Marie Brennan - A Star Shall Fall

Hoping to draw the sprite out, she said gently, “Indeed, I owe you a great debt. Ask anything of me, and it will be yours.” Save the abdication of her throne—but after Valentin Aspell, Irrith would never ask it.

Unfortunately, the effect was not what she intended. The green eyes sickened, and Irrith dropped her chin. “You can’t give me what I want, your Grace.”

“Perhaps another could?” The sprite shook her head, a quick jerk with hunched shoulders. Refusal of more than just that possibility. “We’ve known each other for a century, Irrith. Whatever it is, you needn’t fear saying it in front of me.”

“Not you.” The wince that followed made it clear that had slipped out against her will.

There were only three of them in the room, and Delphia could count as well as any. With the abruptness of a woman who must force the words out of her mouth, she said, “The ladies of this court gossip, in the manner of ladies everywhere. I know you shared his bed. And I—I won’t begrudge you your grief.”

The sprite shook her head vehemently, auburn tangles whipping. “No. I didn’t love him. Not in the way that we do—not real love, the sort that hurts forever.”

But there was grief in her voice, even if it was of a transient kind. Delphia, folding her hands like one at prayer, offered up a misplaced mortal reassurance. “We may comfort ourselves that he is with—that he is in a better place now.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Not just a Christian comfort, and meaningless to fae; no, this was the hammer stroke, shattering Irrith’s mask and laying bare the horror beneath it. “No, he isn’t! He killed himself, and now he’s in Hell !”

The word rang through the room like a thunderclap—and then the air changed.

Irrith thought at first that tears were blurring her vision. And so they were; but the shape remained even when she blinked the moisture away.

It formed above the carpet, in the centre of the triangle the three of them created. White mist at first, almost too faint to see; then it thickened, solidified, colour seeping through it like slow dye, never quite attaining the vibrancy of life.

Delphia sank to the floor in shock, and Irrith almost did the same.

Those bound to the fae sometimes lingered among them after death.

The ghost of Galen St. Clair seemed puzzled at first, unsure of where he was. Then he saw Delphia on the floor; then Irrith and Lune, standing to either side. He turned from one to the other, half-drifting, and Irrith’s heart tried to burst from relief when she saw his eyes, clear of any flame.

“The Dragon,” he whispered.

She had to try three times before the word came out. “Dead. Do—do you remember?”

The question sent a shudder down his spine. Galen was dressed as he had been in death, free from all the armour of elegance, but his shirt was whole; no mark of the beast’s flame showed on him anywhere. “I… I remember pain.”

“You were burning,” Irrith said, voice wavering so badly it was almost unintelligible. “It would have killed you eventually. And maybe that would have killed the Dragon. But I—”

“Destruction.” Galen might not have heard anything she said; he was lost in the fog of his own memories. “For its own sake, at first; that was the fire of the Dragon. Then destruction for the sake of making others suffer. And that was my fire.”

His gaze pinned Irrith, swift as an arrow. “I hurt you.”

She shook her head so hard, pain flared in her neck. “No. That wasn’t you.”

“It was. The me that was the Dragon. The two of us as one…” He trailed one ghostly hand across his chest, where she had stabbed him. “The ice put out the flames. I think some part of it is still in me—I remember the comet, and the vastness of space. But there is no more fire.”

The tears were coming again. She’d done this much for him, then: that beast would not add to his torments. Scant comfort.

The ghostly substance of Galen’s body rippled, then firmed once more. Looking around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time, he said, “I thought I would be in Hell.”

Lune smiled. A strange radiance had suffused her: serenity, unshakeable as the foundations of the earth. “No, Galen. Your soul is not bound for Hell.”

“But he killed himself,” Irrith said. “Even I know where suicides go.”

Delphia pushed herself to her feet, careful as a cripple walking for the first time. She said, “I won’t quote the words of scripture directly, not in this place—but it tells us the greatest love of all is to give up one’s life for the sake of others.”

“For the sake of faeries.” The words tasted bitter in Irrith’s mouth, all the more so because she wanted to hope, and didn’t dare. “We don’t matter, in Heaven’s eyes.”

“Yes, we do.” The joy in Lune’s smile was like nothing Irrith had ever seen before. “We are not creatures of Heaven, but when love joins our two worlds, even the angels do not condemn it. I have seen it myself, long ago.”

She sounded like a madwoman. The shining certainty in her eyes, though, dissolved the ache that had lodged within Irrith’s breast since Galen first offered himself for the sacrifice. He isn’t damned. He’s given up his life—but not his soul.

Through her own dignified tears, Delphia said, “Go on, Galen. Heaven awaits you.”

He hesitated. Irrith thought some lingering fear held him back, until he shook his head.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

To leave Lune—but he said it to all three of them, his wife, his lover, and his Queen. Irrith’s throat closed, with sudden hope. “He’s a ghost,” she said, as if no one had noticed. “Haunting the palace. He doesn’t have to go anywhere, does he?”

She looked hopefully to Lune as she said it, but saw the elfin woman’s radiance dim. “Have to—no. But Galen… do not trap yourself in that fashion.”

“It isn’t a trap if I choose it,” he said, and all the passion of his soul was in those words.

Sorrow touched Lune’s lips. The fading that had come upon her, the exhaustion of the Onyx Hall’s decline, had only made her beauty more poignant. “But think of what you are choosing. For today, it would be a blessing; you would remain among those you love. What of tomorrow, though, and the next day, and all the days to come? Forever adrift in these halls, as mortals pass and faerie memory dissolves into forgetfulness, until even your friends scarcely remember who you are and why they once cared for you.”

Irrith wanted to insist it would not be so. But then she thought of past Princes—or tried to. Lord Antony, Jack Ellin, Lord Joseph. The names were there when she reached for them, and even the faces; that was not how fae forgot. When she tried to recall Jack’s sense of humour, though, or the respect she felt for Lord Joseph when he heard the news of the comet’s return… nothing. They might have been people from a history book, not men she’d known.

That would happen to Galen, too. The only way to hold on to such memories was to love. And then his lingering would be an endless source of pain to them both.

“This place would become a prison to you,” Lune said, softly, regretfully. “Do not condemn yourself to that Hell.”

His face was taut as if he would weep, but death had robbed him of all tears. “I cannot abandon this place, though. If I knew all danger had passed—the Dragon is gone, but the enchantments are still fraying. How can I leave you to face that alone?”

He couldn’t go, and he couldn’t stay. Irrith remembered the moans of the ghosts on All Hallows’ Eve—then thought of other ghosts. The ones they didn’t sweep away each year.