"Deirdre," Brendan said. "You have saved the tarbh uisge, one of ours, on this night, and that binds us." He sang,
312
The bird that flies across the fields
Eats the seeds of the meadow grasses
The seed that falls from the beak yields
More than the meadows losses.
I stared at him. He was looking at me expectantly, and I'm sure I was supposed to say something clever.
Thomas leaned in and touched my shoulder. "A life for a life," he whispered. "It's a song of balance. They'll give you a life for the life you saved."
Oh.
In my head, Eleanor was pressing a dirty-pigeon soul into Aodhan's chest and he was falling to the ground, dead, wearing Luke's face. But it didn't have to end that way. I could ask for Luke's life. I could win his soul back and save him. This wouldn't be the last time I held his hand. My story would have a happy ending.
"Save his life," Luke whispered, his lips on my ear. "Hurry. He doesn't have much time left."
Guilt rocked through me, pricking immediate tears in my eyes. I didn't know how I could've forgotten James, back on the stage, gasping for life. What kind of a person was I? Of course, I had to save James. What was I thinking? I half turned my head toward Luke, swallowing more tears. "But then--but when--if I--if you get your soul back--"
Luke kissed just in front of my ear, so brief and light that it was almost just his lips forming words. "I know. I know, pretty girl. I knew all along."
I wanted him so badly it hurt, a dull ache somewhere
313
below my ribs. I wanted to say, "save Luke." It would be so easy.
It would be so wrong.
I looked at the ground, at every little jagged crevice in the asphalt. If you stared at it long enough, you could see little flecks of some sort of shining rock mixed into its surface. Two glistening drops splatted on the asphalt, and I looked up at Brendan and wiped my cheek.
"Thank you for the favor. Truly, you are very kind. Please--please would you save my friend James? If you can?" I almost choked on the last words, but I got it all out before another tear escaped.
"Good girl," Luke said softly.
"Where is he?" Brendan asked.
Una whirled past us. "I know. I can hear him dying in here."
Brendan dismounted and followed her through the door, giving me and my iron key a wide berth, even on Solstice. He said over his shoulder, "It will be done."
And I burst into tears. I didn't care who was watching--the Queen, Eleanor, all of the faeries of the world, whatever. I didn't care. Luke squeezed his arms around me, letting me bury my face in his shoulder. I felt him staring at the Queen as he kissed the top of my head.
"Let go of her." The Queen's voice was stony.
Luke's arms tightened around me as I pulled up my face to look at her. Again, the red setting sun was blazing in her eyes. Please don't let go of me. He didn't.
"Let go of her."
314
Eleanor's lips curled into a smile at the anger in her Queen's voice.
"I will when she asks me to," Luke said. "I told you, I'm done doing your bidding. If this is the way I die, so be it."
If he was afraid, I could not feel it. The Queen whirled to the cage at Eleanor's feet, and tugged off the cover. Beneath it, a doorless birdcage with wire-thin bars surrounded a dove so white it hurt my eyes. It flapped its wings in terror, crashing off the sides of the cage and tumbling to the bottom. Luke sighed, his eyes fixed on the bird, his body firmly pressed against me but the rest of him somewhere else.
"Foul, isn't it?" the Queen asked. "Seems only fitting that the essence of a killer should manifest as a filthy, ordinary pigeon."
The words burst from my mouth. "Are you kidding? It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
I stared at that brilliant form in the cage. It felt like the promise of what people could be, before we started to screw ourselves up. It felt like a beginning.
The Queen crooked an eyebrow at me, disbelieving. "One last chance, Luke Dillon. Tell me you will love me, and I'll spare you."
Luke just shook his head, a slight movement against my cheek. I stepped out of the circle of his arms, toward the Queen. "You can't force someone to love you--don't you get it? You can force them to kill for you. You can force them to be your subjects. You can't make someone love you!"
The Queen shrilled, "My subjects love me! I do not force them to obey me!"
315
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
