Shards and Ashes

go in there again. But her purse was in there. Her clothes. She hoped Jordan remembered to take good care of her stuff. She had her mom’s jewelry, meager as it was, and some souvenirs from the days before—report cards, birthday cards, a Barbie doll, and her favorite stuffy, Clown Bear.

Sighing, she leaned her head on the glass. Coolness pressed against her cheek and then the sky exploded into colors. Blue, pink, purple, shimmering and flaring; she stared, transfixed, as gray clouds billowed into being. The moon rose and became the face in the book Alex had shown her. Staring at her. Whispering to her, in words she didn’t understand. In a rising and falling voice, like someone reciting a poem. She put her hand on the glass and felt such a pull.

“Alex!” she shouted.

She heard him spring out of his bed and race across the hall. Within seconds, he was standing beside her.

“I see it!” he cried. “That’s the Pale. I know it. I can feel it.”

“The face is the Pale?” she asked.

He cocked his head. “What face?”

She pointed. It was staring at them both.

No, it wasn’t.

It was staring at Alex.

She looked at him. He was bathed in moonlight, every inch of him. His skin, his hair, his eyes.

She told him, and he held out his arms. “I don’t see it,” he said. He gazed back through the window. “Delaney, what if I’m the lost thing that you were supposed to find?”

And she didn’t know why—maybe because he was afraid—but she put her arms around him. His body was very solid. He was staring out the window; now he gave her his attention. She rose on her tiptoes and brushed his lips with hers. Cautiously, he kissed her back. Just the one kiss, chaste, and then she unloosened her arms.

“Just when it couldn’t get any weirder,” she said, and he chuckled. Then his smile faded.

“I think we should drive toward those lights. Now,” he said.

As soon as they got into the car, it began to rain. Wind blew. Alex turned on the windshield wipers as he drove back through the town, to the castle, then past it too, as the lights intensified.

Nothing whispered to her.

“Did I mention that you’re very pretty?” he said. “I like your dark skin.”

The raindrops painted shadowy tattoos on his face, and she wondered if he had them in other places, too.

“I like your tats.”

“Danke,” he said.

The rain came down, and she thought about her mom, and as she often did, the faceless man who had been her father.

The lights filled the sky; it seemed that if they drove forward any farther, they would drive into them. Alex stopped the car, and she opened her door.

He came around to her side of the car and laced his fingers through hers. As if on cue, it stopped raining. The earth rumbled beneath her feet. Shadows billowed against the colors, gauzy and diffuse. They started to coalesce and thicken, taking on the shapes she had seen in the castle, by the cages.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. He squeezed her hand. She couldn’t squeeze back. She was too terrified.

The flares of color vanished, and a figure on a massive horse faced them. It was dressed in ebony chain mail covered with a black chest plate. Its black helmet was smooth, with no eyeholes and topped with curved antlers that flared with smoky flames; fastened at the shoulders, a cloak furled behind like the wake of an obsidian river. In its right chain-mail gauntlet, it held the reins of the horse. Its left arm was raised, and another hand in a gauntlet rested on its fist—that of a rider beside it.

The rider beside it was smaller, dressed much like the other, except that red hair hung over its shoulders. Then it reached up its free hand and pushed back the faceplate of its helmet. It was the woman in the picture. Meg Zecherle.

Her aunt.

She stared at Dana, sweeping her gaze up and down. “Delaney?” she said softly. “Dana? Is that you?”

Alex stepped in front of Dana, placing himself between her and Meg.

“Honey, I have so much to tell you,” Meg said, ignoring him. “I was so glad when your mom found me. I was going to come for you. But then . . .” She exhaled. “Then it all happened.”

Tears welled in Dana’s eyes and she opened her mouth, but Meg held up her hand and turned to the black figure. It inclined its head. Meg seemed to be listening to it. Then she turned her attention back to Dana.

“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to save that for later. But we will talk. I promise.”

“Just tell me who my father is,” Dana said.

“He was a good man,” Meg replied. “But, honey, he passed away before you were born.”

“Oh.” Her voice was tiny. Tears welled, and she knew right then that that was what she had wanted her life to be like, before. She’d wanted to have a dad. That would have been her magic.

“I’m sorry,” Alex murmured.

She nodded, a tear spilling down her cheek.

“You’re going to have to believe a lot of things that will sound pretty crazy,” Meg said.

Dana wiped her cheek. “I think you can skip ahead.”

“Okay, but if you need me to slow down, just tell me.”

“We will,” Alex said.

Meg leaned forward in her saddle. “There was a war. A terrible war, between two magical races. What we might call fairies are known as the fair folk. And the other side are the goblins.”

Dana pressed her fingertips over her eyes. She could feel herself tensing, as if bracing herself to hear things she was incapable of handling. She began to shake. Alex put his arm around her waist and pulled her protectively against his side. She did the same. She needed someone to hang on to.

“Hostages were taken on both sides. Infant children, since their code of war demanded that children could never be harmed.

“Finally, it was over. A truce was declared. They agreed to exchange hostages. One baby of the fair folk for one goblin, every Midsummer’s Eve, until there were no more. That way, peace would be kept until both sides were made whole.

“For years, my lord faithfully brought a captive goblin baby and laid it in the cradle in the forest,” she said, inclining her head in the direction of the tall, black figure. “From the other cradle beside it, he would take the fair child left by his goblin counterpart, and bring it home.”

Her lord? Dana thought, with a sudden rush of panic. The stranger who was her aunt called the thing beside her such an archaic name?

“One Midsummer’s Night, the local nobleman was riding through the forest. From a hiding place, he saw the exchange. Months later, his wife gave birth to a tiny, sickly girl. The nobleman remembered the swap, and the next Midsummer Night’s Eve, he replaced the fair child with his own. What he didn’t know was that his baby carried a plague.”

“Your . . . lord . . . took the plague back with him to the fairies,” Dana ventured, and Meg nodded.

“The humanness of the child went undetected because it was so sick. Nearly all the fair folk died, but the goblin babies in their care seemed to be immune. War threatened to break out again, but the goblins were able to prove that they had had nothing to do with what had happened. But they used the plague as leverage. They demanded the immediate release of all their children. The fair folk couldn’t care for them anyway, and asked the goblins to keep their own children safe as well, until the plague was gone.”

Dana pictured the cages. “But the humans took the goblin babies instead.”

“The noble and his lackeys trapped some of them before the goblins arrived to collect them,” Meg said. “In all the confusion, the count was off, and neither side realized it.”

“But that happened, when?” Alex said.

“Eight hundred years ago,” Meg replied.

Alex’s arm tightened around Dana.