“I’m the Iron Queen,” she said firmly. “No matter what I want, that will never change. And you’re still part of the Winter Court. Even if you could come into the Iron Realm, you would die. We can’t be together, and there’s no use in wishing for the impossible. It’s selfish of me to 133/387
keep hoping.” Her voice shook on the last sentence, but she took a deep, steadying breath and looked up at me. “Perhaps…it’s time to move on, to find happiness with someone else.” I wanted to tell her, to explain what I was trying to do. That I was trying to earn my soul. I was going to the End of the World for her; that I would become mortal if it meant we could be together. I wanted to tell her so badly, but at the same time, I feared getting her hopes up only to have them dashed if I failed. I didn’t want her waiting for me, worrying and constantly looking to the horizon for someone who would never appear.
“You have a chance to be happy now,” Meghan went on, and her blue eyes shone with unshed tears, though she never looked away. “Ash, this is Ariella, the love you’ve been missing for decades. If she’s really back, then fate has given you both another chance, and I…I’m not going to stand in your way.” A tear spilled over, running down her cheek, but she still smiled as she held my gaze. “What we had was a dream, and it was beautiful, but it was just a dream. It’s time for us to wake up.” I took a breath to argue, but she laid her fingers against my lips, silencing me. “Close your eyes.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in this dream almost as much as I wanted to find a soul, even though I knew this wasn’t real. But, almost against my will, I felt my eyes slip shut, and a moment later her lips brushed against mine, a featherlight touch that pulled my stomach inside out. “Goodbye, Ash,” she whispered. “Be happy.” And I awoke.
I was lying on my back, staring up at a roof of branches, tiny pinpricks of light filtering through the leaves. A fire crackled somewhere to my 134/387
left, and the scent of smoke drifted on the breeze, tickling the back of my throat.
“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.”
Puck’s voice filtered through the haze in my mind. Groaning, I struggled into a sitting position, rubbing my eyes. My skin felt cold and clammy, my body drained. Mostly, I felt hollow, empty, though the dull ache in my chest reminded me why I had closed off my emotions, freezing everyone out. It hurt, the knowledge that the girl I loved had let me go once more.
Ariel a and the Wolf were nowhere to be seen, but Puck sat on a log in front of a small campfire, holding a fat, speared mushroom over the f lames, turning it slowly. Grimalkin lay opposite him on a f lat rock, his feet tucked beneath him, purring in contentment.
“’Bout time you woke up, ice-boy,” Puck said without turning around.
“I was hoping for some groaning and thrashing, but you just lay there like the dead. And you didn’t even talk in your sleep so I could torment you about it later. What fun is that?” I struggled to my feet, pausing a moment to let the ground stop swaying. “How long was I out?” I asked, moving toward the fire.
“Hard to say.” Puck tossed me a mushroom kebab as I walked up. “I haven’t seen the sun in forever. We must be far into the Deep Wyld.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Wolfman is out hunting.” Puck stuffed an entire mushroom into his mouth and swallowed without seeming to chew. “I guess my humble white-truff le kebabs weren’t good enough for him. Do you know how 135/387
hard it is to find these things? Furbal turned up his nose as wel
—picky, ungrateful animals.”
Grimalkin sniffed without opening his eyes. “I do not eat fungi, Goodfel ow,” he said in a lofty voice. “And if you are so enamored by these spores, feel free to chew on those spotted toadstools in that pile of elk dung.”
“Oh, well, that’s just gross.”
I swallowed the mushrooms without tasting them, my body recognizing the need for food even though my mind was far away. “Where’s Ariel a?” I asked, tossing the stick back into the fire.
Puck nodded to the edge of the circle of firelight, where Ariel a sat hunched on a rock, her back to us. “She walked away a few minutes before you came to,” Puck said softly, watching me with narrowed eyes. “I tried following her, but she said she wanted to be alone for a while.” I felt his gaze sharpen, cutting into me. “What did you say to her, Ash?”
I was such a mess, pulled in so many directions I felt like I would snap.
I was still reeling from Meghan’s last words, from the f lash of jealousy in Ariel a’s eyes, from the strain of walking the line between the girl I had lost and the girl I wanted but could not have. But even though Ari had clearly been goading Meghan back in the dreamworld, I could not ignore her pain.
Disregarding Puck, I walked to where Ariel a sat, her head bowed, silver hair covering her face like a shimmering curtain. As I stepped closer, she raised her head but didn’t look back at me.
“So, that was her.”