I was falling. The air tasted like snow – sharp, tart particles whipped past my face, bruising me with frost. The mountain’s peak was far above me, now – and from where I was plummeting I could see that needle-sharp point from which I had been pushed. I closed my eyes. I was dying, now, I knew – I had made that choice. For Kian. For Kian, whom I had loved – for Kian, on whom I rested all my hopes. It was up to him now. It was up to Kian to make peace, the peace that we had been working for for so long. I could feel tears trickle from in between my eyelids, squeezed tightly but not tightly enough to hold them back; I could feel them freeze on my face.
Was this dying?
I never imagined that there would be so much time between falling and landing. I never imagined that it would take so long to die. All these moments, each one stretching and slowing so that I could see in every second that kept me from the ground all the memories, long-hidden, long-forgotten, of my life thus far. I could see my mother’s laugh and my father raised up on his horse – see the childhood in Feyland I thought I had forgotten, and the childhood in Gregory, Oregon, I knew so well.
I was only eighteen years old. And already I was going to die. For Kian.
I tried to push the fear out of my mind, the beating of my heart, the terror as I kept falling. I didn’t want to look down. I didn’t want to see how much time I had left – how many feet there were still to fall. A queen wouldn’t be scared, I told myself. A queen would be strong. I had been the Summer Queen in life – now it was time to die like one.
It was time to die alone, scared, on some mountain I had never seen before (but I was only eighteen years old! And the past two years in Feyland were nothing but a dream…suddenly I was sixteen again, in high school, making poster cutouts for the Environmentalist Club and my heart ached for that unknowing childhood!) It was time to die for a love that, two years ago, I thought was only the stuff of dreams. It was time to die for a country I had never even known to be real.
No. A voice was strong and loud within me. No. I wasn’t going to die – not here, not now. I wasn’t going to give it up – not everything…not Feyland, not Gregory. I wasn’t going to die without seeing my mother again, without going back to Gregory, without walking in those woods behind the High School, without laughing in the face of Clarisse who had teased me so mercilessly. And I wasn’t going to die without saving Feyland, making peace, stopping the Pixies, the onslaught of death…
These two lives, so different – my human life and my fairy life – each flashing before me. These two lives I loved so much – I wasn’t going to give up either.
I wasn’t going to die. No – the voice within me grew angry – not when I had so much left to do. Not when there was so much ahead of me. I wasn’t going to die because some old woman with mystic powers had told me to – no, there had to be something more than that. Something more than her magic. There had to be some way – a way based in the ancient magic of love, that mysterious subject with all its primal power that the fairies so loved and feared – there had to be a way to save us both. Me and Kian – linked forever. As long as one of us lived, the other one had to live, too. I was sure of it. Kian had said once that love was the strongest, most dangerous magic there was.
Well, I was willing to face the danger. I felt the magic in me – the power of Summer, the power of my throne and crown – call out to the magic around me: to the twin suns of Feyland, to the sky and stars, to the mountains, to the earth. I could feel my body growing warm; I could feel on my face the ray of a sun I knew was not shining down upon me.
I wasn’t going to die like this – I wasn’t going to let it end. There had to be another way. I could hear a sound roaring in my ears – the sound of life, the sound of wind – a great, magnificent flapping that seemed to drown out my fear, drown out all sound but its own.
I was falling faster, now; the snow against my flesh grew bitter, and one icicle sliced across my hand.
My eyes flew open.
And then I saw my wound. Not red – not the color of human blood – but silver. The color of fairy blood.