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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A va awoke to chaos.

The mist surrounding the clearing was churning like a storm-tossed sea, tendrils of it lashing outward as if trying to escape something beyond its boundaries. The moss beneath her no longer glowed with gentle blue phosphorescence, but pulsed angrily.

Her body ached, but not with pain. With power . It hummed beneath her skin, through her veins. She remembered everything. The revelation. The truth. The choice.

In the end, she had chosen to remain herself.

To remain Ava Cole, despite knowing what she knew. Despite the terrible truth that had threatened to break her.

“Ava!” Bitty's high, panicked voice cut through her thoughts. The tiny fae ran over to her, wings buzzing frantically. “Ava, are you okay? What happened? What did you do?”

Ava pushed herself up on her elbows, disoriented, trying to reconcile the world around her with what she now understood.

Bitty wasn't real. Not in the way Ava had thought.

Not in the way that “mattered.” Yet…there she was, concern etched on her tiny face, as real as anything Ava could see or touch .

“I’m fine, Bit,” she managed, her voice hoarse as if she'd been screaming. Maybe she had been.

Lysander was there too, crouched beside her, his amber eyes wide with alarm. Another fiction. Another dream. But his hand on her shoulder felt solid. Warm. “The mist is agitated.” He glanced nervously at the swirling boundary around them. “Something's coming. I think we all know who.”

“Yeah. Three guesses.” Ava sat up fully, taking stock of herself.

The changes weren't just internal. Her hair had darkened to a deep, blue-black. The tattoos on her arm were now complete. Solidified. She wondered what her eyes looked like. It didn’t really matter, she supposed.

She wasn’t quite human anymore, not quite Ava Cole—she probably shouldn’t look it.

Puck was still sitting cross-legged at the edge of the clearing, munching on what appeared to be popcorn from a bucket that definitely hadn't been there before. His expression was caught somewhere between delight and terror.

“You're in trouuuuble ,” he sang out when he caught her looking at him. “Daddy’s on his way. And he's pissed.”

Before Ava could respond, the churning mist parted like a curtain, revealing Valroy. The Unseelie King strode into the clearing, his massive bat wings extended behind him, his blue eyes blazing with cold fire. The air around him crackled with power, with barely contained rage.

And he wasn't alone. Behind him came Nos and Ibin, both looking badly shaken. Nos had a black eye forming, and Ibin's dress was torn at the sleeve. They had clearly been handled roughly.

“What have you done, you idiot girl?” Valroy's voice was quiet, but it carried the promise of violence like thunder before a storm. “Do you have any idea what you've set in motion?”

Ava climbed to her feet, swaying slightly but finding her balance.

The power inside her was disorienting, but not unpleasant.

Different. Vast. But still hers to control.

They were still in control. “I did what you all told me to do. I accepted what I am.” She brushed herself off. “I made my choice.”

“A choice you had no right to make without consultation!” Valroy took another step into the clearing, the grass withering beneath his feet. “You are not the only one affected by this decision. You have endangered two entire realms!”

Ava laughed. She couldn't help it. The sound bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her, slightly manic but genuine. “That's rich, coming from you.”

Valroy's eyes narrowed dangerously. With a gesture almost too fast to follow, he seized Nos by the throat, dragging him forward.

"Let me make something perfectly clear to you, Weaver,” he hissed.

"While most of what you've encountered may be figments of some shattered collective imagination, this one was born of reality before being trapped in the Web. Therefore, he is still mine to destroy.”

Nos struggled against Valroy's grip, his hands clawing ineffectually at the king's arm. Ibin cried out, moving forward. Valroy struck out with his wing, knocking Ibin back.

“I may not be able to harm you directly, Weaver. I may not even be able to destroy him, given that his body is an amalgam of your power,” Valroy continued, “but I can absolutely make him suffer in a way that will prove to be quite real.

So unless you want to see just how creative I can be with punishment, you will undo what you've done and return to the path I set before you.”

Bitty gasped, fluttering backward in confusion. “What's he talking about, Ava? Figments of imagination? What does that mean?”

Lysander looked equally baffled, his tail lashing agitatedly behind him. “Ava? What's going on?”

Ava's laughter faded, replaced by something colder, harder. She looked at Bitty, at Lysander, at the confusion on their faces. Then at Nos and Ibin, at the fear in their eyes. And finally at Valroy, at the cruel calculation in his gaze.

“They don't know,” she said quietly. “You never told them what they are. Not even Lysander, and you played along with—you pretended he was part of your court.”

“We all did. For you. To aid in this farce.” Valroy sneered. “To keep ourselves safe from the madness at our door, yes, we played along.”

“Madness? Oh, fuck you, buddy. I’m not crazy. They aren’t—” Growling, she forced herself to stay calm. Well, as much as she could, at any rate. “You told Lysander that the Web was a dream, and you didn’t tell him the rest of it?”

“He did not need to know,” Valroy replied dismissively. “He served a very particular purpose, and I wielded him to carry it out.”

“And what purpose was that?” Ava took a step toward him, feeling the power inside her respond to her anger, wanting to lash out. “To keep me on track? To guide me toward becoming this? Toward becoming a weapon for either you or Serrik to wield?”

She turned to Bitty, Lysander, and Ibin, softening her voice.

“I—” She didn’t know how to break it to them.

But it was worse not to tell them. To leave them in the dark like she had been.

“I’m so sorry, but you’re—you’re dreams. Dreams, given form.

Created by Serrik, or…me, or…Nos, when we were imprisoned. ”

“That's not…” Bitty shook her head frantically. “That can't be true. I have memories. A life. I was a handmaiden to Queen Abigail before I was deemed defective?—”

“False memories,” Ava said gently. “I remember now when Abigail met you in the clearing. She didn’t seem to know who you were. I…made you to be my friend. To help me adjust to the Web. I was lonely.”

“No. No.” Lysander's voice was hollow with disbelief. “I have served King Valroy for years. That's not possible. I'm real. I have to be real!”

Valroy snorted in laughter. “Oh, this is quite exquisite in its brutality. I do appreciate how painful this is for them.”

Ava ignored the bastard and stepped up to Lysander.

“For a second, you were the most confusing. You were the hardest to explain. You knew things I seemingly couldn’t know, right?

Like your way around this place. Leading me where I needed to go.

But at the same point in time—I wasn’t experiencing any changes as the Web, was I?

You were just my imaginary friend. Knowing things that I didn’t want to know.

I was displacing it all onto you, because I… couldn’t handle it.”

“It's why you've always felt drawn to help me,” Ava continued, the pieces falling into place as she said them.

“It's why you've been willing to defy Valroy to support me.

It's not just because you're attracted to me or because you're a good person.

It's because deep down, on some level you can't articulate, you know your purpose is to aid me. Because that's what you were created for. Think about this. Why would that guy have a Master of Revelries? Does he look like the kind of motherfucker to have a Master of Revelries? I didn’t know that when I’d first met him.”

Lysander staggered back as if she'd struck him, his amber eyes wide with horror. Bitty made a small, wounded sound like a bird with a broken wing.

“And—” Ibin stammered. “But what about?—”

“I don’t know.” Ava smiled weakly at the tall, beautiful Seelie. “You’re not one of mine.”

“May we focus?” Valroy shook Nos once for emphasis. “As much as I enjoy watching them all wallow in their newfound horror.”

Ava's gaze hardened. She reached out, feeling for the power that now lived inside her. It responded eagerly, flowing through her like electricity through a conductor. The tattoos on her arms glowed with an inner light. “I’ve made a lot of decisions in the past hour,” she said, her voice taking on a resonance it hadn't had before. “But I still have one more to make.”

“And what might that be?” Valroy asked, wariness creeping into his tone.

“Who to side with. You or Serrik.” Ava smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “The destroyer who wants to raze Earth to the ground, or the prisoner who wants to annihilate the fae. The king or the exile. ”

She took another step forward, power crackling around her fingers like green lightning.

The Web was responding to her emotions, to her will.

“But I think I've found a third option.” She grinned.

Valroy's eyes widened as understanding dawned. “No?—”

“Since neither of you children can play nice, I'm going to let you duke it out,” Ava continued, the power building around her, within her.

“No more hiding behind me. No more using me as your personal nuclear warhead.

You want to kill each other so badly? Be my fucking guest. But you'll have to do it face to face.”

“You don't understand what you're trying to do,” Valroy warned, releasing Nos entirely now, his full attention on Ava. “The Web isn't meant to enter Tir n'Aill. The barriers between our realms exist for a reason!”