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"Were you not trying to make me guilty? I did no more harm to them than you. If I am culpable in this, you are complicit. At least I've tried to fix things, while you have dragged your heels and whined and fought me every step of the way. "
"Because no one would tell me anything! You all made plans and stuck me in the middle of them without a single explanation! My whole freaking life, my entire existence is just a pawn on a stupid faerie chessboard! So you'll have to excuse me if maybe I wanted to make my own decisions rather than blindly accept the directions of the very things that have been hurting me and everyone else since they showed up on my planet!"
I stalked away from him to the far edge of the orange-grassed clearing, then sank to the ground and wrapped my arms around my knees.
"Evie?" Lend sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. "What's wrong? Did Reth do something?"
"Is this my fault?"
"What?"
"Those girls. Reth said. . . if I had listened to the faeries from the start, let Reth fill me up with his creepy burning soul, opened their stupid gate when they wanted me to, none of this would have happened. Those girls will never get better. They're as good as dead if we take away the faerie they love. And I think it's my fault. "
"You can't really believe that. " He pulled me closer, trying to get me to look him in the eyes, but I wouldn't.
"I didn't tell you about the werewolf, either. A security guard in the Center. He told me that one of the werewolves I let out bit him. I ruined his whole life because I was trying to help someone else. Even when I think I'm doing good, I hurt people!"
"You haven't hurt anyone. "
"I have. "
"You haven't. You make the best choices you can based on what you know at the time. You can't blame yourself for the choices other people make. You were right to free those werewolves. If one of them didn't take precautions at the full moon, the blame is on them, not on you. You were right to reject Reth, to wait to make a decision about opening a gate until it was your decision. If you had gone with the Light Court's original plan, who knows if they would have taken all the other paranormals with them? And you didn't make the Dark Queen a freaking psycho witch. "
I snorted. "Pretty sure she came that way. "
"Definitely sure she came that way. She did that to those girls. It has nothing to do with you. You've made the best choices you could. "
I nodded into my knees, still not looking up. I'd made the best choices I could have. But none of them seemed to be the right ones. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this world, after all. What if by staying on the Earth I shouldn't even exi
st on I just screwed things up even more? And did I even want to try to stay if Lend didn't?
Then again, an eternity in that other place, the one I'd been shown in my dream. . . well, to be honest, it seemed impossibly boring. And I definitely didn't want to become this eternal creature Reth seemed to think I should be. Thinking two or three years in the future was overwhelming enough. I couldn't even figure out what I wanted to major in next year at college. I didn't want to make a choice that would last forever.
"Do you know what you're going to do?" I whispered.
He was quiet for so long I thought maybe he hadn't heard me before he finally spoke. "I want to be with you, and have my life here, but the idea of being alone, forever, after you. . . " We didn't need him to finish the sentence. After I died. It'd be the opposite of Cresseda and David. I'd be the one to leave Lend alone, but he'd be alone forever. I smiled bitterly, remembering when I tried to break up with him because I thought he'd leave me behind. It was the other way around, it had always been, which made Lend far braver than I'd been.
"Are you sure?" he asked. "About me being immortal, I mean? Because I don't feel immortal. "
I turned my head toward him, able to see his soul, reflecting light like a stream of water under the brilliant summer sun. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I wouldn't change it for anything, not even if it would mean something could finally be easy for us. "I'm sure. And we have no idea how long I'll live. "
"But really, we have no idea how long I will, either. I mean, sure, I'm immortal, but a gas pipe explosion or an asteroid or whatever could kill me tomorrow. Nobody knows when they're going to die. "
"Well, some of us have a better idea than others. "
He sighed. "Yeah. "
We sat together, silent and melancholy on the edge of an impossible forest in an impossible place with nothing but impossible decisions to keep us company.
"So. " Jack skipped over. "Everyone's settled and only one person passed out from hyperventilating. Most of them were IPCA employees-surprise, surprise-and almost everyone remembers exactly who they were and want to go home immediately, which means we're going to have to figure out logistics of feeding them soon. Plus we need to figure out what to do with all the weird pregnant girls. And you're opening the gate really soon, right?" He waited for me to say something, then poked me with his foot when I didn't move. "What's the plan?"
If I never had to make another plan for the rest of my life, it'd be too soon.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A LOT STRANGE
Carlee was with Lend, who was entertaining the kids by changing into their favorite characters from television shows. It was more than a little creepy for me to watch the boy I enjoyed making out with become some perky girl known for singing the alphabet, so I avoided that part of the meadow. Now, if he were to start acting out Easton Heights by being various characters, well, then I might tune in.
