Since Maeve showed up at Briarwood, since the first time Corbin kissed me, I’d never known it was possible to be sohappy. I’d thought I’d live out my days at Briarwood, content with the amazing life Corbin had given me, content to watch him from a distance as he soared like the beautiful avenging angel he was, content to stay behind when he finally went off to university and got his degree in a gazillion dead languages and married Maeve and started a family of his own. Content just to be a small part of his life. But for a few glorious days he and Maeve had given me a glimpse of another life, a future I couldn’t have dreamed of. And then the fae ripped it away and burned my happiness along with my home.
“Rowan, please. I need to talk to you.”
I dragged my eyes open and looked up at Maeve. I expected to see my own despair reflected there, but what greeted me was even worse. The sparkle had left her eyes. She was cold and dead inside. Tears streaked her cheeks, but I knew they were my tears, because she hadn’t cried. Her eyes took up half her face – wide pools of deep hazel that glinted with no hint of pain, no hint of anything at all.
“I just had a dream,” she said, her voice steady. Her hands stretched across the bed and stroked Obelix’s thick fur. “Corbin was there.”
The words pierced through my grief, battering me around the head with their sweet implausibility. Corbin’s body burned up in the fire, and then that stake plunged through his chest. This wasn’t like Aline whose body was never actually discovered because she somehow took it with her into the painting. Corbin’s body couldn’t just be re-sculpted.
I clung to Maeve, my body trembling. Anxiety prickled at the back of my neck, creeping down my spine and filling my body with ice. The horror of seeing Corbin’s death would never leave me, and for the rest of my life I’d wonder what I could have done to stop it.
“Please…” I moaned into Maeve’s hair. “Don’t make me think…”
I didn’t think it was possible, but Maeve’s eyes grew wider, like a manga girl. Her shoulders slumped, and the first flicker of grief jolted through her irises. Her fingers tightened around Obelix. He yelped in protest and jumped down off the bed. “It’s all my fault.”
“No, it’s not…”
She sighed. “I broke the charms and let the humans inside the castle. Daigh came to me in the mirror and he told me all these things…”
Arthur sat up and narrowed his eyes. “Codswaddle. You told us everything Daigh said and it was nothing about the charms.”
At the end of the bed, Flynn and Blake lifted their heads, their eyes questioning. My skin crawled and badgers gnawed at my stomach. I searched the room for something to count. There wasn’t much. Ryan had very modern, minimal tastes. I settled for our shoes lined up beside the door, each one streaked with dirt and green-tinted blood.One…two…three…
“This was tonight. Daigh said Aline and I had to keep it secret, or the fae would use their compulsion and read your thoughts. I thought we were helping, but I just played right into his hands.”
“This was when you went to the bathroom?” Arthur growled. “What did that bastard say to you?”
“He told us about the secret passage and…” Maeve shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. It was all lies. I should have seen through it. Aline did, and she’s the only reason we’re all still alive. I should have realised that Daigh no longer had his powers.”
Four…five…shite, I ran out of shoes.
“You can’t blame yourself.” Arthur squeezed her shoulder. Maeve stiffened. “No one could have predicted Daigh wouldbargain away his powers. I think that’s what he was counting on. Besides, this whole bloody thing ismyfault. We were fighting the fae and I lost sight of Corbin. I let him get captured. I could have saved him if I hadn’t let my temper get control again.”
“Sorry Arnold, you don’t get to be the scapegoat.” Blake piped up. “You were the hero out there, getting Kelly out and Corbin’s body and taking down all those fae. If you want to blame someone, blame me.Ididn’t understand what those two voices compelling the villagers meant. If I’d have figured out that Aline was the second voice sooner, we might’ve been able to?—”
“It’s my fault,” Flynn added. “I’m Irish.”
“I let Corbin hide us in that priest hole,” I whispered. “I huddled in the dark while he died on his own. I should have been fighting. I would have fought for him.”
I would have died for him, for Maeve, for all of them. It should have been me in Corbin’s place.
“In my dream Corbin said that even if we’d all held him down he’d have found a way to do it anyway,” Maeve said. “That’s so like him.”
“Is it…” I tried to keep the hope from rising in my voice. “Could he be alive still, sending us a message…”
Maeve shook her head. “Premonitions and precognition aren’t real, and tonight proved that. I don’t believe the dreams I had about the stakes were any kind of sign from the future. The stakes were there, just like in the dream, but there was no irradiated earth, no burning sky, no briar bushes as high as the castle walls. And even if it was the same, the fact that we stopped Daigh before all of us ended up on the stakes means that it wasn’t a premonition. Because the future was never set in the first place. It’s all about quantum?—”
“If we could skip the quantum lecture for now, Einstein,” Flynn stroked her hair. “Rowan doesn’t look like he can take it.”
Maeve’s hand gripped my shoulder, her fingers tightening around my skin. The anxiety tickled down my back again as she said, “I think Daigh planted this vision of Corbin in my head to get me to follow him. It’s just another one of his tortures. He makes me believe Corbin is still alive and then he makes a bargain to bring him back and I fall for it because I’m a complete fucking moron.”
“Daigh gave up his powers,” Blake whispered. “He can’t affect your dreams any more than cheese.”
“Mmmm, cheese,” Flynn pretended to drool.
“Than this dream is just my subconscious reacting to my guilt and grief. We can’t go reading it as a sign that Corbin’s…that he...” Maeve sucked in a breath. “We all saw what happened. This isn’t like Aline. You can’t come back from that.”
Everyone fell silent. I knew we were all picturing Corbin’s body sliding down the stake. I counted the shoes again, my fingernails tearing the expensive cotton sheets.
