Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [62]
I turned back to the Lady, my knife still in hand. Johnny was gone—I hoped he’d followed Kyle. I hoped he could protect him, because I couldn’t, not anymore.
The Lady brushed at her smoldering skirt, and dozens of tiny gray moths flew away from where the ants had been. Mom moved to her side, holding her knife as well.
“Arianna! Go away!” I put all the power I could into those words. The Lady laughed, as if I were a fool to imagine that my magic could touch her, but again she stepped back. I felt the thread of my magic between us. Was that thread strong enough that I could send her farther away, so far she’d never draw breath again? I’d held back with Father, with Elin. I’d been right to hold back with them—I didn’t dare hold back now. I drew a breath, knowing I didn’t act from anger, only need. “Go away, Arianna. Go away, go away, go away.”
She took a second step back, and a third—and then she stopped. She didn’t look anywhere near to dying. Harder to hurt, harder to heal. Faerie folk were not as easy to kill as humans.
“I am sure you have found this quite entertaining,” the Lady said in her icy voice. “But the game is about to get more interesting. For I begin to find you tedious, Liza, and so I offer you a choice: either let Tara cut out your heart, as I have commanded, or I shall order her to turn the knife on herself instead. I will allow you to decide.”
“Go away, Arianna.” My voice sounded small and strained. My shoulder hurt so much.
The Lady took one more step away. “Do that again and I shall decide for you—and your mother will die more slowly for your disobedience. Don’t you believe you deserve a slow death, Tara, for bringing the humans against us?”
Mom turned her cloudy gaze to Arianna. She nodded and clutched her knife more tightly.
“So you see,” the Lady said, “your mother is eager for death, and I am eager to give it to her. Yet still I offer you a choice. Still I allow you to play this game. What say you?”
I didn’t know how to play games. I knew only that this was deadly serious, and that the Lady would have both our lives if she could. I gauged the distance between Mom and me. If I could somehow render Mom unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to carry out the Lady’s commands. The Lady followed my gaze and raised an eyebrow, and I knew she’d stop me before I could get there—and my injured shoulder would slow me down. I couldn’t get at the Lady with my knife, and I couldn’t get at her with my magic. I had no other weapons.
I couldn’t let her kill Mom the way she’d killed Johnny. If it came down to that, I knew I’d let Mom take my life instead—and what then? What would happen when Mom woke from this nightmare and saw what she’d done?
Before then, the Lady would have the leaf I wore and, with it, Caleb’s life. She’d no doubt find Caleb and Karin’s town, too, and other towns I didn’t know after that. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to play this game after all.
I thought of the offer the Lady had made to Karin. I didn’t want to trade away anyone’s life—I wasn’t sure I had a choice.
“Your decision, Liza.”
I sheathed my knife. “I will give up the leaf I wear, if you will give me your word that you will leave the human towns that remain in this world alone.”
The Lady lifted her head. A breeze blew, and the fireflies in her hair glowed more brightly. “You are an interesting child. Yet you ask much for Kaylen’s life. I will leave this town alone, nothing more.”
My town’s people might die yet if spring didn’t come, and Karin hadn’t stopped at saving only my town. I fought not to look away from the Lady’s bright eyes. Who was I to negotiate with such power?
I was the only one left to do so. I forced my thoughts away from the pain in my shoulder and focused on choosing my words. “You will leave all the human towns, or I will keep the leaf.”
Arianna crushed her wineglass into the mud with her boot. “You try my patience, Liza. I will not harm any human who remains within this world’s few surviving towns. You will