When I turned back, Endymion stood before us. The fire had burned away his cloak and gloves, revealing eerie white flesh that glowed with a bluish light. Unlike the other two nephilim, Endymion’s face was beautiful—the face of an angel. His unfurled wings were golden in the firelight. How cruel, I thought, to be granted such beauty but still be a monster in your parents’ eyes.
I felt William’s muscles tense. He slowly lowered me to the ground, placing me beside him. I clenched the stone in one hand, William’s hand in the other. Endymion smiled.
“What a worthy opponent you’ve turned out to be,” he crooned, his voice gentle as a lover’s. “I look forward to meeting you again.”
Then, before I could aim the stone at him, he rose straight into the sky, his great wings beating the air into a maelstrom of ash and sparks. The tartan dome, weakened by the breaks in the line as the Stewards tended to the accused witches, shattered. A rain of multicolored sparks drifted to the ground. I stared up, waiting for another attack, but nothing came. The sky above was clear, the full moon pouring white light into the courtyard like cool water to bathe our burns and clean away the ash. I looked at William. His hair, singed from the fire, stood up in wild peaks, his face blackened with ash and streaked with blood. He resembled one of the wild blue-painted Picts that had defended Scotland from the Romans centuries ago. Like a warrior. I glanced around the courtyard and saw that the Stewards and the villagers were all stained with ash and blood. Una and Nan were tending to them. The glow of the tartan was still on them, and Nan was using it to bind wounds and heal burns. She looked up from treating a gash on Jamie McPhee’s forehead and caught my eye. She administered a quick stitch in glowing blue thread, told Jamie he was a “braw lad,” and came toward us.
As she approached, her eyes were on my hand that held the stone. I still held William’s hand in the other. She reached out her hand for mine, and I laid it in hers. She gently un-pried my fingers from the brooch. I heard William gasp. As I’d used the stone, the silver of the brooch had heated up and burned my skin. The silver was embedded in my flesh. Nan lifted the brooch as gently as she could but not so gently that it didn’t hurt like hell. William squeezed my hand as I bit back a scream. Seared into my palm was the pattern of the two interlocked hearts. Nan laid her hand over mine and emitted a healing green light, which smelled like mint and felt like a balm. When she moved her hand, the pain was gone, but the mark was still there.
“Aye,” Nan said, “some marks are worth keeping.” She lifted her eyes from my hand to my face. “Remember us when you look on that. The Stewards of Ballydoon will always remember you. You’ve given us a way to protect our village. And now that ye have the stone, you can save yours.”
She squeezed my hand again, bathing it once more in her healing green light, then nodded, her eyes shining, and turned to go back to tend her village. As I must do now. The green balm could do nothing to ease the ache I felt in my heart knowing that. I turned to William.
“I know ye must go,” he said. “Do you have to leave from a particular place?”
“No,” I said. “I’m the door, so I can open a passage anywhere. But I don’t want it to be here. I have an idea of where it should be. Will you come with me?”
William smiled and touched my face. A bit of the red from the tartan warmed my cheek. “Whither thou goest, I goest.”
We walked out of Castle Coldclough and down into the blasted ravine.
“You still have to get past the Fairy Queen,” William said as we walked. “She cursed you, too, remember.”
“Yes,” I said. I hadn’t let myself think about that until I had the stone, but now I did. “I think I can convince her to remove the curse. I understand now that the tithes she’s been paying have been to save her people from the nephilim. But when she sees that I have the stone and that I can protect her people in the future, she’ll have to see reason.”
William made a skeptical noise—he knew the Fairy Queen better than I did—but he didn’t argue. He seemed to be working something out in his head. I was, too. If the Fairy Queen was willing to bargain to let me through Faerie, mightn’t she be convinced to let William through, too? But if I brought him with me to Faerie and she didn’t let him into my time, then he’d be trapped in Faerie again. I couldn’t take that chance. It was better to leave him here in Ballydoon, where he was safe. Perhaps he had also figured out the same thing in his head. We walked in silence to the bottom of the ravine, where the petrified vines twisted together like a nest of snakes.
“Here?” William asked. “It isna a verra pretty place.”
“No,” I admitted, “but it once was. And it can be again.” I let William’s hand go and took a step back. I closed my eyes and uttered the words I’d used when I first tied myself to the door. Cor mea aperit, tam ianua aperit. As my heart opens, let the door open. I felt a swelling in my chest … and an ache. It felt different than when I’d last done the spell. It hurt—as if to open the door I had to break my heart open.
Because you’re leaving him.
I opened my eyes. A small white light was glowing amid the blackened and petrified vines.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. The light wavered like a candle in the wind.
“I know you must go back,” he said, taking my hand. The light grew into a pillar and then swelled into an arched doorway. As its light touched the petrified vines, they turned green and flowers bloomed. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, the scent that had first brought him to me.
“I love you,” I said.
William smiled and shook his head. “You love the man I will become …” He bent his head to mine and kissed me on the cheek, whispering in my ear, “… And so I must become that man.” Then he wrapped his arms around me and stepped us both through the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We went straight into Faerie, finding ourselves in a flower-bedecked meadow under a lilac sky. Lambent gold light lapped over everything, but there was no visible source for it—no sun, no moon. It may have been dawn or twilight. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I knew that appearances here could deceive.
“William, what were you thinking? The Fairy Queen said she’d kill you if you came through Faerie again.” I anxiously looked around for Fiona, wondering if I could get William through Faerie and into Fairwick. The last time I’d gone through the door, I hadn’t paused in Faerie. That hope was destroyed, though, when I saw a procession climbing the hill toward us. It was too late.
The procession was led by Fiona the Fairy Queen and King Fionn on horseback. Behind them was a host made up of myriad creatures: satyrs and centaurs; winged blond Valkyries; a great stag with gold-tipped horns, a herd of deer in his wake; women with feathered legs and the faces of owls; short white-bearded men with red caps, looking like an army of garden gnomes. Even more frightening creatures lurked on the edges of the crowd and in the woods bordering the meadow. Rat-faced goblins and pointy-eared imps chattered and hissed but scared me less than the Fairy Queen, whose emerald-green eyes were fastened on William. I moved to stand in front of him, but he tightened his grip on my arm and held me back. “It’s all right, lass,” he hissed under his breath. “I know what I’m doing.”