Night's End (19 page)

The snow had let up, and overhead the stars were peeking out, crystal clear and twinkling. I slowly descended the back steps and crossed into the yard where the Snow Hag waited for me. She was standing frozen, a sparkle in her eye.

“The snowy night seems to agree with you.” I was too tired to play all the games required, but I'd do what I could and hope for the best.

“A queen might be weary and tired, and forget herself with lessons in communication so recently learned, and one of the Wilding Fae might recognize this to be exhaustion and not disrespect.” And with that the Hag gave me an out.

She stared up at the sky, a bemused look on her face. “One might think we chance never to see the stars again, and one might be right at there being a chance, if the long winter is to come. But there are ways to prevent the winter from lingering. There are ways to find weaknesses in an enemy, if you are a queen who was once a princess.”

I froze. The Snow Hag knew something, and I needed to know what it was. My tired brain scrambled to put together my question into the right format. “If one were a queen who was once a princess, one might wonder what a Wilding Fae knows. One might be wondering what the price for such information would be.” Crossing to one of the low bushes, now a mound of white, I felt wrapped in a cocoon, muffled from the world. Everywhere, the snow reigned, and it was now my life, my world, and even after we had destroyed Myst, my realm would remain a frozen chrysalis—perpetual winter encased in ice and frost.

The Snow Hag followed me, somehow managing to keep atop the crust. She was short enough and squat enough that I'd expect her to sink deep in the drifts, to be encumbered by them. My thoughts must have been at the top of my mind because she let out a tinkle of laughter—it sounded young to her age, and fell pleasantly on my ears.

“The Wilding Fae belong to seasons. A Snow Hag might belong to the winter, wouldn't one surmise? She might embody the chill nights and frosty skies. Her form might be an illusion, wouldn't one think?”

I glanced at her sideways, a tired smile creeping across my face. I nodded. “One might think so, indeed.”

After a moment, she raised a handful of snow to the sky. “Snow falls from the clouds. It freezes to the ground, then melts in the natural cycle of things. Come the spring, it flows into waterways where it evaporates with the heat of the summer, and returns to the sky. When winter rolls around again, it falls once more. The natural order of life. A cycle—a circle.”

I said nothing, just listening. She was teaching me things, even if I didn't recognize what they were just yet.

“A queen may ask a question and ask the price of the answer. She understands there are always costs for information. Answers require the questioner to pay a price. Whether to life, or to one with knowledge, this is always true, even if the price is not agreed upon in advance.”

“Never anything for free,” I murmured.

“One might be a queen and be correct. Nothing is free. However, there are costs . . . and then there are costs. And sometimes, the sum cannot be determined because the one holding the answer is not she who determines it. At times, the price is roundabout. One asks, one gives, the price is taken by some other force, the payment is given through yet another. Roundabout we go—twists and turns in the path.”

Mulling over her words, I thought I understood what she was saying. “Then, perhaps a queen may ask a question, and an answer is given, but the payment takes place behind the scenes. And neither the queen nor the Wilding Fae know what it is to be, or when it will be given.”

The Snow Hag turned to me. “One understands, one does. One wonders, then . . . does a queen still wish an answer to her question, not knowing what the price will be, or to whom it will be paid?”

I stared at her silent form. The snow on her hand wasn't melting. She was as cold as I. Suddenly grateful she'd aligned herself to me, I nodded.

“Yes, a queen might still want an answer, given those circumstances.”

Abruptly dropping the snow, she turned to face me. Her eyes, so beady during the day, had grown luminous and bright, and I could see the outer edges of the brilliant creature hiding within the old crone's body.

“A queen must look to the past—must actually travel into days gone by. She must look to the time when she was a princess, and seek out the vulnerabilities of her enemy. She must journey back to when she lived with starry eyes and cerulean skin, to when she knew the secrets of the one who now holds her fate. She must look for chinks in the armor—only through that means will she know how to proceed in playing the final move. Check might be found without this journey . . . but checkmate? Only can be accomplished by taking a step backward before moving forward.”

The swirl of singsong words danced in my brain . . . and then I understood what she meant. I'd had several flashbacks to my time spent as Myst's daughter. I was Princess Cherish then—my time when I was a princess, not a queen. If I was able to travel back, I might discover what Myst's vulnerabilities were.
Find the chink in her armor
, so to speak.

“But how do I do that?” The words slipped out without me thinking.

The Snow Hag merely tapped her finger to her nose and vanished out of my sight into the darkness. Ask a straight question, and the Wilding Fae would turn a deaf ear or vanish. They lived in a world of riddles and rules and bargains.

I watched her fade, as if into the landscape itself, as Grieve came up behind me. He wrapped his arms around my waist, and I leaned back against him.

“I know what I have to do, but I don't know how to do it.”

“And what is that?”

“I have to return to the past—I've done it via flashbacks, unwittingly, but I have to go back to when I was Cherish and look for anything that makes Myst vulnerable. The Snow Hag is convinced I know something—or
knew
something—that can give us an advantage against the Vampiric Queen. But I can't remember it as I am now.” I rested the back of my head against his shoulder.

He kissed my hair, his arms gentle around my waist. “Hypnotic regression? Would that work?”

“I don't know, but it might be worth a try. I wonder if Ysandra can help me. It's worth asking. Or . . . Kaylin. I wonder if his demon might know of a way.”

Grieve didn't like that idea. “Kaylin's demon is chaotic and dangerous. Trusting him might be stretching our luck, Cicely.”

“We live in dangerous times.” I closed my eyes and reached out into the slipstream. There, on the currents, was a cacophony of whispers. The rush of recent dead slipped past—they were loud tonight, and I could hear the murmurs of confusion coming from them. And the voices of people hurrying home, trying to get off the streets, terrified that they might be targeted for attack like so many others had been. A rush swept by—a Wind Elemental I didn't recognize, but it paid no attention to me, just soared past in a frenzy of movement.

As I lowered myself deeper into the ever-changing river of energy, I could hear the sounds of forest animals scurrying through the snow and the footsteps of the guards patrolling the land and the Golden Wood. From the house, I could hear the pacing of Ysandra's thoughts—she was worried about Luna, about me, about the world. And in another room, I could hear Luna crying. Fear seeped into her voice as she settled into the realization of what she had promised Dorthea.

And then, from farther out, I began to sense a disturbance. It wasn't an energy I recognized, at least not well—I thought I might have felt it before but couldn't be fully certain. But it was covert and covetous, and . . . jealous. Envy? Or jealousy? The two emotions were very much akin to one another, but there were subtle differences. . . . Jealousy was more dangerous.

A moment later, the focus zeroed in on me. Someone was horribly jealous of me and . . . just as I was about to home in on the source, she pulled back, like a snake coiling, rearing to strike. But instead of lashing out, she turned tail and slithered off, faster than I could follow. Whoever it was had picked up on my energy. She knew I was out riding the currents.

I shook myself out of the slipstream.
Ulean! Ulean, are you here? I need to follow an energy signature. Someone I think might be the spy in my Court.

I'm here, and I heard it. I'll see what I can find.

I turned to Grieve. “Someone is out there who hates me. She's jealous. I think I felt the energy of whoever is our spy. Ulean is following her signature to see if she can track her down.”

“Then we let her do her job. Come inside. We will discuss how best to send you back to discover Myst's secrets.” He led me toward the door. As we neared the homey Veil House, I realized that I was lonely. Lonely for our realm, for the stark lands and the austere luster of the Barrow. For the heat of the fireplaces that kept the chill at bay. And yet, even with the roaring fires, there was always a chill there. It had seeped into my bones, into my soul. It was who I was.

“I want to go home,” I whispered.

“So do I, but we have things to do. We'll go soon enough. We aren't far from there. Just a skip through the woods, my love.”

And yet, it seemed like we were half a world away from our home. With a start, I realized that the town—New Forest, and the beloved Veil House—were beginning to feel alien to me. They no longer belonged to my life, and while I was still adapting to life in the Court of Snow and Ice, a part of me had already adopted it for my own.

As we entered the house, I realized I was a guest here now. I wondered if Rhiannon was feeling the same way, and that made me sad. It was her childhood home, after all. She'd spent all her life here. Her memories of her mother were locked within these walls. That it might no longer be a welcome haven for her hit me in the gut.

I found her in the kitchen. She was staring out the window.

“I was watching you out there. You look so at home under the night.” She turned. “What are you thinking?”

“About my home. I finally have a home, and it's not the one I expected it to be. I always thought I'd return here, to this house, and that we'd be a family again.” I shook my head. “We're so far from where we started; there's no way to calculate the distance, is there?”

She bit her lip, but it wasn't indecision. A drop of blood welled up, and she licked it off, deliberately, holding my gaze. “The initiation changed me. It changed you. How can we ever think to be the same? Even when Leo was holding me in that cage, I was not the woman I was when he walked out on me. Cicely, you worry too much about me.”

Rhia looked around, motioning to the kitchen. “I lived my life here, but when it burned, it burned away my connection to it. When you and I killed my mother, we severed my connection to the past. I've had to let it go to stay sane, to forget what we had to do to Heather. To let her go, I've had to let the Veil House go. You never had a foundation like I did. I think sometimes you place too much value on it. I think, like I've had to let go of my past, you need to let go your idolization of actually having one.”

I leaned against the counter. What she said made a lot of sense, but it was hard to see through the layers of hope I'd built up around coming home. “Maybe I'm so caught up in losing what I never had, that I'm struggling with what I have now. I feel guilty for loving my new home. I feel guilty for moving into that dark, icy realm, and leaving everything behind.”

“But you're not leaving
anything
behind. I'm still here—and we're closer than we've been since we were little. You have Grieve. All you left behind was a life on the streets. You didn't have Heather, Cicely. You didn't have the Veil House. You didn't even have Krystal. She wasn't your mother; you couldn't rely on her. If anything, she treated you like the adult. All you had was your car and your memories of being dragged from city to city. The only thing you're leaving behind is your old life.” She laughed gently and reached out to stroke my cheek. “You've got more now than you ever had in your life.”

I knew she was right, but there was something I couldn't seem to verbalize. And then I knew. “Kaylin, Luna, Peyton. They were . . . I thought they'd be my family.”

“And you feel you've lost Luna. And you aren't sure about the others.” Rhia pulled me close, resting her forehead against mine. “Kaylin will follow whatever path he needs to. Peyton will return to her father's pride to learn what she needs to know about that side of her heritage. Luna . . . Luna might hate you forever. They each have their own journeys. It's hard to accept, but people leave us along the way. People don't always stay with us until the end of the story.”

I let out a long sigh. “I know. I just thought maybe I was done with losing people. I lost you for so long, Rhia.”

“And you found me again. But Cicely . . .” She stood back and a pained, sad smile crossed her face. “We will outlive them all. Unless we're murdered, we're going to outlive all of them. Did you think about that?”

And there it was. The crux of our transformation. Except for our new families—Grieve and Chatter—we would outlive everyone we ever knew. We were headed down a one-way path to virtual immortality, and other than the vampires, anybody we'd ever known would be dust before we could even blink an eye.

“Immortality. What a bitch, right?” I glanced at the staircase. “And Luna . . . She may go sooner than we thought. I wish she hadn't made that pact.” But there was nothing else to say. Nothing to make it better. Sometimes, we did what we had to, even when the end result was devastating. Sometimes, we played the devil, because playing god was out of reach.

Rhia handed me a sandwich. “Eat. You need food. What were you doing out there?”

I bit into the roast beef with Swiss, and smiled. Simple comforts meant a lot when times were dark. Even with all the riches of my Court, sometimes the best cure to sorrow was standing by a kitchen counter, a roast beef sandwich in hand, talking to my cousin.