For a single heartbeat, there was absolute silence.
Then a torrent of noise erupted from beneath the broken dais, a wail like a thousand voices screaming at once. Light and ghostly faces poured from the hole, howling like bean sidhes, and swirled frantically around the room. Images flashed into my head, memories that weren’t mine, people, places, and events that I didn’t recognize. The memories continued to pour in, too fast to understand, fragments from a thousand strangers all invading my head at once. The Nevernever. A terrible war. Fear, blood, and death. A group of fey standing in a circle in a place that looked much like this one, arms raised and chanting in one unified voice. A great black wolf was part of that circle, a shaggy gray cat standing opposite him.
And I remembered.
Everything.
Part III
EVENFALL
18
THE MIRROR WORLD
There was...another Nevernever, once.
It wasn’t called the Nevernever. But it was another realm of Faery, one that existed alongside the mortal world. As the fey of the Nevernever were born from mankind’s dreams and fears, the faeries of this world came from their nightmares and most primal emotions. Rage, terror, hate, despair; these were the emotions that created this world and the fey within, and this was the glamour that sustained them. A mirror realm to the Nevernever, it was a world of terror and darkness, ruled by a creature few had ever seen, and the ones that did often went insane. Some called him an Elder god, some called him the personification of fear and rage. To the fey of the mirror world, he was the Nightmare King, and he ruled the realm without opposition.
The realm known as Evenfall.
* * *
“Evenfall grows too powerful.”
I stood at the edge of an enormous table grown entirely from roots and branches, flowering vines weaving together to form the surface. Around the table, a circle of unfamiliar sidhe looked on with grim expressions. In the deep forest around them, even more powerful creatures looked on. An ancient treant crouched several feet from the clearing, blending perfectly into the surrounding woods, his mossy beard nearly reaching to the grassy floor. A massive creature that looked like a pile of boulders come to life looked on silently, the glow of its eyes the only indication that it was a living creature at all.
And something else watched from the forest. Something old and formidable, lurking in the shadows just out of sight. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel its eyes on me. Right now, it wasn’t a threat; we weren’t in any danger, but just knowing it was out there caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. Even more so than the enormous, bulbous form of the Spider Queen, crouched in the center of her cocoon in the branches overhead.
I gazed around at the circle of fey, knowing them and yet not recognizing them. My consciousness was split; part of me realized I was experiencing someone else’s memories, but everything was hazy and dreamlike. Of the sidhe lords and ladies, I knew they all were very powerful, the strongest of their kind. But they were not the kings and queens of the Nevernever. There was no Oberon or Titania, no Queen Mab. I didn’t know these faeries’ names. In fact, I had never seen them before, never even heard of them. They were all strangers to me.
Except for one.
On the other side of the table, watching everything with a calm, appraising gaze, was the Lady. Looking younger and far less bitter than I remembered, though I had only glimpsed her once. Seeing her now, I felt a rush of both anger and regret. Anger at what she had done—or would do—to Faery, to the Forgotten, but most of all, to Keirran. He had followed her blindly, believed her promises, committed terrible acts for her, and had suffered greatly for it. Gazing at the younger, more innocent version of the First Queen of Faery, I found myself hating her, wishing I could leap across the table and drive my sword into her throat. Maybe if I could watch her die here, before she could put Faery in danger and drive my family apart, maybe then it would erase the flood of remorse I felt for waking her up again. Because, despite my son’s reckless decisions, despite never regretting my choice to earn a soul to be with Meghan, the one responsible for freeing the First Queen and turning her loose on the Nevernever again wasn’t Keirran.
It was me.
I had been in Phaed that day with Puck, Ariella, Grimalkin, and the Wolf. Where, unbeknownst to us all, the Lady had been sleeping, forgotten, for the past few centuries. Maybe it wasn’t just me; maybe our combined glamour had been enough to rouse the Lady from her slumber. But it had been my quest, my determination to be with Meghan, that had put us in Phaed in the first place.
I did not regret what I had done. Everything I had gone through, my entire quest to earn a soul, if I had to do it all again, there would be no hesitation. However, if I could change one thing about the journey to gain a soul, I’d wish that we had never stumbled into that silent, eerie town in the fog. If there had been no war with the Forgotten, if the Lady still slept beneath the Town that Wasn’t There, maybe Keirran would still be home.
The fey that had spoken, a tall sidhe noble with silver hair, raised his chin and gazed at the assembled crowd as if he expected opposition. “Evenfall must be dealt with,” he insisted, though no one was disagreeing yet. “The mortal realm grows violent. The humans are becoming ever more bloodthirsty, and the Nightmare King grows fat on the hate and fear.”
“You say that as if we have no knowledge of what is happening, short-lived one,” the ancient treant rumbled. Shiny, beetle-black eyes gleamed in the darkness as it peered down upon us all. “The darkness in the human world can be felt even through the roots of the Mother Tree. The fey of Evenfall spread anger and fear, and the mortals respond as mortals do.”
“They are going to destroy themselves.” This from the other female sidhe, her cold eyes and blue-black hair reminding me vaguely of Mab. Though there were also white feathers woven throughout the strands, and her cloak was split like a pair of giant bird wings. “If the Nightmare King continues to spread his influence, the mortals will turn on each other and destroy themselves. And then there will be no glamour. If the humans die, the Nevernever will vanish, too.”
“But if we slay the Nightmare King,” said yet a third sidhe noble, a golden-haired youth with a cape of roses and a swarm of bees around him, “we risk war with Evenfall. The fey of the mirror realm will not take kindly to their king being slain. Are we willing to go to war with the whole of Evenfall should we kill the Nightmare King?”
“You are all being foolish.”
The deep, guttural voice came from the trees, from the dense shadows beneath the tangled limbs. A pair of gold-green eyes appeared in the darkness, glaring out at the assembled fey.
“The Nightmare King is not a creature that can be destroyed,” the presence growled. “He is the embodiment of fear itself. To the Evenfey, he is nearly a god. None of you are strong enough to challenge him.”