Give Me (18 page)

“Serve not desire, but enhance delight.

All will be well, all will be right.”

“Stop it!” Someone tried to push the front door open, but a woman sitting in front of it blocked the way. “Stop!”

Cade. He gave a big shove just as the woman moved, and he fell into the room, sprawled on the floor. He jumped to his feet, wild-eyed. He looked horrible, like he’d had no sleep. “Stop the Handover!”

The wyrding woman grasped Lilith’s hand and pushed a silver ring over her gold ring, just as Cade lunged for her and pulled her away.

The woman fainted.

Lilith looked at Cade. “It is done.” Someone else had used her mouth to speak the words, like she was a medium at a séance channeling a spirit.

“Beverly, wake up!” Marion grabbed the wyrding woman’s hand and slapped her face. “Beverly!”

“Moo.” Cade dropped Lilith’s arm and stared at the woman on the floor. “Who is that?”

I feel good!
The voice that had used Lilith’s mouth was in her head.
Great gods, a little fae blood does wonders for a human body.

Beverly. Marion’s sister. The girl in the photograph, years older. That’s who was lying on the floor. She opened her eyes and looked at Lilith. “You have to stop her.”

Cade looked back and forth from Lilith to Beverly.

The voice in Lilith’s head said,
He doesn’t know who to save first, poor boy.

Cade and Marion helped Beverly to a chair. As everyone surrounded them, Lilith backed away. She had to have air. She had to get out of here.

This is what falling apart was. Literally. She’d separated into discrete pieces, each dominated by a separate problem.

Cade.

The wyrding woman.

The voice in her head.

And the ring. The wyrding woman’s silver ring had wound itself around her gold ring. How could that be?

They’re together again. We have to release them—and Lourdes.

There was no one in the garden. Everybody had crammed into the cottage to see. Lilith wasn’t dreaming, and the voice was someone new. Not Diantha.

Elyse. Elyse from her dreams. Lilith couldn’t tell where she ended and Elyse began. She was going to vomit.

Cade’s hands were on her shoulders. He spun her around and looked into her eyes. Who did he see? she wondered.

“Lilith?”

Lilith. That’s right.

You can’t fight them. But we can fight them together.

Fight who? “Help me, Cade.” Lilith could barely breathe. “I have to get out of here.”

He swept her up in his arms, and that made her laugh. This was going to be a lot harder than lifting her over a few broken treads. She hugged his neck and laid her head over his heart. It sounded like it would pound right out of his chest.

“Take me to the tree, Cade. To Igdrasil.”

Yes, that’s it. That’s good.

Lilith ignored Elyse, who snickered.

Thank sun and moon, he’d brought the Aston Martin.
Sun and moon?
That was Elyse’s phraseology. Cade dumped her in the passenger seat. In minutes, he lifted her out again and carried her over to Igdrasil’s trunk.

“Why are you smiling?” he said.

“Because I could walk well enough, but I love being in your arms.”

Cade kissed her.

His kiss was as big as everything about him—his body, his personality, his heart. His desire. She could tell he wanted everything she had, everything she was. He wanted her—but not to keep or to consume or to put on display. Not because their marriage would keep their fathers from killing each other.

Stop!
Elyse said.
Those are not your thoughts, not yours and the boy’s. That’s Diantha and Galen. Hold them off.

But it was too hard. It would be so much easier to let it all go, let Cade or Galen or whoever he was take over. Not lost in him, but held within for safekeeping. He would take her love and give it, and more, back again. He cradled her head and pressed her closer, his kiss more intense. More desperate, more powerful. “Diantha,” he said.

“Galen, my love, my love,” she said.

It felt so right.

“I’ve waited for you so long.” Lilith’s voice. Not Lilith. She quivered with joy, surprise, virginal anticipation, delight.

Stop her, you fool! Don’t let her in. You were supposed to be stronger than a human!

Stronger than a human?

“Wait.” Lilith pushed Cade/Galen away from her. “Just wait a minute.”

Images flashed through her mind: The gold band on her hand—Elyse wyrding the ring to find her and bring her here. A fae king offering a necklace that looked very like her mother’s. And another image. A memory. Not Elyse’s memory but one from Lilith’s own past: She was young, a toddler, with her arms flung tight around a woman’s neck. The woman was running, fleeing to a place so foreign that the fae king would never follow.

Her mother.

Then Elyse’s memories flooded into Lilith’s consciousness. Lilith knew everything Elyse knew: They were alike, human and…fae.

We can deal with that later.

“Diantha,” Cade/Galen said. “Come to me now.”

Give me control,
Elyse said.
I can get them back into the ring.

“Great gods, wait!” Lilith cried. Cade looked alarmed, but she held up her hand. She had to think.

The two strands of the ring sparkled. So beautiful. She looked up at the tree’s branches, spread so serenely. This was a special place in the world. She could die here and the tree would take in her soul. Convey her to some kind of heaven. She could forget the world, leave this body to Diantha. Let her have her love.

No, don’t think like that.

“You’ve kept them prisoners for a thousand years,” Lilith said. “How has that worked out for you?” She had to break Elyse’s hold.

Don’t think for one second you can use the breaking spell on me.

Lilith burst out laughing. “I forgive you.”

“What did I do?” Cade said.

“Not you.”

If you do this, you’ll be sorry.

Elyse’s rage was dangerous. It had lead to so many mistakes. Lilith had once felt rage like that herself, when Greg had told her he was leaving her. In a flash, she knew that she had caused the crack in the window behind Greg that evening. It hadn’t been a bird trying to fly into the bar but the explosive energy from the rage within her.

Her fae side wasn’t something to take lightly.

“I forgive you.”

Please. Don’t.

Poor Elyse. A thousand years of frustration, of self-sacrifice. Lilith turned away from Cade and put her palms against the tree and said a prayer: “Igdrasil, take Elyse and keep her. Save her, and give her peace.”

To Elyse she said for the third time, “I forgive you.”

She inhaled and exhaled and waited. Elyse had left her body, but she wasn’t gone. Lilith felt Elyse’s joy as she greeted someone else—someone who existed in the flow of energy that permeated the tree. Someone with a name: Frona.

“Diantha.” Cade’s lips grazed Lilith’s cheek. It was like watching a movie. Cade’s moan, his hand on her waist, his finger tracing her ear. She looked into his eyes and saw Galen. Galen who knew exactly who she was.

Diantha.

Elyse was gone, but Lilith carried the memories of a thousand years’ battle with Galen and Diantha, fighting against possession, mourning her sister Lourdes.

Lilith looked at Cade/Galen again. Diantha’s longing for him was so strong, it hurt. A thousand years of denial hadn’t worked. Galen and Diantha had been cheated out of life on the eve of their lives together and cheated out of heaven—or hell—too. Yet their love had lasted all those centuries.

It wasn’t fair.

Cade took her hand. “I know everything,” he said. “Everything Galen knows, anyway.”

“I’d give them what they want,” Lilith said. “But I won’t risk hurting you.” She couldn’t ask him to make the sacrifice she contemplated.

“My eyes are wide open. Let’s do it.”

He held her head between his hands and kissed her again. Lilith didn’t know if he was Cade or Galen. Hell, was she still herself? She felt dizzy. Brown flecks appeared in Cade’s green eyes. They turned hazel and then dark brown. Part of her felt so, so sad. Another part filled with so much joy she thought she’d explode.

At last they were alone together. No one was here but the two of them. He loved her. There was delight in his eyes—and undeniable desire. She had wanted him for so long, a thousand years.

At dawn the next day, Brother Sun said hello to Sister Moon. They looked down, both eager to see what would happen next.

The two lovers had returned to Glimmer Cottage the night before. They emerged now, arm in arm, and walked. They walked through the village, through the castle ruins, and ended at Igdrasil.

Diantha said, “We have to give it back. It’s lovely, but it’s wrong.”

“I don’t know how.” Galen held his love’s hands and kissed her forehead. “But we’ll find a way.”

“This.” Diantha held up her hand. The silver and gold ring glimmered in the sunlight. “This is the key.”

“I agree.”

They kissed, maybe for the last time. “I’m afraid,” Diantha said. “Don’t let me go.”

“Give me your hand,” he said.

Galen removed the ring from her finger and laid it on the ground like an offering, in the space between two large roots where he had once contemplated using the glamour dust.

“Help us, Igdrasil.” Galen stepped back beside Diantha.

“We don’t belong here,” she said.

The earth trembled. A sound like thunder boomed against the cliffs and rolled in all directions, over the castle ruins and Tintagos Village and Glimmer Cottage. An explosion of energy knocked them to the ground.

When they looked up, Igdrasil had been cleft down the middle as if hit by lightning.

The waters of the Severn Sea roiled in clashing waves. Dark clouds consolidated over the waters. A monstrous beast in the form of a man emerged from the howling winds and hovered above them.

“At last, I will have my bride.” The sky god stretched his hand toward broken Igdrasil and culled a stream of ghostly energy from the branches and leaves. The energy consolidated into the shape of a woman with long dark hair who grew more substantial with each minute—and more beautiful.

“Lourdes.” Galen whispered.

Lourdes’s spirit looked back over her shoulder. There was vague recognition in her expression but no interest, no happiness—or anger—at seeing Galen.

“You were always too much for any man, Lourdes,” Galen said. “You deserve a god.”

A little smile turned up one corner of Lourdes’s mouth. “I reached that conclusion nine hundred and ninety-five years ago.” She turned to take the sky god’s extended arm.

“Wait!” Galen cried out. “Aeolios, I beg you!”

The sky god was indeed Aeolios, a god humans did best to avoid. But Galen was an exceptionally brave young man who’d learned over the millennium to grab opportunity when it presented itself.

“Aeolios!” Galen called again. “I ask a favor in honor of your…your coming nuptials.”

The god hovered, gazing at Galen the way a mediocre king looks on his lowest subject. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t strike Galen down either.

“A favor, good Aeolios.” Galen looked to Diantha for her consent. “We were wronged by the wyrder Elyse, though she meant to save us. Still, we don’t belong here.”

“You have the power to make things right,” Diantha said. “Return these bodies to their rightful owners.”

The deep voice of the god rumbled, barely distinguishable from far off thunder. One word permeated the air.

“Done.”

The bodies the lovers occupied collapsed.

The oracle’s ring had settled into the charred cleft in Igdrasil’s trunk. Within the gold and silver circle, a sphere of light pulsated. The sphere expanded until it surrounded all of Igdrasil and restored the world tree to robust health.

A stream of the energy shot out from Igdrasil into the bodies on the ground and, like a mystical net, caught Galen’s and Diantha’s souls, extracted them and snaked away, sinking into the earth near Igdrasil’s roots. A hazel tree and a honeysuckle sprouted from the spot. Within minutes, the hazel and honeysuckle were full grown and entwined about each other.

Igdrasil exploded with renewed life, and its leafy branches sheltered Lilith and Cade from the bright light when they awoke in each others’ arms.