Midnight Never Come (39 page)

The palace groaned and shook under the assault of the battle above. How long would the Nellt siblings and their army hold off the Wild Hunt?

She ran flat out for the presence chamber. The rooms and galleries were deserted; everyone had gone to fight, or fled. Everywhere was debris, decorations knocked to the floor by the rattling blasts. And then the doors of the presence chamber were before her, closed tight, but without their usual guard. She should pause, listen at the crack, try to discover who was inside, but she could not stop; she lacked both the time and the courage.

Lune hit the doors and flung herself into the room beyond.

A wiry arm locked around her throat the instant she came through, and someone dragged her backward. Lune clawed behind herself, arms flailing. Fingers caught in matted hair.
Eurydice. Sun and Moon, she knows. . . .

Achilles lay in a pool of his own blood along one wall. Sir Cunobel of the Onyx Guard groaned on the floor not far away, struggling and failing to rise. But his twin Cerenel was still on his feet, and at the point of his sword, pinned with his back to a column, Michael Deven.

“So,” Invidiana said, from the distant height of her throne. “You have betrayed me most thoroughly, it seems. And all for
this
?”

Deven was bruised and battered, his right hand bleeding; great tears showed in his doublet, where his opponents had nearly skewered him. His eyes met hers. They were not so very far apart. If only she could get to him, just for an instant —

One kiss. But was it worth them both dying, to deliver it? What would happen, once their lips met?

Lune forced herself to look at Invidiana. “You mean to execute us both.”

The Queen’s beauty was all the more terrible, now that Lune knew from whence it came. Invidiana smiled, exulting. “Both? Perhaps, and perhaps not . . . he has drunk of faerie wine, you see. Already he is becoming ours. Once they take the first step, ’tis so easy to draw them in further. And you have deprived me of two of my pets. It seems only fitting that one, at least, should be replaced.”

She saw the signs of it now, in the glittering of his eyes, the hectic flush of his cheeks against his pale skin. How much had he drunk? How far had he fallen into Faerie’s thrall?

Some. But not, perhaps, enough.

Lune faced the Queen again. “He is stubborn. ’Tis a testament to your power that he drank even one sip. But a man with strong enough will can cast that off; he may refuse more. I know this man, and I tell you now: you will lose him. He will starve before he takes more from your hand, or from any of your courtiers.”

Invidiana’s lip curled. “Tell me now what you think to offer, traitor, before I lose patience with you.”

Eurydice’s bony arm threatened to choke her. Lune rasped out, “Promise me that you will keep him alive, and I will convince him to accept more food.”

“I make no
promises
,” Invidiana spat, her rage suddenly breaking through. “You are not here to bargain, traitor. I need do nothing you ask of me.”

“I understand that.” Lune let her weight drop; Eurydice was not strong enough to keep her upright, and so she sagged to her knees on the floor, the mortal now clinging to her back. Bowing her head against the restricting arm around her throat, Lune said, “With nothing left to lose, I can only beg, and offer my assistance — in hopes of buying this small mercy for him.”

Invidiana considered this for several nerve-racking moments. “Why would you wish for that?”

Lune closed her eyes. “Because I love him, and would not see him die.”

Soft, contemptuous laughter. Invidiana must have guessed it, but the admission amused her. “And why would he accept from you what he would not take from us?”

Her fingernails carved crescents into her palms. “Because I placed a charm on him, when I went to the mortal court, that made his heart mine. He will do anything I ask of him.”

The battle still shook the walls of the presence chamber. Most of what could fall, had fallen; the next thing to go would be the Hall itself.

Eurydice’s arm vanished from her throat.

“Prove your words true,” Invidiana said. “Show me this mortal is your puppet. Damn him with your love. And perhaps I will hear your plea.”

Lune pressed one trembling hand to the cold floor, pushed herself to her feet. She found Eurydice offering her a dented cup half-filled with wine. She took it, made a deep curtsy to the Queen, and only then turned to face Michael.

His blue eyes stared at her unreadably. There was no way to tell him what she intended, no way to tell him her words were a lie, that she had placed no charm upon him, that she would see him dead before she left him to be tormented by Invidiana, as Francis had been. All that would have to come later — if there was a later.

All that mattered now was to get close to him, for just one heartbeat.

Sir Cerenel sidestepped as she approached, but kept his blade at Deven’s throat, and now a dagger flickered out, its point trained on her. Lune drew close, raised the cup, and leaned in just a fraction closer, so she could smile into his eyes, as if drawing upon a charm. “Drink for me, Master Deven.”

His hand dashed the cup to the floor, and the instant it was gone from between them, she threw herself forward and kissed him.

As their lips met — as Lune kissed him as herself for the first time, with no masks between them — a voice rang out in the Onyx Hall, high and pure, speaking the language that lay beyond language.

“Be now freed all those whose love hath led them into chains.”

Fire burned again on Deven’s brow, six points in a ring, and he cried out against Lune’s mouth, thinking himself about to die.

But it was a clean fire, a white heat that burned away whatever Invidiana had left there, and it caused him no pain; when it ended, he knew himself to be free.

Nor was he the only one.

The elf knight staggered away, dropping his weapons, hands outstretched, as if the power of that angelic presence had blinded him. The mortal woman collapsed on the floor, mouth open in a silent scream.

And in the center of the chamber, in the very place Deven had stood to pray, he saw a slender, dark-haired man with sapphire eyes.

Francis Merriman stood loose and straight, his shoulders unbowed, his chin high, his eyes clear. Deven could see a shadow falling away from him, the last remnant of Tiresias, the maddened reflection that wandered lost in these halls for so many years. But it was a shadow only: death had freed him from the grip of dreams, and restored the man Suspiria once loved.

And Invidiana’s icy calm shattered beneath his gaze.

“Control him!” she screamed at the woman on the floor, her fingers clutching the arms of her throne. “I did not summon him —”

“Yet I am come,” Francis Merriman said. His voice was a light tenor, clear and distinct. “I have never left your side, Suspiria. You thought you bound me, first with your jewel, then by Margaret’s arts —” The mortal woman gasped at the name. “But the first and truest chains that bound me were ones I forged myself. They are my prison, and my shield. They protected me against you after my death, so that I told you nothing I did not wish you to know. And they bring me to you now.”

“Then I will banish you,” Invidiana spat. Rage distorted the melody of her voice. “You are a ghost, and nothing more. What Hell waits for your unshriven soul?”

She should not have mentioned Hell. Francis’s face darkened with sorrow. “You need not have made that pact, Suspiria. Nor need you have hidden from me. Did you think me, with my gift, blind to what you were? What you suffered? I stayed with you, knowing, and would have continued so.”

“Stayed with me? With what? A shriveling, rotting husk — you speak of prisons, and you know nothing of them. To be trapped in one’s own flesh, every day bringing you closer to worms — a fitting fate for you, perhaps, but not for me. I did what he demanded, and yet to no avail. Why should I go on trying? I would endure his punishment
no more.
”

Then her voice dropped from its heightened pitch, growing cold again. “Nor will I endure you.”

She raised her long-fingered hands, like two white spiders in the gloom. Deven’s entire body tensed. A darkness hovered at the edge of his vision, deeper than the shadows of the Onyx Hall, and more foul. A corruption to match the purity that had touched him with Lune’s kiss. It but waited for someone to invite it in.

Francis stopped her. He came forward with measured strides, approaching the throne, and despite herself Invidiana shrank back, hands faltering. “You did not give them your soul. You were never such a fool. No, you sold something else, did you not?” His voice was full of sorrow. “I saw it, that day in the garden. A heart, traded for what you had lost.”

Her mouth twisted in fury: an open admission of guilt.

The man who had been her lover watched her with grieving eyes. “You bartered away your heart. All the warmth and kindness you could feel. All the love. Hell gained the evil you would wreak, and you gained a mask of ageless, immortal beauty.

“But I knew you without that mask, Suspiria. And I know what you have forgotten.”

He mounted the steps of the dais. Invidiana seemed paralyzed, her black eyes fixed unblinking upon him.

“You gave your heart years before you sold it to the devil,” Francis said. “You gave it to me. And so I return it to you.”

The ghost of her love bent and kissed her, as Lune had kissed Deven moments before.

A scream echoed through the Onyx Hall, a sound of pure despair. The flawless, aching beauty of Invidiana shriveled and decayed, folding in upon itself; the woman herself shrank, losing her imposing height, until what sat upon the throne seemed like a girl, not yet at her full growth, sitting upon a chair too large for her. But no girl would ever have looked so old.

Deven flinched in revulsion from the ancient, haggard thing Invidiana had become.

As the pact with Hell snapped, as the Queen of the Onyx Court dwindled, so, too, did the ghost of Francis Merriman fade. He grew fainter and fainter, and his last words whispered through the chamber.

“I will wait for you, Suspiria. I will never leave you.”

The last wisp of him disappeared from view.

“-Please — do not leave me.”

Deven and Lune were left, the only two still standing, before the throne of the Onyx Hall.

A sound pierced the air, faint but passionate: part snarl, part shriek. The creature before them should not have been able to move, but she shifted forward, rising to her feet, and she had not lost the force of her presence; hatred beat outward like heat from a forge. Her voice was a shredded remnant of itself, grinding out the accusation.
“You brought this upon me!”

Lune opened her mouth, her eyes full of urgency. But Deven stepped forward, interposing himself between his lady and the maddened shell of the Queen. He recognized what he saw in her eyes. Fury, yes, but fury to cover what lay beneath: a bottomless well of pain. She had her heart again; with it must have come all the emotions she had lost. Including remorse, for what she had done to the man she loved.

He had to say it now, before it was too late; the chance would not come again.

“Suspiria.” It was important he use that name. The pieces had fallen together in the depths of his mind; he spoke from instinct. “-Suspiria —
I know why you are still cursed.
”

The withered hag twitched at his words.

“You had so much of it right,” he said. Lune came forward a step, moving to stand at his side. “You atoned for your error. The Onyx Hall was a creation worthy of legend — a place for fae to live among mortals in safety, a place where the two could come together. You had so much of it right. But you did not
understand.

“The chieftain’s son loved you. But you disdained mortality, did you not? You could not bear to join yourself to it. And so you cast him aside, cast his love aside, as a thing without value, for what can it be worth, when it dies so soon? But the ages you endured after that must have taught you something, as they were intended to do; else you would not have made this great hall. And you would not have loved Francis Merriman.”

He could feel the presence still. The ghost was gone, but Francis was not. The man had said it himself. He would never leave her. The love he felt joined them still.

And he had restored
her
ability to love.

“You did everything right,” Deven said. “Your mistake came when you did not trust it. Faced with a future alongside the man you loved — suffering a sort of mortality, yes, aging while you watched him stay eternally young — you let your fear, your disdain, triumph again. You cast aside his love, and the love you felt for him. You failed to understand its worth.”

A heart, traded for what she had lost. Youth. Beauty. Immortality. The answer had been in her hands, had she but accepted it.

Do not leave me,
Francis had said.

“You face that decision again,” Deven whispered. “Your true love waits for you. Honor that love as it deserves. Do not cast it aside a third time.” This world operated by certain rules he did not have to explain to her or Lune. What was done a third time, was done forever.

For the first time since she bargained with Invidiana, Lune spoke. “Once we love, we cannot revoke it,” she said. “We can only glory in what it brings — pain as well as joy, grief as well as hope. He is as much a fae creature now as a mortal. Where you will go, I do not know. But you can go with him.”

Suspiria lifted her wasted face, lowering the clawlike hands that had risen to hide it. Only after a moment did Deven realize she was crying, the tears running down the deep gullies of her wrinkles, almost hidden from sight.

Invidiana had been evil. Suspiria was not. His heart gave a sharp ache, and a moment later, he felt Lune’s hand slip into his own.

The change happened too subtly to watch. Without him ever seeing how, the wrinkles grew shallower, the liver spots began to fade. As age had shriveled her a moment ago, now it acted in reverse, all the years lifting away, revealing the face of the woman Francis had loved.