KIND OF A BIG DEAL
You're dying?" I shrieked.
Reth sat up and brushed off his clothes. "It's not an issue." Lend offered a hand to help him stand, which Reth ignored.
"Actually," Lend said, "dying is kind of a big deal. Especially for an immortal faerie."
"I already told you," Reth said, only looking at me. "This will be fixed when you open the gate and we go through together. My connection to eternity will be restored and this will all be a horrible memory. Now come on." He tried to project calm, but the same quivering, fraying-around-the-edges look his soul had was reflected in his face.
I stared incredulously as he stalked into the forest, pausing once to lean against a tree and catch his breath before continuing without looking back.
"Well, no pressure now. Not only does every paranormal in the world need me to open the gate so they can go home, but Reth will die soon if I don't."
Lend squeezed my hand reassuringly as we started walking after my fastly failing faerie. "You'll figure it out. I know you will. What was he saying about going through together?"
I willed my eyes to roll, but everything felt so serious and heavy that I couldn't muster the sarcastic energy. "He thinks I'm going to decide to go through with him." Which reminded me that Lend and I hadn't had a conversation we needed to. One I really, really didn't want to. I stopped, pulling his hand so he'd face me. "Lend, I-Your mom, she said they were going to take all the paranormals. And I know she includes you in that group. What are you...I mean, they're going to be gone. All of them. Forever. Every immortal creature on the earth." He'd told me he wouldn't go through, but he had to have been thinking about it. He needed to think about it. For a few brief seconds I was tempted to take Reth up on his offer of eternity, if only to spare Lend the agony of choosing between his two worlds.
But no. This was my home. This was who I was, and what I loved most about loving Lend was that I didn't have to lose myself to be with him. Being with him meant I found myself. I wasn't going to try and become something entirely new.
"Not every immortal creature. I don't think they're taking vampires," Lend answered, avoiding my eyes and digging into the frozen dirt with his shoe.
"Yeah, but, Lend, you're going to live forever-you know that, right? And once they're gone, that means forever by..." My throat caught, trying to keep the word inside. "By yourself. Alone."
"I know," he whispered.
I squeezed his hands, bending my head until he looked me in the eyes. "Do you? I mean, do you really know? Have you thought this through? Because you're going to have to-" I squeezed my eyes shut, hating what I was saying, hating this conversation just when I got him back. "You're going to have to choose. And whatever you choose is going to be forever. I want to make sure you're thinking about it. You need to make the right choice."
"What do you think that is?" His voice was soft and vulnerable and already filled with pain.
I opened my eyes and let go of his hands, putting mine on his cheeks to frame his face. I'd missed looking into his water eyes so, so much. "I can't make it for you."
"I didn't think I'd be making this choice for years. Decades, even." He stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets, kicking angrily at a rock on the trail. "This is all happening so fast."
"I know," I said, miserable. "But you know whatever you choose, I love you. Always. And it's important to me that you choose what is best for you. Okay?" I blinked furiously, trying to keep the tears back. I knew-I knew-if I asked him to stay, he would. But that wasn't something I could ask him. I had to make decisions for the rest of my life. He had to make a decision that would last for all eternity.
Dude, it sucked.
"But, Lend?" He looked up and I pulled one of his hands out of his pocket and wrapped it up in mine. "No matter what? Whatever happens? You still owe me a Christmas present."
He laughed, hugging me, and we stood there with our arms around each other for way too long and way too short. Finally I sighed. "We should get to the pond."
We reached the end of the trail that I spent so much time on I saw it every time I closed my eyes. Arianna wasn't kidding when she described the scene at the pond. A different creature inhabited every square foot. The pond was totally melted now and teeming with heads and bodies and fins and flippers. An impossibly huge, sucker-covered tentacle curled up out of the water, snatching a bird out of the air and pulling it back under.
"Holy crap, was that a kraken? How deep is the water, anyway?"
"As deep as my mom needs it to be, I think."
We walked closer to a pit glowing such a brilliant orange it hurt my eyes; when I glanced to the side, I could see it was crawling with flaming salamanders. Reth stood next to it, his perfectly square, narrow shoulders slumped. Across the pond, at the edge of the trees, the sole sylph floated miserably.
I remembered what I'd seen in the faerie dream and wondered if this sylph was all that was left of the mighty wind that betrayed the rest of the paranormals and brought them all here. No wonder it had been so desperate to find me that Jack had been able to convince it to get involved. It probably wanted to atone for what it had done.
Or it just hated being stuck in this form. Now that I knew what most of them had been before, I couldn't imagine how strange it would be to go from being limitless to being confined in a new, strange body, subjected to different rules.
I jumped back, startled, as a group of rabid pixies scrambled past, wrestling and biting and pulling each other's hair.
"They can't all be here." I squinted at the far borders. I wanted to figure this out and do it as fast as possible. As much as Reth had been terrible to me and had made me crazy, I was shocked at how deeply the idea of his being hurt affected me. He'd taken that faerie magic in my place-he'd sacrificed his buffer from this world to be with me in the first place. It wasn't that I didn't want his death on my hands. I didn't want his death at all. And to avoid that I needed to open the gate, and to open the gate I needed all the paranormals here.
Raquel walked over from where she'd been standing, talking with David, Arianna, and Cresseda. She beamed at the sight of Lend and me holding hands. "You did it, Evie! I am so happy."
I grinned, leaning my head on Lend's shoulder. "Of course. If anyone needs more beauty sleep in this relationship, it's me. Where are the rest of the paranormals?"
"Not all of them want to go, apparently. Some are so far removed that they don't remember or don't want what they had before. Most of the troll colonies are staying. A few other types are mixed. About half the selkies are choosing to stay behind. A handful of nymphs. Mostly those that can become more human when they love a human."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Lend snapped.
Raquel looked taken aback. "Simply that some are choosing to stay and others are not."
"Just because they're leaving doesn't mean they don't love people here."
I looked at him sharply, wondering if that statement applied to more than his mom. Was he talking about himself, too? Thankfully David spared Raquel having to answer Lend by joining us and making me tell them how I broke the curse. They weren't very amused by Reth's clever prank, either, but we didn't have time to dwell on it.
"When do we get this show on the road?" I tried to sound more confident than I felt. If they asked me to open the gate right now, I had no idea what I'd do, but at least I'd know one way or the other whether it'd work.
"There's a problem," he said.
People needed to stop saying that.