I fall to my knees and look on Isabeau with new eyes. I feel like Wendy from Peter Pan. Watching a boy cry over his shadow. Except I need not ask why the heartbroken woman before me sheds her tears. The Rose has been planted at the center of what used to be her Garden and the crown sits atop her head once more. And . . . she’s singing. And I know this is the true lament of the Fairy Queen.
“I have only longed for love; I have waited all these years
To return to the only love I have ever known, to return to my garden home.
But it has died with everything else, withered away while I was gone,
And now not even my song can bring what I have been missing all along.”
The words break my heart. Shred it in two. When she looks up, her face is streaked in tears. But this is not what stills my soul. No, it’s the face beneath the mirrorglass crown that fills me with new understanding. Void-blackened veins cover her skin. The Void’s vessel cannot hide them now. The darkness has returned to where it began, taking over despite her many efforts to control it. She sought to take back the light, only to end up in shadows. And Dimitri’s story comes full circle.
“She bestowed on him the most perfect of kisses, a Kiss of Infinity . . .”
But the love was never returned.
It all makes sense. The story is the key. My Scrib memory recalls the tale in detail now. Piecing the final fragments together.
“And this was the Scrib’s fate, cursed to walk the earth consumed with darkness crafted by the woman he did not love. Eventually he grew old and the darkness left him for another, latching onto one who loved the soul infused with light. The switch had to occur, for the light’s purpose was to be loved.”
And now I know what must be done. We were never meant to reverse what happened with Dimitri.
Ky’s words float to the surface of my mind. “You can’t be forced to love someone, Em. A Kiss of Infinity comes from the deepest part of you.”
Love can’t be forced any more than the Verity could be compelled to choose Isabeau.
“The Rose is the Fountain,” Ky thinks. “Need and desire go hand in hand.”
Now Ebony breaks off from the group. Tucks her hair behind her ears. Folds her arms over her chest. Something flashes in her brown eyes that reminds me of the old Ebony—Quinn as I knew her then.
But then . . .
The light—the love Isabeau sought all along—kneels beside the Void.
THIRTY-NINE
Ebony
I’ve waited for this day. Imagined it. What I would do if I ever had the chance to make my mother feel the way she made me feel for so many years.
Trash. Garbage. Unwanted. Nothing.
“Mom.” I touch her shoulder.
She wrenches away. “Just go.” She claws at her hair, pulling it down over her face. “Don’t look at me. Just go.”
Her Void-infested arms bear scrapes and bruises. Did she try to rid herself of the Void with her bare hands?
“I said leave!” Rocking back and forth, my mother hugs her stomach.
Her wailing. Weeping. I . . . It’s too much.
“Get out! Go! Leave!” Sob after racking sob. “Just . . . leave.” Her voice falters on the last word. Not a command. A plea.
I draw back. My hands don’t know what to do with themselves. It feels too condescending to plant them on my hips. I let them fall to the sides of my bent knees. Feels kind of nice to let them relax for a change.
Still . . .
I should go. I ought to leave her here to rot in this wasteland. Garden of Epoch? More like Field of Death. There is nothing—and I mean nothing—gardenish here. I’m talking more than weeds. This is the equivalent of a foliage apocalypse. Besides, we can make it back on our own. The Fairy Fountains make the way a cinch. With our resident Mirror, we don’t even need them. El can take a few, and I’ll lead the rest. We’ll be in the Second again by midnight. Poof! Glass slipper totally not necessary.
What else is left? We thought we could destroy the Void. Were we wrong? Will darkness forever remain something we must battle? I look at each of my friends in turn. I thought El would be the one in the end, the girl at the center of it all. But here I kneel, all eyes trained on me, myself, and I. And the woman who wanted nothing to do with me? She’s my accessory. Except I’ve no flippin’ clue where to go from here.
I make eye contact with Tide. Khloe. El. Ky. Stormy. Preacher and Wren stayed behind at the Garden’s entrance, opting to keep watch, though I have a feeling they had other reasons for staying behind. Now it’s just those who’ve grown close standing here. They’re tired, starving, smelling of all things gross. But they’re mine. They’ve all fought. All won and lost in different ways. Maybe, in the end, winning isn’t about ending the darkness. Perhaps the victory lies in overcoming the battles we face each day. In a sense, we each destroy the Void every time we choose the light.
I consider my mother, so opposite the woman I know. Hair falling out and skin sunken. She has a choice too. Fight or give in. Clearly, she’s chosen the latter. There’s nothing else we can do for her. I straighten. Square my shoulders. Take a deep breath and prepare to rise.
“I thought . . .”
Her soft-spoken words stop me where I kneel.
“. . . if I could just get back to the Garden.” The word Garden sounds sacred on her tongue. “If I could get her”—outstretched arm shaking, she points at El—“to drink the Rose’s dew once she was here, in my Garden, perhaps my fate could be altered.” My mother lifts her head, just enough so I can see her eyes. No longer blue, they’re a shade of rotting apple green.
“When I killed you all those years ago in the Sixth”—she addresses Eliyana—“I thought the Verity would choose me. I truly believed the crown would complete me, that the piece of my heart Dimitri kept for himself would make me whole again.”
El stares at her, wide eyed.
Did my mother just admit she was wrong about something? Go figure.
“But all I did was curse myself yet again. I followed that boy”—she points to Ky—“and his dead brother into the past in hopes I’d gain perspective on what happened in the palace that day. But all I found was nothing. The more I try, the farther I fall, it seems.”
The laugh she looses bears a sad kind of creepiness. The giggle of someone deranged. “The Void entered me, forcing me to hide in the shadows. I thought, with the crown back, the Void would be suppressed. I could go anywhere and be anything again. I wouldn’t try to fool the Verity. Instead, I would use it to my advantage. All I wanted was to come home.”
Her head raises another inch. Chin quivering, she surveys the destruction around her. “But home is gone!” She sobs into her hands. “Just leave. I am finished trying to change anything. There is no hope for the hopeless.”
Every awful thing she’s flung my way rushes back. This is my sweet revenge, this broken woman on her knees, begging us to let her be.