The Queen shrilled, “My subjects love me! I do not force them to obey me!”
Eleanor’s eyebrow raised.
I seized whatever meaning I could find in that little gesture. “Prove it. Prove it.”
“You will die, cloverhand,” the Queen snarled. Then, louder, she screamed to her subjects, so loud that her voice cut through every bit of music and laughing and dancing. They froze, and magic hung in the air on this weird night. “Do you see me, my lovelies? Witness my beauty? Now look at the cloverhand—look at how ordinary she is, how dull, how simple! She is nothing, but she claims that my subjects do not love me!”
A slow smile had started on Eleanor’s face as she stood behind the Queen. With every word that the Queen spoke, it widened, until the beauty of her smile was agony to look at.
The Queen lifted her arms, and when she screamed, her voice was as fierce as summer lightning. “Choose your Queen!”
The night was quiet.
It was so quiet that I could hear the cicadas buzzing in the field across the road, and the frogs chirping in the ravine behind the school. A car’s tires hummed on the distant highway and, above me, in the absolute silence, I heard the streetlight buzzing faintly.
Then the faeries rushed toward the Queen, one crazy mass of shimmering bodies and wings and beaks and claws, and I was forced away from Luke by the press of the throng. The noise was unbearable: cries and laughs and growls. I didn’t know what was happening, and I couldn’t see Luke or the Queen or anyone for all the bodies shoving past me.
But one cry could be heard above all of them—a high, reedy wail that went on and on, freezing my blood with its wildness. And then I saw a tall faerie, with shaggy fur growing on his shoulders, stalk by me holding a handful of blond hair in his huge fist. Long blond hair, with a clump of red on the end. I still didn’t get it until I saw a collection of lithe, willowy she-faeries tossing a hand between the three of them. I saw blood drip from it. Then I saw two faeries the color of the sky tugging on either end of a long stretch of fabric from the Queen’s dress.
“Oh my God.” I pushed my hand to my mouth. Next to me, Eleanor made a small, vaguely amused sound.
A hugely tall faerie with the pricked ears of a horse lifted some gory prize above his head, and the wild crowd cheered, primitive and delighted with their kill.
They killed her.
“Dee,” Luke pushed by Eleanor as if she were nothing and gripped my arm. “Are you all right? I thought—” He broke off as he watched a dragon-like creature slither by with an arm in its long, toothy mouth. His pale eyes followed its progress through the strange crowd.
“I didn’t think they’d kill her.”
“I thought it was you.” Suddenly I realized that Luke, for the first time, looked shaken. “I saw them carrying a hand and—”
“Shut up. I’m okay. Nothing happened.” It felt good to be the one to comfort him for once; to hold him together. “What’s going on?”
A tall, beautiful male faerie had caught everyone’s attention, and he held the Queen’s bloody circlet above his head. His voice was like one thousand voices together as he said, “We have chosen our Queen.”
He walked through the crowd, the faeries making a path for him, heading straight for me with the horrible crown—still covered with the Queen’s blood. I couldn’t even begin to imagine its awful weight on my head. I shivered; Luke’s hand tightened on my arm.
Oh God! No!
Still the faerie came, his path unerring, through the crowd toward me.
No. Not me. Not me, I wished fervently. Anybody but me.
The faerie stopped before me, and I saw blood dripping down his arm from the circlet.
Not me.
He stepped forward, closing the space between us, and then he placed the circlet on Eleanor’s head. “Long live the Queen.”
“Oh, that I will,” said Eleanor.
twenty-two
There was silence as Eleanor faced us across the parking lot. Over her shoulder, the moon moved slowly across the sky, the birds still fluttering and trembling on its surface. The silver glimmer they cast mingled with the ugly yellow of the streetlights.
“I have waited a long time,” Eleanor said finally. She knelt and picked up the soul-cage with more grace than any human. “Luke Dillon, you served the last Queen, not this one. Take your soul, darling.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s not a gift,” Luke said, his voice flat.
Eleanor smiled, both beautiful and fearsome. “You were always such a clever one. Do you want it or not, dear? You worked so hard for it.”
Luke released my hand to retrieve the cage. He returned to my side and set the cage down between us, like it was something we both owned. “What happens to Deirdre?”
Eleanor shrugged. “Probably an extremely boring life. Ugly children. Midlife crisis. Bed pan. Death.”
“You won’t hurt her?”
Eleanor smiled at me as if the idea was pleasing, but she shook her head. “I doubt it, dear. So many other fun things to do.” She looked around at her faeries and clapped her hands. “Speaking of which, pretties, where did the music go? Is this not Solstice?”
And with that, They whirled into the night around us, filling the parking lot with music once more. Eleanor smiled benevolently. “Now, Deirdre, are you not going to give the gallowglass back his soul? He cannot stop looking at it.”
It was true. Luke’s eyes kept going back to the bird, and the part of him in me tugged toward it as well. I almost hated it. I hated that it meant goodbye. But most of all, I hated that I didn’t know what would happen to him after he had his soul back. Was Eleanor right? Would he have to pay for the Queen’s sins?
“The hero always dies at the end of Irish songs, didn’t you notice?” Luke’s voice was barely audible. He crouched to look at his soul, and I saw the brilliance of the dove reflected in his pupils.
“Wait!” Una’s voice carried as she danced out of the auditorium. Behind her, Brendan was carrying James’ body as if it weighed nothing. He strode as close to me as he dared and laid James down on the asphalt.
“Is he alive?” I asked, rushing to him, thoughtlessly pushing Brendan back with the presence of my iron. I knelt and saw the rising of his chest; I put my hand above his mouth and felt his breath warm my hand.
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” Brendan shook his head. “But for now, the piper lives.” He jerked his head toward Luke. “What of Luke Dillon?”