DADDY ISSUES

I lurched forward, my mind spinning with horror. I watched Vivian get brighter and brighter as the Dark Queen dimmed. "Wait, you-"

Jack grabbed my arm, and I whipped around, furiously trying to pull it away. "What are you doing? I need to stop her!"

I'd expected Jack's big blue eyes to be manic and evil, but he looked...calm. "Evie, this has to happen. Vivian'll do it so you don't have to."

"But it's wrong!" I jerked my arm free, only to find Reth on my other side, blocking my way. I could knock him over, the state he was in. And then I could stop Vivian, and-

"It might be wrong," Jack said, "but it's the right wrong thing to do."

Angry tears stung my eyes. I wanted to turn around and see what was happening, but I didn't want to see it if I couldn't stop it. "What about Vivian? What will this do to her? Was this her idea?" I wasn't sure I could stop her again. She'd always been stronger than me, and this time she'd be expecting an attack. And the idea of putting her into another coma killed me. Then again, I couldn't let her hurt my friends.

Jack shook his head. "No, Reth agreed that Viv and I should follow you, and if you couldn't do what needed to be done, we'd help you."

"You'd help me?"

"Yes." He put a hand on my shoulder. "We'd help you, like you've helped us."

"But..."

"It was an impossible decision for you, Evie. We made it so that you can concentrate on the things you need to do. In case you haven't noticed, your delightful sister and I are a bit more ruthless than you." He grinned, that impish, dimpled grin I knew better than I wanted to.

"But you don't know Vivian." I was scared down to my toes not only for what she could do but also at the thought of losing her to the monster she had been. "You have no idea what she was like before I stopped her."

A soft thud sounded behind us, and then I heard Vivian's voice, altered, both higher and lower than it had been before. "Whew! Don't you all look so pretty."

When I saw Vivian for the first time back when she attacked the Center, she'd looked like a sun goddess thrown down to earth. I turned to find her not quite so bright that I couldn't make out her features, but it would definitely have been more comfortable to look at her through a pair of sunglasses. I could barely see the thin hospital gown over her body. If she'd gotten almost as much soul from one faerie as she had from the hundreds of paranormals she'd drained, I hated to think what this taste would do to her. At her feet was the dim and infinitely lessened shell of the Dark Queen, now only a body. I jerked my eyes upward to avoid looking at her; it was too wrong to see her ended. She had been cruel and evil, but destroying her was taking something from the universe we had no right to.

"Vivian?"

She giggled, not looking at me but at the Light Queen. "That was a rush, Ev."

"Why did you do it? I thought you were different. I thought you'd found your own soul."

She had her hand half raised toward the Light Queen, who was kneeling next to the body of her sister. Vivian looked up slowly, as though she couldn't tear herself from staring at the Light Queen's soul. "Hmmm?"

"You said you weren't going to drain anyone else, because you had your own soul now. Because I love you, and you love me. What about your soul?" I wasn't mad or scared anymore, just so very, very sad. The faeries and their stupid plots had finally succeeded in destroying Vivian's soul once and for all.

"I-Oh, Evie." She jumped off the gleaming silver throne platform and walked to me, putting her hands on both my shoulders, her fingers burning my skin. "I'm sorry. I did this because of my soul. Because of you. I didn't want you to cross that line. The line and I are best friends by now, but you don't need to go there. You made the hard choice to free the souls I had taken, so I made the choice to take one last one. I will not let you spend your own soul to open a gate for these idiot faeries."

"You aren't going to...you know, go crazy?"

She laughed, and the sound was a little unhinged. "Oh, I'm there, stupid. But I'm not going to go crazier. I'm here to help."

I nodded numbly. "Do you think-Should you-Do you want to-" I looked helplessly toward the Light Queen. She bent and kissed the Dark Queen's cold forehead, then stood.

"I guess I can do her, too," Vivian said, but her voice was hesitant. "It's just...this is a lot of soul, Evie. Like, whoa, a lot. I shouldn't. I don't want to give this one up already, and I don't know if I can figure out the gate on my own. You're the only one who's ever actually used the souls' energy to make something. But I don't want...We need to hurry. Hurry, please?" Her confidence was quickly shifting, and I saw her hands curl into fists at her side-a gesture I knew well from when I was overwhelmed with wanting to taste souls, to make them mine.

"This is your task," the Light Queen said. "The two of you together, sisters. It is a lovely parallel, a healing balance."

She held both arms out to me, and I swallowed hard. "I don't want to."

"I know, child. But I am asking you to. You will need me to accomplish this."

"Are you sure?"

"I am."

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, putting my hand on her chest, hating my stupid, empty shell of a body for being able to take her out of eternity. I steeled myself to ask the channel to open, but instead of having to pull it out, her soul rushed forward, a torrent of light and heat and time and agelessness and regret and hope, swirling and filling me until I was full from my toes to my head, and then filling me even more, not stopping, more and more warmth and energy and light and burning, and I never wanted it to end, I wanted to be connected to this, to feel this forever, just like I knew the soul could. I could feel myself stretching, changing, becoming more than I had been before, being taken out of the tiny stream flow of my time and thrust into the tidal oceans of immortality.

"Thank you," she whispered, snapping me back to reality as the last of her soul drained out into me and her eyes changed from the color of life to plain brown, then went dim and cold forever.

"Hey look! We match!"

I turned to Vivian, feeling fast and slow and warm and cold, like everything that had ever happened and ever would happen was happening right now, like nothing mattered and everything mattered and I was at the center of it all-

"You are totally tripping, aren't you?" Vivian asked.

I shook my head, looking down at my bare arms that glowed brilliant blue-white. A hand settled on my arm, and though the touch registered I didn't feel it the same way I knew I should, that I knew I had. It was simply there. I looked up at Reth, seeing straight through to his quickly fading soul and knowing him in a way I never could have. Surpassing him. Finally understanding what he wanted us to be, together.

"Say your name." His eyes were serious and oddly sad. Why was he sad? I was eternal now. The girl I'd been, capricious and angry and scared, tossed and turned on the currents and whims of time, that girl was gone. I stood straighter, flexing my fingers, luxuriating in the power that infused my whole body, burning away what had been before, purifying me.

"Say your name," Reth said again, his voice insistent.

I narrowed my eyes, then formed the word; it felt foreign and strange on my tongue, the lip movements forced. "Evie."

"No, your real name."

"Neamh." I gasped and closed my eyes, breathing deep to hold on to the flare of my own soul, lost amid the power of the Light Queen's. "Oh, gosh, Neamh, Neamh, Neamh. Me." And Lend. The image of him popped up in my brain, the memory of his touch, his laugh, the way he made me feel. I clung to it, our relationship as much a part of me as my own soul.

"You okay, baby sister?" Vivian asked, putting her arm around me. It didn't burn anymore-it felt the same as my skin. "I should have figured it'd affect you more since you've never built up a tolerance. They can take over pretty fast."

"I'm good. I think. I know who I am, at least." It hadn't stopped the other feelings, but I could separate from them. I could feel the weight of the faeries' stares on me, and I wondered how they felt about what I'd done. I dared to look out at them, and was met with equal parts sadness and peace in their faces. I hoped we'd be able to pull this off; otherwise I doubted they'd be so chill with the fact that we'd ended the lives of their queens. "Okay. We need to get to the pond and make this bleeping gate." Not only were we almost out of time, but I wasn't sure how long I could keep the Light Queen's soul from overwhelming mine and making these changes permanent.

Vivian leaned close, so close I could see her real eyes underneath the brilliant light of the soul inside her. "We could maybe keep them? Just you and me, forever?"

"Vivian," I said, despairing.

"Kidding! Totally kidding." I sincerely doubted it, but she took my hand. "Let's make a gate!"

Reth took my other hand, and I moved his hand into the crook of my elbow, letting him put all his weight on me. Jack took Vivian's, then immediately let it go with a hiss. "Ouch!" he said, shaking his burned hand. "I'll go get all the people left in the meadow to Lend's house and then meet you. Don't start until I'm there, though. If this place implodes or something while I'm in it, I'll be very upset." He disappeared, and the entire clearing around us lit up as door after door was opened, and all the faeries left behind their carefully crafted world.

"Evelyn," a voice that felt familiar said. I turned to see a faerie whose soul was ragged and dim, tarnished among the pristine brilliance of the others. Worse even than Reth's. I didn't know that soul. "I can't go back unless you tell me I can."

I frowned, and then I realized how I knew the voice. My faerie father. The one I'd banished to the Faerie Realms forever. The part of me that held onto my soul had an instant and harsh desire to leave him here. He'd be alone and lost until the end of time-the same way he left my mother and then me. He deserved it.

But I was better than he was. More proof that he had no claim to the soul I'd made in spite of him. "Melinthros, you may enter the mortal realms for the sole purpose of leaving through the gate." He stood straighter, but I hadn't finished yet. "And while there you absolutely cannot have any carbonation whatsoever."

Okay, maybe I was a bit petty after all. But the way his shoulders slumped back down as he stumbled off was highly gratifying.

"That was good of you, Evelyn," Reth said. I shrugged and, for the last time ever, we walked through a door and into the darkness, my own light filling my vision so not even the Faerie Paths could darken it.