“Don’t leave me,” I whisper, brushing back his hair. His face is so pale. His lips tinged with blue. My hand cups his face, and I press a kiss to his lips. “No,” I whisper again, my throat tight and aching.
His eyes blink, but he’s very, very far away. His face is almost colorless and his skin is growing ever cooler to the touch.
Little by little my strength is beginning to return, though. Little by little I become more conscious of everything around me. Pan’s still body is slumped to the ground nearby, his skin covered in a maze of dark lines, like a shattered plate.
Olivia stumbles to Pan, a sleepwalker just beginning to surface from a dream, but when she takes his hand, his body is so fragile, so brittle, it shatters, crumbling beneath her touch. A strangled scream escapes her lips as she draws back in horror.
I should feel the same horror, the same revulsion, but I’m still too much in shock to feel anything at all at the sight of the headless Fey on the ground nearby. For a moment, I can almost begin to feel relief, but the moment doesn’t last long.
All around me, the world turns a brilliant white, and I recognize the power strumming through the air that signals the presence of the Queen.
She comes and floats over us, her face strangely beautiful in its fury. “He has killed one of our own,” she rages, her voice a terrible screech of fury. “He shall pay with his life.” She raises her hands as though to strike him down.
“No,” I say, covering him with my own body, as he once protected me. I steel myself for what is coming. For the terrible shattering pain that is sure to be my end.
But a screeching wail echoes in the air, and that blow never comes.
I look up, squinting against the brightness of the Queen’s glow, and I see what has caused that terrible noise—Olivia is behind the Queen. Her hair is a tangled mass around the blank fury in her face.
“Olivia?” I whisper.
She turns to me, but she doesn’t see me. Her gaze is glassy and unknowing. With an almost hysterical laugh, she pulls the dagger from the Queen—Pan’s dagger. It gleams dark silver in the Queen’s light, tipped with the Queen’s own blackish blood.
The Queen stumbles, her light wavering, her skin crawling with the dark lines of her unmaking. “No,” she screeches, clutching at herself. Pain contorts her beautiful face as she turns on Olivia. A dangerous current crackles through the air in the wake of her fury and pain.
With a motion as quick and deadly as a striking snake, the Queen takes Olivia by the throat, lifting her until her feet dangle in the air. Black lines creep across Olivia’s skin from beneath the Queen’s hand as Olivia writhes and struggles, her eyes wide with fear. The black lines continue to craw across her skin—up over her face, down her chest, creeping across the soft skin of her arms, until Olivia stops struggling and goes still.
“No!” I scream, torn between protecting Rowan and helping my friend. Olivia looks up at me, her eyes clear again, and they are filled with pain and confusion.
Before I can choose, I hear the rustling call of the Dark Ones. They begin to creep out from beneath the dead and brittle plants and begin to gather, swirling, marching themselves around us until they surround the Queen. Again they pull at her, but this time, she stumbles beneath their fingertips, releasing Olivia, who crumples to the floor.
The Queen falls to her knees, the dark blood still spreading from the wound Pan’s dagger made in her back—the wound Olivia gave her. The Dark Ones continue to swirl, pulling at the Queen, until they cover her completely. And as she disappears beneath them, she shrieks again, an earsplitting wail that causes the caverns around us to shake and tremble.
Huge chunks of the crystalline ceiling tumble down, crashing with violent explosions to the ground below. The world is quaking, rumbling, and alive by the time the dark wisps form themselves into the shapes of monsters and an army of living shadow stands before me.
The scuttling wind spins faster now, whirling violently in that familiar rustling, but in that rustling, I hear someone speaking to me.
“Please!” I scream, trying to block the sound. I’m not sure what I’m even asking for, but I sob out the word again and again as the Dark Ones swirl. Telling me their secrets, whispering my own truths back to me.
“Please,” I continue to repeat. But my voice is now a feeble whisper, begging for things I don’t understand, and then the darkness overwhelms me and I am tossed back—and the voice whispers to me again.