Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

with a dull thwap, and she collapsed.
    Oh God. Ivy!
    “Invader!” Belle shouted from the floor, and Newt shifted the aim of the black ball of death in her hand from me to the fairy, the demon’s white robes furling elegantly.
    “Newt, stop!” I shouted, diving in front of Belle to intercept it. I threw up a protection circle as I lunged, but Newt’s magic tore right through, hitting me in the chest as I took the fall, narrowly missing squishing the small woman I’d been trying to protect.
    I clenched into a ball, a spasm ripping through me as everything cramped. My feet scrabbled against the floor as I was racked with a curse that felt like it was ripping my spine apart. Newt hauled me up, pinning me to the farm table.
    “Don’t hurt Newt!” I gasped as Belle trilled like an Amazon warrior. “Belle, stop!”
    Newt’s black eyes stared into mine, wild and alive. Her color was high, accenting her new, spiky red hair, cut short just at her ears. Her fingers were clenched in my hair as she forced my head back, and her staff was across my neck, pressing me into the table. Clearly something had snapped in her. Had she remembered something, or forgot?
    “Belle, no!” I cried out as the fairy, poised at the top of the hanging rack, gathered herself to jump on Newt.
    “ Immolerate! ” Newt snarled, without even looking back.
    A wave of force pushed from her, and I squinted as the air was pressed from my lungs. Belle was gone, and I panicked. I couldn’t move my legs, and they felt like they were on fire.
    “I have to kill you now,” the crazed demon said, and I choked as she pressed into my throat. “And I was doing so well. If I don’t, they’ll believe that I’m responsible for all of this !”
    “Fine. Great. But don’t hurt my friends,” I gasped, my hands trying to shove her off me. “Please.”
    The muscles of her jaw smoothed, and her shoulders eased. “Don’t hurt your friends?”
    “Please,” I wheezed, my grasping fingers brushing the tips of her hair. If it had been an inch longer, I could have pulled her off balance. “My friends. Belle, she’s the fairy—she’s a great warrior. She protects the pixy children who live here. Jenks needs to be alive to help Ivy. Ivy is trying to live with her guilt. Please don’t ruin her. She’s so beautiful inside.”
    The fervor of her eyes diminishing, Newt eased up, clearly confused, and I took a grateful gasp of air. “And help Bis,” I said, my hands dropping to her staff, trying to push just an inch more of space between us and failing. My arms, too, felt like they were on fire. “If you have to kill me, will you help Bis? Will you do that for me? He deserves better than to be with Ku’Sox the rest of his life. He’s just a baby.”
    “Bis?”
    She was confused, and I forged ahead. “And take Al his chrysalis.” My eyes darted to the window. I couldn’t see it; the angle was wrong. “It’s right there on the sill,” I said, wishing she would turn to look. “He thinks he can’t love anymore, but I know he can. Tell him he was right. He used to have wings. They were like stretched moonlight. Tell him I’m sorry.”
    Newt took a step back, her grip falling from me. “You know what we looked like?”
    Slowly I sat up against the table and rubbed my throat. Ivy was still out. So was Jenks. Belle was standing guard over him, fierce and determined. I didn’t know where Nick was. I didn’t care. “I saw the pools of shallow water, the moss green branches overhead,” I said, voice ragged. “The fog that muffled and soothed the sun.” Newt dropped back another step, her hands loose on her ebony staff, confusion in her eyes. I coughed, sending ribbons of fire to flare and die in my limbs. “The ever-after was a paradise. What happened?”
    “We killed it.”
    I looked up to see Newt lost in a memory.
    “Both the elves and us in our war,” she said, her grip going white on her staff. “Together we killed the ever-after. They could flee. We were left to wallow in our shared war waste. We make it worse with every curse, but we have no choice. To survive, we must set things even more out of balance.”
    Somehow I wasn’t surprised that the elf-demon war was to blame. “I’m sorry.”
    Newt’s focus sharpened, and her long face grew tight again. “I didn’t want to kill you. They made me do it.”
    “I’m not dead quite yet.” Still holding my throat, I slid to the edge of the table and cautiously slipped off.