Reckless (Free Preview) (16 page)

Soon he saw
the first of the dark nets the moths of the Fairies spun between the
trees.
 
Tents as delicate as lacewing
skin, that even in daytime stayed so dark they appeared to have trapped the
night in their mesh.
 
The Fairies only slept
there when the sun was in the sky, but Jacob could think of no better place to
wait for Miranda.

The Red Fairy.
 
It was
by that name that he had first heard mention of her.
 
A drunk mercenary had told him about a friend
she had lured to the island and who, after his return, had been so sick with
yearning for her he had drowned himself.
 
Everyone had heard such stories about the Fairies, though few ever got
to see one.
 
Some thought their island
was actually the Realm of the Dead, but the Fairies knew nothing of human time
or death.
 
Miranda called the Dark Fairy
her sister only because both of them had emerged from the lake on the same
day.
 
So how could she truly understand
the despair he felt as his brother grew a skin of stone?

The tent,
which for almost a year had been the beginning and the end of his world, clung
to Jacob's clothes as he felt his way through its gauzy walls.
 
His eyes adapted slowly to the darkness, and
he was startled by the sight of a sleeping figure on the bed of moss where he
himself had lain so often.

She hadn't
changed.
 
Of course
not.
 
Fairies didn't age.
 
Her skin was as pale as the night she so
loved.
 
At night her eyes turned black,
though by day they were as blue as the sky or as green as the water of the
lake, mirroring the leaves of the willows.
 
Too beautiful.
 
Too beautiful for human eyes.
 
Untouched by time and the decay it
wrought.
 
But in the end a man wants to
sense the same mortality that dwells in his own flesh also in the skin he
caresses.

Jacob pulled
the medallion from his shirt and unhooked it from the chain around his
neck.
 
Miranda stirred as soon as he
placed it next to her, and Jacob took a step back as she whispered his name in
her dream.
 
It wasn't a good dream, and
she opened her eyes with a start.

So beautiful.
 
Jacob's
fingers sought the bite marks on his hand.

"Since
when do you sleep away the night?"

For a moment
she seemed to think he was still the dream that had woken her.
 
But then she noticed the medallion lying next
to her.
 
She opened it and took out the
petal.

"So
that's how you hid yourself from me."
 
Jacob wasn't sure what he saw on her face.
 
Horror or joy.
 
Love or hatred.
 
Maybe something of it all.
 
"Who told you how?"

"You
did."

Her moths
immediately swarmed at his face as he took a step toward her.

"You have
to help me, Miranda."

She got up and
brushed moss from her skin.

"I used
to sleep away the nights because they reminded me too much of you," she
said.
 
"But that was a long time
ago.
 
Now it's just a bad habit."

The wings of
her moths tinged the night air red.

"I see
you haven't come alone," she said, crumbling the lily petal between her
fingers.
 
"And you brought a
Goyl."

"He's my
brother."
 
This time the moths let
him approach her.
 
"It's a Fairy's
curse, Miranda."

"But
you've come to the wrong Fairy."

"You must
know a way to break it."

She seemed to
be made of the shadows that surrounded her, of the moonlight and the night's
dew on the leaves.
 
He'd been so happy
when this was all he knew.
 
But there was
so much more.

"My
sister isn't one of us anymore."
 
Miranda turned her back to him.
 
"She betrayed us for the Goyl."

"Then
help me!"

Jacob reached
out his hand, but she pushed it away.

"Why
should I?"

"I had to
leave!
 
I couldn't stay here
forever."

"That's
what my sister said.
 
But Fairies don't
leave.
 
We belong to the place that
brought us into this world.
 
You knew
that as well as she did."

So beautiful.
 
The
memories spun a web in the darkness, entangling them both.

"Help
him, Miranda.
 
Please!"

She raised her
hand and brushed her fingers over his lips.

"Kiss
me!"

It felt as if
he were kissing the night, or the wind.
 
Her moths were piercing his skin, and all he had lost tasted like ashes
in his mouth.
 
When he let her go, he
thought for a brief moment he could see his own death in her eyes.

A fox was
barking outside.
 
Fox always claimed she
could feel when he was in danger.

Miranda turned
her back to him.

"There is
only one remedy against this spell," she said.

"What is
it?"

"You will
have to destroy my sister."

Jacob's heart
stopped, for one beat, and he felt his own fear clammy on his skin.

The Dark Fairy.

"She turns her enemies into the wine
she drinks or into the iron form which her lover builds his bridges."
 
Even Chanute's voice had sounded hoarse when
he'd spoken of her.

"But she
can't be killed," he said.
 
"Any more than you can."

"For a
Fairy, there are far worse things than death."

For a moment,
her beauty was like a poisonous flower.

"How long
does your brother have left?" she asked.

"Two, maybe three days."

Voices came to
them through the dark.
 
The other Fairies.
 
Jacob had never found out how many of them there were.

Miranda gazed
at her bed as if remembering the times they had shared in it.
 
"My sister is with the Goyl, in his main
fortress."

That was a
ride of at least six days.

It would be
too late.
 
Much too
late.

Jacob wasn't
sure which he felt more, the despair or the relief.

Miranda
reached out.
 
One of her moths perched
delicately on her finger.

"You can
still make it if I give you some time."

Fox began to
bark again.

"One of
us once cursed a princess to die on her fifteenth birthday.
 
But we suspended that curse.
 
With a deep sleep."

In his mind's
eye, Jacob saw the castle, wrapped in thorns, and the sleeping beauty in the
bedchamber at the top of the tower...

"She died
anyway," he said.
 
"Nobody ever
woke her."

Miranda
shrugged.
 
"I'll make your brother
sleep.
 
It's up to you to make sure he is
awoken.
 
But not before you have broken
my sister's power."

The moth on
her hand was preening its wings.

"The girl who is with you.
 
She belongs to you brother?"
 
Miranda brushed her naked foot over the
ground, and the moonlight drew Clara's face on the dark earth.

"Yes,"
Jacob replied — and he felt something he didn't quite comprehend.

"Does she
love him?"

"Yes,"
he said.
 
"I think so."

"She'd
better, for should she not, he will sleep himself to death."
 
Miranda wiped away the moonlight image.
 
"Have you ever met my sister?"

Jacob shook
his head.
 
He had seen blurry
photographs, a sketch in a newspaper — the Demon Lover, the Fairy Witch, who
makes stone grow in the flesh of humans...

"She is
the fairest of us all."
 
Miranda's
eyes traced the features of his face as if trying to recall the love she'd once
felt.
 
"Don't look at her for too
long," she said softly.
 
"And
whatever she promises you, do exactly as I say, or your brother is lost."

Fox's bark
rang through the night again.
 
I'm fine, Fox
, thought Jacob.
 
All
will be well
.
 
Even
if he did not yet quite understand how.

He took
Miranda's hand.
 
Six
fingers, as white as the flowers on the lake.
 
She let him kiss her again.
 
"What if the price for my help is that
you come back to me?" she whispered.
 
"Would you do it?"

"Is that
your price?" he asked, though he was terrified of the answer.

She
smiled.
 
"No," she said.
 
"My price will be paid when you destroy
my sister."

27

So Far Away

Will had not
once taken his eyes off the island.
 
It
was painful for Clara to see the fear on his face — fear of himself and of what
Jacob would learn on the island but, first and foremost, fear that his brother
wouldn't come back, that he would be left alone with his skin of stone.

He had
forgotten Clara.
 
But she still went to
him.
 
The stone didn't yet completely
conceal the one she loved, and he was so alone.

"Jacob
will be
back
soon, Will.
 
I'm sure."

He didn't turn
around.

"With
Jacob, you never know when he'll come back," he said.
 
"Believe
me,
I
know what I'm talking about."

They were both
here:
 
the stranger from the cave, whose
iciness she could still taste on her tongue like poison, and the other one, who
had stood in the hospital corridor in front of his mother's room and smiled at
her every time she walked past.
 
Will.
 
She missed him so much.

"He'll
come back," she said.
 
"I know
it.
 
And he'll find a way.
 
He loves you.
 
Even though he's not very good at showing it."

Will shook his
head.

"You
don't know him," he said, turning his back to the lake as though he was
sick of seeing his reflection in the water.
 
"Jacob has never been able to accept that not everything turns out
right, that
some things and some people just get lost."

He averted his
face, as if remembering the jade.
 
But
Clara didn't see it.
 
This was still the
face she loved.
 
The mouth she had kissed
so often.
 
Even the eyes were still his,
despite the gold.
 
But when she reached
out, he shuddered, as he had done in the cave, and the night was like a black
river running between them.

Will pulled
from inside his coat the pistol that Jacob had given him.

"Here,
take this," he said.
 
You may need
it if Jacob doesn't come back and should I no longer remember your name
tomorrow.
 
If you have to kill him, the
other one with the stone face, just remember that he has done the same thing to
me."

She wanted to
back away, but
Will
held on to her, pushing the gun
into her hand.
 
He avoided touching her skin,
but he ran his fingers through her hair.

"I'm so
sorry!" he whispered.

Then he
stepped past her and disappeared beneath the willows.
 
Clara stared at the pistol.
 
Then she took a few steps toward the lake and
hurled it into the dark water.

28

Just
A
Rose

Jacob stayed
the whole night, though every hour tasted of ash.
 
He loosened Miranda's black hair from the
darkness and sought solace in her white skin.
 
He allowed his fingers to remember and his mind to forget.
 
Outside, the other Fairies laughed and
whispered, and Jacob wondered whether she would protect him should they
discover him.
 
He didn’t really
care.
 
That night, nothing mattered.
 
No tomorrow.
 
No yesterday.
 
No brother and no
father.
 
Just black hair and white skin
and red wings writing words he didn't understand into the dark night.

But when even
the canopy could no longer shield them from the day, the bite on his hand
started to throb, and everything flooded back:
 
the fear, the stone, the gold in Will's eyes — and the hope that he
might yet have found a way to put an end to it all.

Miranda didn't
ask him whether he would come back.
 
But
before he left, she made him repeat everything she'd taught him about her dark
sister.
 
Word for word.