This will work.
It has to work.
Because I will be free, and Farin is going to make sure of that.
I set the vial of prepared antidote—lacking only a single ingredient—upon the counter next to the urn. The queen doesn’t move, refusing to take her hands off it like she’s fearful it will slip off the even counter and come crashing to the floor.
Like she’s clinging onto her son’s life, not the evidence of his death.
Because she won’t move, our arms brush as I reach into the urn and produce a handful of Farin’s ashes. The boyish urge to squirm away from her touch churns through me, but I suppress it and focus on the feel of cool ash as it settles between my fingertips.
I wonder what the queen would think if she knew I preferred the feel of fae ashes to her touch.
She flinches when she sees how much I’ve taken from the urn, but she says nothing.
She’s as desperate as I am for this to work. Perhaps this is the only moment when our desires have been utterly aligned.
When I tilt my palm, half-closed to funnel the ash into the smoking vial, the ashes fall like loose sand.
The smoking substance inside the vial thickens, its purplish hues turning black as night. There’s no need for me to mix it manually because the swirling smoke does that for me, churning the mixture until it’s the consistency of tar.
Though there’s molten moonlight in the concoction, one wouldn’t be able to tell with how the ashes dim its glow. It’s been the limiting factor in producing this antidote. It took me years to skim money off the top of the queen’s allowance she supplies for my and Gunter’s supplies, even longer to find a supplier shady enough to sell it.
Farin’s ashes stain my palm, but when I go to rinse them in the nearby bowl of salt water, the queen grabs my wrist and shakes her head.
“Not until I see it works,” she says, as if there’s a way to remove the ashes from the cracks in my skin and return them to the urn should this fail.
I don’t fight her, though. I’ve long since learned the queen’s peculiarities are not to be questioned. One cannot reason with a person whose reality abides upon a different plane. Within a different realm.
So I do as she says and fight my instincts to wipe my hand on my robes.
“It’s done then?” the queen asks, running her long fingers against the curve of the vial. “There is nothing left to do to it?”
“Only to apply it to the corpse of your choosing,” I say, and, noticing the queen has not brought one to the workroom, add, “I suppose you’ve yet to find one to your liking?”
That’s not entirely surprising, though I find it irritating if that’s the case. I wouldn’t put it past the queen to spend months scouring the entirety of Alondria for a corpse who looks practically identical to her dead son, but I’ll do my best to convince her otherwise. That it’s her son’s spirit she misses, not his form.
The queen clutches the vial to her chest, then peers in the urn. We must’ve used at least a quarter of the ashes. “There are only so many opportunities. We’re limited in our trials,” she murmurs, almost absentmindedly.
It’s then that I commit perhaps the most deceptive act I’ve ever attempted; I place my hand upon the queen’s, slipping it between her fingers and the urn, and give it a gentle squeeze. Tears flood the queen’s colorless eyes, but I feel nothing.
The fae curse prevents me from lying with my tongue, but there is nothing stopping me from lying with my hands.
“I know this will work,” I’m able to say because I believe with all my being it to be true. “If you’d like, I’d be more than happy to help you in picking out a…vessel.” I almost choke on the word. I’m not keen on the fact that a fresh corpse is necessary to complete the reanimation process. It feels like a violation to the previous owner’s body to place another spirit inside of it.
But my identity has been violated for the past nine years, and it’s time to pass that burden on to someone else. At least they won’t be around to understand what their body is being used for.
“It doesn’t concern you?” the queen asks, her gaze dipping into the urn. “The levels of power it might take to bring that which is dead back to life?”
I sigh, and I try to make it sound sympathetic rather than impatient, and I’m not altogether sure that I’m successful. “We’ve been over this, my queen. You’ve already agreed we have all the elements necessary to restore life. A life sacrifice. A celestial anomaly. The ashes of the lost. It’s your heart that doubts, not your reason.”
“Still,” she says, “one can’t help but wonder if it would ensure the process if we were instead to use an already living subject.”
The image of a bulbous tick, gorged on blood, flashes before my mind.
I have to stifle the tickle in my throat, the urge to clear it. I’d be lying if I said my thoughts haven’t already traversed this path many a time as I lay tossing and turning at night. The queen is right. Breathing life into that which has already lost it is a much more complicated process than transferring the essence of her son into a living vessel. In fact, I’ve held onto that option, keeping it tucked away in my pockets in case the queen expressed doubt in my proposal. But I haven’t offered it forthrightly.
I’ve spent the past nine years acting as the vessel of another without my permission. I’ve been called by a name that is not my own, touched with hands that are not meant for me, adored by a heart that has no business claiming my affections. Yet in my case, I am only the vessel in name, in behavior.
To place Farin’s essence into the living vessel of another, to consign another to a fate mirroring mine—I could never forgive myself.
That doesn’t mean I won’t do it.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, my queen,” I say, though I can’t provide a valid reason without lying or delving into the morality of the situation. If the queen is bringing it up, then it’s already passed her elusive standard for right and wrong, and there’s no use in taking that approach.
“But you agree it would be more likely to be effective?”
I have to clench my jaw a bit when I answer, like my body is fighting being complicit in this. “I suppose it would eliminate one of the less stable variables.”
“I see.” The queen strokes the urn absentmindedly before setting it back on the workbench. In its place, she picks up the life-giving vial and caresses it.
When she shoves the vial to my lips and tips it back, it’s only instinct and shock that cause my throat to swallow.
I am no longer.
There is darkness and death and the echo of screams, but it is not my ears that hear them. Not my tongue that tastes the bitterness of death.
Inky waters engulf me, filling my lungs and sticking like tar to my ribs.
