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"She'd better, for should she not, he will sleep himself to death." Miranda wiped away the moonlight image. "Have you ever met my sister?"
Jacob shook his head. He had seen blurry photographs, a sketch in a newspaper — the Demon Lover, the Fairy Witch, who makes stone grow in the flesh of humans...
"She is the fairest of us all." Miranda's eyes traced the features of his face as if trying to recall the love she'd once felt. "Don't look at her for too long," she said softly. "And whatever she promises you, do exactly as I say, or your brother is lost."
Fox's bark rang through the night again. I'm fine, Fox, thought Jacob. All will be well. Even if he did not yet quite understand how.
He took Miranda's hand. Six fingers, as white as the flowers on the lake. She let him kiss her again. "What if the price for my help is that you come back to me?" she whispered. "Would you do it?"
"Is that your price?" he asked, though he was terrified of the answer.
She smiled. "No," she said. "My price will be paid when you destroy my sister."
27
So Far Away
Will had not once taken his eyes off the island. It was painful for Clara to see the fear on his face — fear of himself and of what Jacob would learn on the island but, first and foremost, fear that his brother wouldn't come back, that he would be left alone with his skin of stone.
He had forgotten Clara. But she still went to him. The stone didn't yet completely conceal the one she loved, and he was so alone.
"Jacob will be back soon, Will. I'm sure."
He didn't turn around.
"With Jacob, you never know when he'll come back," he said. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
They were both here: the stranger from the cave, whose iciness she could still taste on her tongue like poison, and the other one, who had stood in the hospital corridor in front of his mother's room and smiled at her every time she walked past. Will. She missed him so much.
"He'll come back," she said. "I know it. And he'll find a way. He loves you. Even though he's not very good at showing it."
Will shook his head.
"You don't know him," he said, turning his back to the lake as though he was sick of seeing his reflection in the water. "Jacob has never been able to accept that not everything turns out right, that some things and some people just get lost."
He averted his face, as if remembering the jade. But Clara didn't see it. This was still the face she loved. The mouth she had kissed so often. Even the eyes were still his, despite the gold. But when she reached out, he shuddered, as he had done in the cave, and the night was like a black river running between them.
Will pulled from inside his coat the pistol that Jacob had given him.
"Here, take this," he said. You may need it if Jacob doesn't come back and should I no longer remember your name tomorrow. If you have to kill him, the other one with the stone face, just remember that he has done the same thing to me."
She wanted to back away, but Will held on to her, pushing the gun into her hand. He avoided touching her skin, but he ran his fingers through her hair.
"I'm so sorry!" he whispered.
Then he stepped past her and disappeared beneath the willows. Clara stared at the pistol. Then she took a few steps toward the lake and hurled it into the dark water.
28
Just A Rose
Jacob stayed the whole night, though every hour tasted of ash. He loosened Miranda's black hair from the darkness and sought solace in her white skin. He allowed his fingers to remember and his mind to forget. Outside, the other Fairies laughed and whispered, and Jacob wondered whether she would protect him should they discover him. He didn’t really care. That night, nothing mattered. No tomorrow. No yesterday. No brother and no father. Just black hair and white skin and red wings writing words he didn't understand into the dark night.
But when even the canopy could no longer shield them from the day, the bite on his hand started to throb, and everything flooded back: the fear, the stone, the gold in Will's eyes — and the hope that he might yet have found a way to put an end to it all.
Miranda didn't ask him whether he would come back. But before he left, she made him repeat everything she'd taught him about her dark sister. Word for word.
Brother. Sister.
