LIGHT AND DARK

Neamh. Evie. Neamh. Evie. Lend, Lend, Lend. Neamh. Evie.

"What are you doing, my love?"

I scowled at Reth for breaking my concentration. "Thinking. Shut up." The Light Queen was speechifying up on a podium made of liquid light, her radiance bathing all the faeries in a glow that was nearly overpowering. Within a few seconds of being around this much faerie glamour I was having a hard time seeing straight and found myself slack-jawed and dazed. Thus, the name equivalent of pinching myself.

I realized at some point she had stopped talking, and now every single set of faerie eyes-a few hundred of them-were trained intently on me.

"Oh, uh, hey." I waved. "What did I miss?" I whispered to Reth.

"You're supposed to tell us how to convince the Dark Court to join us."

"I-What? Seriously? I'm only here to make sure everything happens. I thought the queen would have a plan! I'm a glorified doorman. I open the gate, I close the gate. Nowhere in my job description of Empty One does it say I also manage to convince a mob of anti-Evie faeries to saunter on through the gate."

Reth smiled. "And just when she'd finished praising human ingenuity and assuring us that everything will work out according to plan."

"Yes! Plan! Her plan! Gosh, you guys are sucking it up all over the place. Aren't you supposed to have these things in place for centuries, or were you too busy writing pretty little poems to describe the plans that you never bothered actually making them?"

His golden eyes, now with fine lines around them, twinkled with amusement. "We had a plan, my love. I was to fill you up and you were to open a gate for us immediately. But I seem to recall you doing everything in your power to resist and change that plan. So now we've had to account for all the other creatures from our world and conform to your requirements. I think you'll find that we fey, while obviously superior in nearly every way, are not quite so adaptable as temporary creatures. If you want improvisation, you'll have to provide it yourself."

"Of course I will." I rolled my eyes, huffing. Why had I expected anything else? "Okay, fine. Do you all know any of the Unseelie names? Maybe we could force-"

"No," Reth said, cutting me off sharply.

"You don't know any?"

"It is not a matter of whether or not they are known. My queen knows every name of every soul from our world. But we will not use our brothers' and sisters' names to control them. It is not done."

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "So you could have stopped this-all this-at any time? Your queen could have controlled those faeries?"

"If you could stop all this by killing someone you know-anyone-would you have done it?"

"No!"

"There are some boundaries we do not cross. IPCA visited great evil on us when it ensnared us and forced us to reveal the names of other faeries. We would have sooner perished but had no choice."

"But you used my father's name!"

He sneered as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "That creature hardly counts as fey."

"But you still broke the rule."

"I might have, yes. But there is a chasm between the Light Queen and myself that can never be crossed. You and your entire world have changed me, pulling me further and further from myself. I am not proud of it. She remains unsullied."

"Well, goody for her."

"Child?" The Light Queen's voice stilled the turbulent waves of my soul, singing calm and grace to every fiber of my being. Neamh. Ah, there, I was pissed off again.

I looked over the gathering of fey, all the ethereally impossible faces blending and blurring together. I didn't want to look too closely at them for fear of seeing the faerie who was my father, Melinthros. I didn't want to talk to him ever again. I didn't even want him to exist.

Putting my hands on my hips, I sighed. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to Unseelie territory, and you're all going to protect me with whatever faerie mojo you have, because I'm pretty sure the Dark Queen will not be very excited to see me. And then I'm going to talk to them."

"Talk to them?" the Light Queen asked.

"Yes," I said, trying to compose a poem on her beauty comparing her to the light of the dawn, to the rays of sunlight piercing clouds after a thunderstorm, to...Evelyn. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Gosh, can't you at least try to turn it down? Anyway. We're going to talk to them. If they're anything like your court, a lot of them probably think their queen is a freaking idiot."

The Light Queen's wide, white eyebrows rose like a question mark.

"I mean, obviously not all these faeries agree with all your decisions. Like the one that got them stuck here. So we're going to tell the Unseelies that time is up and bank on them wanting to get out, period, more than they want to get out under the Dark Queen's terms. And then...we're going to hope she decides to come rather than hanging out here all by herself."

Yeah. This was going to go well, I could tell already.

The Light Queen inclined her head in a regal nod, holding her hand out to me.

"I'll go with Reth, thanks."

He took my hand possessively and put it in the crook of his elbow, though I supported him more than he supported me now. With one nauseating twist we were back in the clearing where I'd saved Lend. I had to give it to the Dark Queen-as we suddenly popped in with a few hundred other faeries, she didn't even look surprised. My eyes darted to her neck, but the skin was once again smooth and unblemished. So much for my secret hope that we'd find her wounded or dead.

But unfortunately for my grand plans to turn her faeries against her, the only faeries in the clearing were those that had come with me. The Dark Queen's court was missing entirely.

"Sister," she said, her black hole voice passing through me like a rush of bass too loud and low to register, leaving me shaken and trembling.

"Neamh," Reth whispered in my ear, so softly only I could hear it, and I felt myself warming up again.

"Sister," the Light Queen answered. "It is time to return home."

"You have taken my things. I want them returned."

"They never belonged to you. None of this has ever belonged to us. Let us leave it all and go home, together."

The Dark Queen tilted her head to the side, a smile pulling at her violet lips. "None of this belongs to us? Have you not brought your own whelp along?" She trained her black eyes on me and I cringed, then tried to stand as straight as possible.

"I don't belong to her." I wished my voice carried power like theirs instead of sounding like a seriously scared seventeen-year-old girl.

The Dark Queen didn't respond to me, instead looking back to the Light Queen. "Do not pretend at superiority. All this was for you; I have not forgotten. If I want to go home with a prize for my ages of suffering on your behalf, it is my right."

"It is wrong."

The Dark Queen laughed, a sound so heart-shatteringly cold and beautiful I didn't realize I'd fallen to the ground and curled into a ball until Reth was kneeling beside me, again whispering my name. I stood, helping him up.

"You speak to me of wrongness when you have committed the same sins? You would control me, your other half, your equal in the eternities. You stand here with your very own Empty One after having the gall to take mine away from me? How is this any different, Sister?" She hissed the last word like a knife drawn across skin.

"Because I choose to be here." I narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists. "My life, my choice. You didn't give that to Vivian or to any of the new Empty Ones. But they're all lost to you now. You don't have any other options! It's now or never!"

She smiled at me, her teeth a straight, sharp white line. "And does the Empty One think it has a will of its own? How precious." I flipped her off. The gesture was meaningless here, but it sure as heck was my decision to do it.

The Dark Queen ignored it, turning back to her sister. "Do what you think best; your court will do well to pray it does not destroy them like your last whim that brought us here did. But return to me what is mine first and let me do as I desire."

"It's too late for that," I said. "If you'd ever stuck around on Earth like the other paranormals, you'd be able to feel that our worlds have moved too far apart, and whoever doesn't leave now doesn't leave ever, no matter how many Empty Ones you make. They won't be able to find the gate."

"Come with me," the Light Queen said, her voice filled with such sorrow and pleading I was ready to throw myself at her and beg her to take me and let me spend the rest of eternity trying to make her happy.

LEND LEND LEND EVIE EVIE EVIE.

"I will not," the Dark Queen said.

"Even if it means dwelling in this hollow land of shadows and death forever?"

"Even then." The Dark Queen's back was ramrod straight, her eyes depthless pools of rage.

"So be it. Children, did you hear? She would remain, dwindling and thinning forever, rather than give up this play at creation, and give you no choice in the matter. Will you remain also, or will you come with me?"

Out of the trees came faerie after faerie, the entirety of the Dark Court, who had apparently been listening to the whole exchange. I looked at Reth, shocked, but he just smiled. I clenched my jaw and shook my head, annoyed. They'd had a plan all along, and it hadn't involved me. I was here for show-Hey, look! Our pet Empty One! You can hitch a ride back if you join now! Limited time offer!

"I did warn her you were less likely to come if you thought you weren't in charge," Reth said, his voice cracked but his tone self-congratulatory.

"Did you warn her I'm highly likely to back out of the entire thing if you piss me off?"

"Perhaps you had better pay attention to what is happening."

"Perhaps you had better watch your back, stupid glowy golden faerie man whore."

He frowned at me. "That made no sense."

"Good! Now maybe I can join your club." I took a step away from him but immediately felt terrible when he swayed and looked like he was going to fall. Moving back and putting my arm around him, I saw that, sure enough, all the faeries had mixed together, slowly joining hands, leaving everyone flanking the Light Queen and no one with the Dark Queen. The Light Queen held out both hands beseechingly toward her sister.

"Please," she said.

"No." The Dark Queen smiled triumphantly at me. "She is not even filled, and I know enough of this Empty One to know she will never do what is necessary to gain enough souls."

"No," the Light Queen said. Her voice was heavy with the weight of more time and years than I could begin to imagine, and I felt my shoulders sag. "She is not filled. And this is where I will ask you, once again, to be my sister, my opposite, my equal. To join me in fixing our great and terrible wrong." She stepped forward, hands still outstretched. "Only a power as endless as the one that formed the original gate can open the new one. Neither of us is what we once were, but together we can give her the strength she will need."

The Dark Queen's eyes widened, then narrowed to glittering points. "You would have me sacrifice myself?"

"We will both be lost forever. But we will be lost together and set the eternities back in order." Her voice was soft and sweet, and I was sure the Dark Queen would agree. She had to. No one could resist that much love and pain and desire.

The Dark Queen cut her hand through the air between them and the sweet, yearning joy and sorrow of the Light Queen's voice dropped away like a sheet of water, leaving me gasping.

"I will never." The Dark Queen's pronouncement rang through the clearing, final and certain as death.

"I am sorry," the Light Queen said, her huge, beautiful eyes releasing a single tear. Then she leaned forward and whispered a name, a name so perfect and strange I couldn't understand it but knew immediately what I was hearing.

"Be still," the Light Queen said, and the Dark Queen ceased moving.

I felt the shock and agitation ripple through the faerie ranks around me. The Light Queen had broken their rule. Their one rule. I couldn't quite believe it, but I finally knew I'd made a good choice working with her. She meant to make things right, no matter what it took.

She turned to me, her smile sad. "Child, you will need everything from both of us to open the gate. I give it freely."

My jaw dropped. "I-Wait-that's what you meant? You want me to suck out both your souls? But that would kill you! You can't go back to your homes if you're dead. And besides, you promised! One of my conditions was that I wouldn't hurt any paranormals." I'd thought she meant to use their energy to help me. Like, both of them standing next to me or something. Not swirling around inside me.

The Light Queen held out her hand, beckoning me closer, and it took all my will to keep my feet firmly planted where I was. "I promised you that no innocent creatures would be harmed. My sister and I are not innocent in this. A sacrifice is needed, and only with both our souls will you have the strength to create a big enough gate for all to pass through. It was our folly and pride that brought us here. It will be our sacrifice and grace that will return everyone."

I stumbled forward, my brain spinning in a million different directions. "But...I'd have to kill you."

"It must be done, and I give you my soul willingly."

I stared into her eyes, their rainbow shades of brown shimmering and shifting. To take her soul out of the eternities...it was wrong. It was too wrong. Reth I wanted to save because he meant something to me, but the Light Queen I wanted to save because she was and always had been and always should be. I could feel it in my very bones. "I can't destroy your soul."

"Of course you cannot destroy it, child. No one can. You will simply give it a different purpose. A nobler purpose."

"But you'll still be dead."

"Yes."

"And you're choosing that?"

"Yes."

I shook my head, overwhelmed. I could...maybe I could. She wanted me to. It was her choice, after all, and she knew exactly what she was doing. I was willing to potentially sacrifice myself to open this gate. I could allow her the same choice. I turned to the Dark Queen, whose black eyes regarded me with hate so powerful I took a couple of involuntary steps back.

"She doesn't choose the same thing," I said.

"I am making this choice for her."

I thought of everything the Dark Queen had done, every life she was responsible for destroying or ending, what she would have done to me if she'd had the chance. But staring at her, proud and cruel and permanent, I couldn't do it. I couldn't take that choice from her. Not even for her-especially not for her-would I lose myself that completely, would I let myself become a murderer.

"I can't do it," I whispered. "I'll drain you if that's what you want, but I won't do it to her if it's not her decision. I'm not like her."

"Well, good thing I can do it," Vivian said, a smile on her face as she let go of Jack's hand, darted forward, and slammed her palm against the Dark Queen's chest.

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