Faery Tales & Nightmares by Marr Melissa

Author:Marr, Melissa [Marr, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Anthologies, Juvenile Fiction, Short Stories, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Fantasy & Magic
ISBN: 9780062101907
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-02-21T08:00:00+00:00

EPILOGUE

IT IS INEVITABLE, BROTHER,” SORCHA SAID by way of greeting when he finished his report.

“What is?”

“Her ascending to strength.” Sorcha could not see her twin’s future, but she knew well the results of Chaos’ growing stronger. The world was not as it should be. Deaths that Sorcha would mourn, in her way, were coming.

As Sorcha reached into the seemingly empty space in front of her, she plucked at threads of possibilities. She let them slip through her fingers, each one as unsatisfactory as the next: her former lover dead, her brother dead, a pierced mortal dead, her once-friend dead, Faerie blackened. They were only possibilities, but none were pleasing.

“She is not going to be stilled easily,” Sorcha whispered.

“You are stronger, Sister.” Devlin smelled of blood. It wasn’t visible on him, but the lingering scent of violence clung to him.

A weapon to be used to keep Chaos at bay.

“Will you help me?”

“I serve the High Court, my Queen. I cannot fathom any reason that I would do otherwise.” He stared at her as he spoke. “Do you know of a reason I would do otherwise?”

There was no pleasing answer to that question. She knew many reasons that he would do otherwise: he was Bananach’s creature too; he wanted things not found in Faerie in centuries; he resented her; he enjoyed violence. None of those were new facts. Logically, none were worth speaking.

“There is a mortal I see.”

“An artist? A Sighted one? A halfling?”

Curiously, as Sorcha tried to look at him, the mortal with the metal decorating his face, she saw only blackness. There was nothing. It was akin to attempting to see Devlin’s or Bananach’s future. Or my own future. In the moment between seeing the mortal and speaking of him, he had become part of one of the three of their lives. He matters.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Watch for him. He is young but not a child. He will matter to one of us.”

Devlin bowed.

Sorcha closed her eyes trying to recall other details, but her glimpse of him had been too brief. “He wears an assortment of metal in his skin.”

“Steel?”

“I do not know. I cannot See him now.” She opened her eyes. “He was a glimpse, and in that glimpse, he was still and bleeding, lying on the soil here in Faerie.”

“Did that please you?”

She shook her head, but did not admit the curious sense she’d had that this mortal’s pain hurt her. The Queen of Order did not mourn. It was illogical. “I do not believe it did.”

Devlin approached her. Silently, he reached out and swiped a tear from her cheek. He lifted it and held it up.

They both looked at it, a silver droplet on the tip of his outstretched finger.

“The body does odd things at times,” she whispered.

“It’s a tear.”

Sorcha lifted her gaze from the oddity to stare at her brother’s face. “I do not weep.”

“Yes, my Queen.” He pulled his hand behind him, and she knew without looking that the tear was still held there.

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