NEVER FOREVER

Vivian was screaming something, but I couldn't hear her over the shrieking wind. We all stumbled farther from the gate and into the trees, where we could lean against their trunks to escape the pull.

Gasping for breath, Lend looked at me, his face open with fear. "What now?"

"Yeah, what now?" Vivian asked.

"How am I supposed to know?" I shouted. "I've never done this before! The gate before sucked the souls through and that was that! I didn't have to do anything!"

"How did they close it when they got pulled through to our world?" Lend asked.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember the dream. "The sylph! The one who whipped up enough energy to open it! It closed when the sylph got pulled through to this side."

"So it got closed from this side?"

"I think so!"

"Maybe it can only be closed from..." he stopped.

"The other side," Vivian finished.

"Oh no," I whispered. "Oh no, oh no, oh no."

Lend looked stricken. "No, it's okay. It'll be okay." He was talking fast, like his tongue was trying to sort through his thoughts and pick something useful out of them. "We can...we can both go through. We'll still be together."

"But I don't want that life!"

"I know, neither do I. But we can't let that gate destroy this world!"

"No, we can't. Okay. We'll still be together." I sniffled, letting out a choking laugh. "And at least I won't have to decorate that stupid dance, right? And it won't matter which college I get into." This time my laugh was definitely more a sob.

Lend leaned forward and smashed his lips against my forehead, and I closed my eyes, letting myself rest against him. We'd fought so hard to stay here together, and now we'd have to give it up.

It sucked. It gave new meaning to the word suck, really. They'd have to change the definition after this ultimate suck to beat all suck.

"Evie, do you have any left?" Vivian asked.

"What?" I pulled my face away from Lend and looked at her.

"Any souls. Do you have any left?" She was staring intently at my chest.

"I...no." My heart sank even further. The only soul I had left was my own. I would be making an even bigger sacrifice than I thought. "Maybe we could leave it open?"

A small sapling, ripped from the ground by its roots, flew past us toward the gate.

"I think we can safely assume it's only going to get worse," Vivian said, her tone flat.

I nodded and nodded and nodded again, like the motion could buoy me up for what had to be done. "Okay. We'll be okay. I'll go through and use...use my own soul to close the gate."

"You can't!" Lend said.

I shrugged, putting on a brave smile. "It'll be okay. They can probably fix me. I mean, Reth was able to put soul into me on this side. He should be able to do it on the other side, right?"

I looked from Vivian to Lend for reassurance, but neither of them had any to give. I needed them to be brave for me, to tell me it was going to work out. I'd come so far to get this bright, happy soul of my own, to figure out who I was and how to love and let myself be loved. I didn't want to give it up, and I needed to know it would be okay.

"Lie to me!" I shouted. "Tell me it's going to be okay!"

Lend shook his head. "There's no way I'm letting you use your own soul to close the gate." He stood straighter. "Use mine."

"What?"

"Take mine! I have more than you do anyway, right? It only makes sense."

"But who knows what that would do to you on the other side! You would be mortal! We'd have no idea how long you'd live, how it would change you."

He smiled bravely, shrugging. "I never asked to last forever. I'm not interested in immortality; you are the life I chose."

"Oh, will you two shut up?" Vivian stomped over to us, her white-blond hair whipped up into a bizarre halo around her head and her cotton gown barely staying on. "'Let me sacrifice myself!' 'No, let me sacrifice myself!' 'I love you more than the eternities!' 'No, I love you more than the eternities!'" She was pale, her huge, manic eyes wide. Maybe having and then losing the Dark Queen's soul really had tipped her over the edge. "This one's all me."

She pushed Lend away from me and slammed her palm against his chest. I screamed, clawing at them, but he looked her in the eyes, then nodded, a small smile on his lips. "Okay," he said.

"What are you doing?" I tried to pull her arm away from him, but she shoved me to the ground with her free arm and pushed her foot against my chest so I couldn't get up.

I watched in horror as the light I could see from Lend got dimmer and dimmer, his glamour fading in and out. He grimaced in pain but didn't move. Vivian closed her eyes, throwing her head back from the rush.

"Vivian!" I shouted.

Her eyes opened, and she came back to herself, snapping her hand away from Lend's chest. He collapsed against a tree, hand over his heart as he panted. He quickly shifted through a variety of glamours before dropping them all and looking down at his water skin, then putting his head back in relief that everything seemed normal. Well, as normal as he ever was. I jumped up, touching his face, his chest, trying to see how much she'd taken, see whether or not he'd be okay.

"It's fine, Evie. I'll be fine." Lend gave me a pained smile, putting his normal glamour back on. I could still see his soul, but it was a faint hint now, like mine.

"How could you do that?" I screamed as I spun around to Vivian who now glowed with Lend's own soul's light. "How could you take that from him? Do you hate me that much?"

"No! It's the best gift I can ever give you. You gave me everything, Evie. You gave me the soul I never deserved to have. So I'm giving you and Lend the life you deserve together."

"I-" My jaw dropped as I realized she hadn't been attacking Lend at all. "You're going through."

She bared her teeth at me in her crazy, off-kilter smile. "In case you hadn't noticed, the only thing I have on this planet is you. If you left, where would I be?"

"But you don't want to live with the faeries forever!"

She laughed. "I dunno, an eternity of pissing them off and being a thorn in their sides? I can live with that. Plus I can keep your vampire friend company, right?"

I shook my head. "You don't have to. I can still do this."

"No, you can't. But will you walk me there?" She held out her hand and I took it in mine.

Lend struggled to stand upright but I waved him away. "I'll be back," I said, my voice breaking because, thanks to Vivian, it was true. He nodded in understanding as Vivian and I braced ourselves and stepped out of the shelter of the trees, tripping forward with the wind shoving us toward the gate.

We barely managed to stop directly in front of it. "Are you sure?" I shouted.

Vivian nodded. We hugged, clinging to each other, and she put her lips to my ear to shout, "I'll see you in your dreams, okay, stupid?"

I nodded, even my tears being whipped away and through the gate. Vivian stepped back and let herself be pulled through to the other side.

The light was so bright it hurt my eyes, but I didn't look away, wouldn't look away. She jolted like an electric current had run through her body, then opened her pale gray eyes. But they weren't the empty pale gray they'd always been. They were shining and bright and bold. It was like she'd been when she was full of souls, but this time there wasn't the emptiness she couldn't get rid of no matter how hard she tried. This time it was all her, as she should be, happy and full and complete. She smiled at me, and I mouthed the only words I could say, as pathetic and inadequate as they were.

"Thank you. I love you."

She smiled, then held up her hand, her face going still with concentration. But it wasn't working, nothing was happening, and Lend's sacrifice would be for nothing. I put my hands to my mouth in horror. Then the edges of the gate went fuzzy, the remains of Virginia night curling in around them, eating at the light until it started collapsing in on itself.

Vivian met my eyes for the last time, and she winked. And then, with an ear-rupturing silent pop like all the air pressure in the world had changed, the gate connecting us closed forever.

I didn't realize I was sitting on the frozen ground until Lend collapsed next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.

"She did it," I whispered, the silence nearly as deafening as the wind had been but so empty it made me ache. If I didn't have Lend here, I didn't know what I'd do. It was almost like I had sent my soul through the gate. So much of who I had been-the people who had defined me, even the work that I'd lived for-was gone now. I felt small, and cold, and a little bit lost.

"We did it." Lend smoothed my wind-tossed hair away from my face.

"It's really over, isn't it?"

He laughed and pulled me into his lap. "That's the beauty of it all. Nothing's over. It's just a new start."

"Re-forming after the chaos," I said, remembering Raquel's words. "Choosing what we'll do with how things are now, who we'll be in this new world where the only magic left is what we make ourselves."

"Exactly. So who do you want to be?"

I smiled, resting my head against his chest. "I'm not sure yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out."

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