Page 92 of My Faire Lady

A single tear falls from my eyes, but I can’t remember why.

33

She’s been gone for three weeks.

Mist sprays over the edge of the fountain, water gurgling as it pours from the blackbird’s beak at the top. Lottie’s sign swings in the eaves of the shoppe as the sun sinks behind me, casting shadows over the roofline.

It’s been closed—locked for three weeks. I can’t go in. Can’t let anyone in.

If I keep it shut and bottle the air, it’s like she never left. She breathed that air. Her hands ran over the clothes hanging on the shelves. Her sketches still litter the table in the back.

There’s a piece of her in there that, if gone undisturbed, might stay forever. I can keep her.

Footsteps crunch down the path, and Jeremy comes into my periphery. He follows my line of sight and sighs, sliding to the ground beside me.

“She never blamed me, you know,” he says, resting his arms over a bent knee. “I almost killed her that night, when I lost control. But she was never mad at me. And when I apologized, she told me there was no need to.”

I dig my shoulder blades into the marble lip of the fountain, anything to staunch the tears climbing up my throat. I’ve managed to keep a brave face around the others, even as the fairgoers dwindled and more and more creatures fell ill, outnumbering the beds in the infirmary.

“You didn’t know what you were doing,” I say.

“Still, she was a good one.” He shrugs and nods at the scroll in my hand. “Any luck?”

I run my finger over the corner of the worn parchment and shake my head. “Even if I did figure it out, I’m starting to think that maybe there’s nothing I can do about it. I think the magic will leave no matter what I do.”

The sun falls farther, painting the sky deep shades of indigo as stars blink to life. I look away. It’s too much like the view from the deck of the treehouse, staring into Lottie’s eyes—the way starlight reflected in them.

She’s woven herself into the fabric of this land—every path, every breath, is laced with her.

In the days after our argument, I traced her footsteps to the cave, considered begging the hydra to pull Lottie from my memories, too. But every time I walked under the opening, I turned around.

“Then it’s the will of the fates,” Jeremy says, pushing to his feet. “Are you coming to dinner?”

“I’ll be back later. I have some things I need to do.”

A moment passes, and he watches me, as if he’s waiting for me to elaborate. But I keep my lips pressed into a thin line.

If he knew what I was planning, he’d try to stop me.

His hand drops to his side, and he offers me a nod before disappearing in the tree line toward the compound. I watch him leave, well knowing this could be the last time he ever sees me. Alive, anyway.

As daytime wanes to night, the full moon bathes the quad in a pool of silver light.

If this doesn’t work, I have nothing else. If the power of the moon can’t bolster my magic enough to find an answer, I’ve run out of options.

Unless the magic takes me with it.

I take a deep breath. Scroll in one hand, I dive into my magic and tether myself to it like a lifeline—braiding my very lifeblood to its whim. The same way my ancestors did, in the beginning, when half of them sacrificed themselves to consecrate the land.

The beginning. The consecration.

It’s the only thing that makes sense.

But where?

I still don’t know the details of how they accomplished it or what runes were cast, but I know enough to offer my life to magic. They died for this, so maybe I will, too.

The threads of my magic tremble, shake, vibrate under the weight of the sacrifice. They buckle. I brace myself, but, just as I think they’re going to crumble, they snap into place. Rigid and unbreakable.