Marie Brennan - Midnight Never Come

Her mouth twisted in fury: an open admission of guilt.

The man who had been her lover watched her with grieving eyes. “You bartered away your heart. All the warmth and kindness you could feel. All the love. Hell gained the evil you would wreak, and you gained a mask of ageless, immortal beauty.

“But I knew you without that mask, Suspiria. And I know what you have forgotten.”

He mounted the steps of the dais. Invidiana seemed paralyzed, her black eyes fixed unblinking upon him.

“You gave your heart years before you sold it to the devil,” Francis said. “You gave it to me. And so I return it to you.”

The ghost of her love bent and kissed her, as Lune had kissed Deven moments before.

A scream echoed through the Onyx Hall, a sound of pure despair. The flawless, aching beauty of Invidiana shriveled and decayed, folding in upon itself; the woman herself shrank, losing her imposing height, until what sat upon the throne seemed like a girl, not yet at her full growth, sitting upon a chair too large for her. But no girl would ever have looked so old.

Deven flinched in revulsion from the ancient, haggard thing Invidiana had become.

As the pact with Hell snapped, as the Queen of the Onyx Court dwindled, so, too, did the ghost of Francis Merriman fade. He grew fainter and fainter, and his last words whispered through the chamber.

“I will wait for you, Suspiria. I will never leave you.”

The last wisp of him disappeared from view.

“-Please — do not leave me.”

Deven and Lune were left, the only two still standing, before the throne of the Onyx Hall.

A sound pierced the air, faint but passionate: part snarl, part shriek. The creature before them should not have been able to move, but she shifted forward, rising to her feet, and she had not lost the force of her presence; hatred beat outward like heat from a forge. Her voice was a shredded remnant of itself, grinding out the accusation. “You brought this upon me!”

Lune opened her mouth, her eyes full of urgency. But Deven stepped forward, interposing himself between his lady and the maddened shell of the Queen. He recognized what he saw in her eyes. Fury, yes, but fury to cover what lay beneath: a bottomless well of pain. She had her heart again; with it must have come all the emotions she had lost. Including remorse, for what she had done to the man she loved.

He had to say it now, before it was too late; the chance would not come again.

“Suspiria.” It was important he use that name. The pieces had fallen together in the depths of his mind; he spoke from instinct. “-Suspiria — I know why you are still cursed. ”

The withered hag twitched at his words.

“You had so much of it right,” he said. Lune came forward a step, moving to stand at his side. “You atoned for your error. The Onyx Hall was a creation worthy of legend — a place for fae to live among mortals in safety, a place where the two could come together. You had so much of it right. But you did not understand.

“The chieftain’s son loved you. But you disdained mortality, did you not? You could not bear to join yourself to it. And so you cast him aside, cast his love aside, as a thing without value, for what can it be worth, when it dies so soon? But the ages you endured after that must have taught you something, as they were intended to do; else you would not have made this great hall. And you would not have loved Francis Merriman.”

He could feel the presence still. The ghost was gone, but Francis was not. The man had said it himself. He would never leave her. The love he felt joined them still.

And he had restored her ability to love.

“You did everything right,” Deven said. “Your mistake came when you did not trust it. Faced with a future alongside the man you loved — suffering a sort of mortality, yes, aging while you watched him stay eternally young — you let your fear, your disdain, triumph again. You cast aside his love, and the love you felt for him. You failed to understand its worth.”

A heart, traded for what she had lost. Youth. Beauty. Immortality. The answer had been in her hands, had she but accepted it.

Do not leave me, Francis had said.

“You face that decision again,” Deven whispered. “Your true love waits for you. Honor that love as it deserves. Do not cast it aside a third time.” This world operated by certain rules he did not have to explain to her or Lune. What was done a third time, was done forever.

For the first time since she bargained with Invidiana, Lune spoke. “Once we love, we cannot revoke it,” she said. “We can only glory in what it brings — pain as well as joy, grief as well as hope. He is as much a fae creature now as a mortal. Where you will go, I do not know. But you can go with him.”

Suspiria lifted her wasted face, lowering the clawlike hands that had risen to hide it. Only after a moment did Deven realize she was crying, the tears running down the deep gullies of her wrinkles, almost hidden from sight.

Invidiana had been evil. Suspiria was not. His heart gave a sharp ache, and a moment later, he felt Lune’s hand slip into his own.

The change happened too subtly to watch. Without him ever seeing how, the wrinkles grew shallower, the liver spots began to fade. As age had shriveled her a moment ago, now it acted in reverse, all the years lifting away, revealing the face of the woman Francis had loved.

She had the pale skin, the inky hair, the black eyes and red lips. But what had been unnerving in its perfection was now mere faerie beauty: a step sideways from mortality, enough to take the breath away, but bearable. And right.

A last, a crystalline tear hovered at the edge of her lashes, then fell.

“Thank you,” Suspiria whispered.

Then, like Francis Merriman, she faded from view, and when the throne was empty Deven knew they were both gone forever.

For a moment they stood silently in the presence chamber, with the corpse of Achilles, the huddled forms of Eurydice and the two elf knights, while Lune absorbed what she had just seen and done.

Then a pillar cracked and split in two, and Lune realized the thunder had not stopped. It had drawn nearer.

And Suspiria was gone.

Deven saw the sudden panic in her face. “What is it?”

“The Hunt,” she said, unnecessarily. “I was to ask Suspiria — the Stone — they think the kings might relent, if she relinquished her sovereignty — but what will happen, now that she is gone?”

He took off before she even finished speaking, flying the length of the presence chamber at a dead run, heading directly for the throne. No, not directly; he went to one side of it, and laid hold of the edge of the great silver arch. “Help me!”

“With what ?” She came forward regardless. “The throne does not matter; we have to find the London Stone—”

“’Tis here!” Tendons ridged the backs of his hands as he dragged ineffectually at the throne. “A hidden chamber — I saw it before—”

Lune stood frozen for only a moment; then she threw herself forward and began to pull at the other side of the seat.

It moved reluctantly, protecting its treasure. “Help us!” Lune snapped, and whether out of reflexive obedience or a simple desire not to die at the hands of the Hunt, first Sir Cerenel and then Eurydice picked themselves up and came to lend their aid. Together the four of them forced it away from the wall, until there was a gap just wide enough for Lune and Deven to slip through.

The chamber beyond was no more than an alcove, scarcely large enough for the two of them and the stone that projected from the ceiling. A sword was buried halfway to the hilt in the pitted surface of the limestone, its grip just where an extremely tall woman’s hand might reach.