’t let him do this alone. But Oberon stepped in front of me, holding out his arm, as unmovable as a mountain. “Do not interfere, daughter,” Oberon said in a voice meant only for me. “This is between the Winter prince and his queen. Let the song play to its conclusion.”
Distraught, I looked back to Ash. Mab had gone very still, a beautiful, deadly statue, the ground beneath her coated with ice. Only her lips moved as she stared at her son, the air around them growing colder by the second. “You know what will happen, if you refuse.”
If Ash was afraid, he didn’t show it. “I know,” he said in a weary voice.
“Their world will eat at you,” Mab said. “Strip you away bit by bit. Cut off from the Nevernever, you will not survive. Whether it takes one mortal year or a thousand, you will gradually fade away, until you simply cease to exist.” Mab stepped closer, pointing at me with the scepter. “She will die, Ash. She is only human. She will grow old, wither and die, and her soul will flee to a place you cannot follow. And then, you will be left to wander the mortal world alone, until you yourself are only a memory. And after that—” the queen opened her empty fist “—nothing. Forever.”
Ash didn’t react, but I felt the queen’s words punch me in the stomach. Bile rose in my throat. How could I be so blind and stupid? Grimalkin had told me once that faeries banished from the Nevernever would die, that they would fade away until nothing was left. Tiaothin had told me that in the Winter palace, when I was trying to ignore her. I’d known all along, but refused to believe. Or perhaps I just hadn’t wanted to remember.
“This is your final chance, Prince.” Mab stepped back, her voice stiff and icy, like she was talking to a stranger. “Give me your solemn vow, or be damned to the mortal world forever. Make your choice.”
Ash looked at me. I saw pain in his eyes, and a little regret, but they shone with such emotion I felt breathless. “I already have.”
“So be it.” If Mab’s voice was cold before, it was in the sub-zero range now. She waved the scepter and, with a sharp crack, a rip appeared in the air. Like ink spreading over paper, it widened into a jagged archway. Beyond the arch, a flickering streetlamp glimmered, and rain pounded the road, hissing. The smell of tar and wet asphalt drifted through the opening. “From this day forth,” Mab boomed, her voice carrying over the field, “Prince Ash is considered a traitor and an exile. All trods will be closed to him, all safe holds are barred, and if he is seen anywhere within the Nevernever, he is to be hunted down and killed immediately.” She looked at Ash, fury and contempt curling her lips. “You are not my son. Get out of my sight.”
Ash stepped back. Without a word, he turned and walked toward the archway, shoulders back and head high. At the edge of the trod, he hesitated, and I saw a shadow of fear cross his face. But then his expression hardened, and he swept through the door without looking back.
“Ash, wait!”
Darting around Oberon, I rushed for the trod. Faeries hissed and snarled, and Puck yelled for me to stop, but I ignored them all. As I approached Mab, her lips curled in a cruel smile and she stepped back, giving me a clear shot at the open trod.
“Meghan Chase!”
Oberon’s voice cracked like a whip, and a roar of thunder shook the ground. I stumbled to a halt a few feet from the doorway, so close that I could see the road and darkened street, the blurry outline of houses through the rain.
The Erlking’s voice was ominously quiet, and his eyes glowed amber through the gently falling snow. “The laws of our people are absolute,” Oberon warned. “Summer and Winter share many things, but love is not one of them. If you make this choice, daughter, the trods will never open for you again.”
My stomach dropped. There it was. Oberon would banish me from the Nevernever, as well. For a split second, I almost laughed in his face. This wasn’t my home. I hadn’t asked to be half-fey. I’d never wanted to be caught up in their problems, or their world. Let him exile me; what did I care?
Don’t kid yourself, I thought with a sudden sick feeling in my gut. You love this world. You risked everything to save it. Are you really going to walk away and forget it ever existed?