15

a very fairy christmas

Lark

I stand alone in the family room, staring at the Christmas tree Uncle bought and plopped into a bucket of water last week. The scent of pine and dust drifts over me. The limbs, still unadorned, are as bare-boned and exposed as I feel.

After I opened the bathroom door for Uncle Thatch and removed Clarey’s silicone prosthetic to reveal my mechanical skeleture underneath, Uncle saw for himself the extent of my deterioration. With him seated on the tub and me on the sink, I gave him a rundown of everything that I’d been hiding . . . ​at least on the surface. My blood’s magical tendencies, my faking the need for crutches, my short but disastrous venture into arson.

I chickened out before telling him what’s deep inside me . . . ​ all the secrets my heart’s been keeping—the why behind everything I’ve done. What would he think, were I to admit my limerence for the Goblin King? That I was foolish enough to believe he cared for me, too, and led by that foolishness, sold out my sister to appease him?

Uncle listened to me and, without any accusations or chiding, took my good hand in his. He paled when my fingertips slipped through his palm, then led me to my bedroom so I could put on the other ambulatory glove in order to have two working hands.

Now, I wait while he fetches us cocoa—my thoughts and nerves jittery and wild, because it’s about to be his turn to talk. Maybe he thinks the memories of family occasions spent putting up decorations will soften the blow when he finally addresses all my wrongs.

It’s quiet in the house, except for a few thuds and shuffles in the attic where Clarey searches for more ornaments. Two opened boxes already sit on the hearth, marked Christmas decor in black ink. Robotic fingers whirring softly, I dip into one and shove aside tissue paper, uncovering a two-dimensional porcelain cupcake. This ornament is new to me, so I move closer to the floor lamp for a better view. I hold the decoration by the silvery rickrack ribbon made to look like a candle. Eveningside Delights trails across the cupcake’s front as if written in icing. Flipping it to the back, I find an inscription:

To Uncle Thatch, the man who’s sweeter than marzipan. So proud of you for opening your dream bakery.

Nix—Christmas 2020

I swallow hard. That’s the year after they thought I died. Once again, I’m pounded by the evidence that life went on in my absence, seemingly uninterrupted. Uncle says he missed me . . . ​ Clarey says he and Nix did, too. I’ve learned since being back that Uncle opened up shop only six months after I’d disappeared. It’s hard to believe their grief was sincere given how quickly they started a new business and celebrated all the holidays without me.

A chiding reminder pecks at the veneer of righteous indignation I’ve built around my heart—a suppressed memory from the night I was taken. I’d woken up to see Perish kneeling at my bedside—a goblin boy whose eyes glittered, more infinite than puddles of rain beneath a bloodred moon. His dual pupils twinkled, four brilliant stars reflected in the darkness. I was transfixed by his beauty . . . ​intrigued by his monstrosity. It was as if one of my robotic inventions—mismatched parts and a manufactured heart—had somehow come alive, then melded into a complete and splendid new entity. He offered his hand to me, and I took it without any hesitation. My sister slept on, unaware, as I watched in stunned silence when the goblin’s form blinked in and out of focus. The stubby antlers on his head, his pointed ears, his long, flowing hair, and flesh the color of pearls—all of it transformed in a blink. Looking back at me was myself, replicated. He’d become my mirror image. I gaped. “Fear not, Architect,” he whispered, his young voice a bow that strummed the strings of my core, waking a hungry song that had always been there, unsung. “We’re taking you home,” he explained, and I nodded, knowing it was true. Knowing I’d been waiting for him my entire life. Then a transparent orb swallowed me up and shrank me down. Through the filmy case, I saw my sister rouse and, bleary eyed, take in what was happening. A silent scream clogged her throat—I felt it wedge in my own. She started to speak, started to protest, but the goblin boy silenced her with a temporary sleep spell. I felt her again, some minutes later, as I was riding my bubble through tunnels toward a kingdom of magic to stake claim on my true purpose. I couldn’t see what she was seeing, but I knew that the goblin prince had stayed behind, wearing a facade that looked exactly like me. I also knew by the grief slashing Nix’s heart and ripping into my own that he somehow used the likeness to convince her I was dead.

Up until this moment, I forgot how debilitating her pain was. If Nix truly lived with that same agony all the years I was gone, if it never dwindled but only grew, then maybe she had missed me.

But where was the proof of her pining? All I’ve seen in the weeks since my return is how easily she slipped into the exoskeleton of my life, painting that shell with tinctures of herself until it no longer resembled me. Even our bedroom has no signs of my time there left. It’s all her.

“Hot cocoa.” Uncle Thatch’s voice startles me from my pity party. He glances at the ornament in my mechanical hand. My cheeks flush as I carefully hang it on a branch.

“The sad remains of your dream, thanks to me.” I make the cupcake swing in perfect symmetry with the seesaw rocking inside my stomach.

Uncle moves to my left side, handing over a cup with chocolate steam curling from the edges. I hover my nose at the brim, inhaling the sweet, creamy heat.

“You love your hot chocolate,” Uncle says, maddeningly avoiding the subject of his scorched bakery again. “While Nix is all about the coffee.” He sets his own cup on an empty corner of the hearth and digs around in the box. “From the time you were infants, you two had a lot of differences, more than I can count. But there was always something special about the way your minds sparked when they came together.”

He holds up a set of six ornaments, one at a time, so their sheen catches the light. These I recognize. They’re glossy and variegated like marbles, but each has a unique shape, none of them perfectly round. Nix polished the precious stones herself with a rock tumbler she’d received for her eighth birthday. She ran them through multiple times, until there were no more pits or rough patches—always the perfectionist. I made frames for them with brass and silver wires, twisting pretty coils around the shapes and leaving a hook at the top for hanging. We surprised Uncle Thatch with the set one year for Christmas.

As I’m suspending the ornaments on the branches, I get lost in the swirls and marbling of each one: cherry quartz, yellow jade, red jasper, rainbow moonstone, spiderweb turquoise, and opaline pearl. They’re sleek and flawless, though my wire frames have worn scratches and scrapes along their surfaces. Typical, since everything I create seems to erode the beauty it’s meant to support. I’m convinced the only reason Flannie’s prosthetic limb works to enhance her life is because my sister took my invention and made it better.

The inadequacy settles in my chest, carving such a cavernous, dented sensation it makes me struggle for breath for an instant. When I finally inhale, the hollowed-out sensation remains—as if my heart is shrinking inside its cavity. My pulse stutters, growing quieter. I wriggle my mechanical fingertips and stanch a wave of dread. Surely the weird fading will stop at my elbows. Surely my insides won’t be affected . . .

Uncle drags out a trio of gingerbread men next, and a nervous jolt spikes goose bumps along my arms and neck. They remind me of the mural I unleashed, and the niggle of fear winds tighter—an unsettling hunch that these might come to life somehow to clamber in the branches, knocking pine needles loose and making a mess of our Christmas. But as I watch Uncle hang a few in place, I relax. They’re nothing more than the dough ornaments Nix and I made years ago, inanimate and harmless. I can still smell the salty-baked scent that filled the kitchen after we formed them with cookie cutters and Uncle placed them in the oven. Upon their cooling, Nix painted them, while I added glittery buttons for eyes and made hair with metal shavings and a soldering iron.

I help Uncle hang the rest of them, befuddled by how he’s treating me like I’m cherished . . . ​like I’m the same girl he raised—the one he loved and fussed over for years. Even after all I’ve done.

“You know, you two were always better as a team,” he says.

I bite my lip, hard. I couldn’t mark it on a calendar, but there had to be a day, an hour, a minute, when Nix and I forgot how good we were together, when we became opponents instead of allies. It hurts that I stopped believing in us. It hurts even more for Uncle to have to be the one to point it out.

As he winds some silvery garlands around the branches, I step back to survey the small spattering of ornaments in place, focusing again on the cupcake and all it represents. How long do I have to totter in limbo, until he pulls the rug from under my pedestal and accuses me of betraying not only him and my twin, but my parents’ memory?

Uncle winds the final glistening tendril close to the tree’s base and stands up, dusting off his hands. “Should we do the paper angel strings or the snowflakes next?”

The mention of angels bound together by papery webs reminds me again of the mural, but I shake it off. Nix must’ve been inspired by these ornaments to paint her mural.

In the absence of my reply, Uncle squats to drag out the angels, illustrated by Nix then cut and decorated by me, with wings linked together in a papery network. The glitter still glistens white, though the paper underneath has yellowed with age. Silver paper-clip halos catch the light, ready to be hooked around waiting branches.

I groan. “So this is it, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“My penance. I get that you can’t possibly forgive me. No more than I can forgive myself. So I guess it makes sense that we’re just going to let . . . ​whatever this is”—I wave my ambulatory gloves—“happen. Without even trying to figure it out or fight it.”

Sighing, Uncle glances at the wheelchair folded and propped against the far wall, waiting to be donated to charity because I no longer need it. Tonight, he realized I never did.

His face solemn, Uncle places the angels back in the box and picks up our cocoa. He leads me over to sit on the couch. Handing me my drink, he urges me to sip before doing the same. We both set our cups on coasters, then turn to face one another. His big owlish eyes measure me from behind the lenses. I used to think he looked like a handsome frog, that he was a prince in hiding, like in a fairy tale.

That was back when I believed in happy endings, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus. Back before Mystiquiel opened my eyes to the truth about faeries and castles, kings and queens, and goblin scum like Scourge who could only be reasoned with by a key crammed into his metal heart.

Yes, I wronged my sister and the rest of my family. But will I ever get credit for trying to save humanity? Then again, how can I, when I don’t have the courage to admit how I humiliated myself, how I assumed I’d be the one Perish would want by his side as his queen? How, on that assumption, I coaxed him into a plan that almost leveled his world. It hurts enough to think about it; it would slaughter me to say it aloud.

Uncle takes my mechanized hand in his. “There’s nothing to forgive, okay? I don’t care about the bakery. It wasn’t my dream. What I have planned with Juniper, a joint venture with a dear friend, with recipes that we’ve come up with together . . . ​that’s dream-worthy. Enchanted Delights was nothing but an opportunity. A way to stay in contact with my precious niece who’d been taken in the middle of the night. Those first few months, all I could do was worry about you. Then my idea for the bakery came along as a link and a means to have some control. To have a reason for the Goblin King to check in with me, to consult with me, to answer any questions I had. And because I was keeping his subjects from starving, I had an iota of power over him, at least. So no, it wasn’t some big aspiration. It was a means to a connection. And just so you know, Perish ruined the bakery before you even burned it. By closing the veil, he stopped the fruit shipments. All to seal us off, to be sure I had nothing left I could use to contact him again.”

“There was more to it, though,” I interrupt, wrestling with how to tell him that Perish actually did it for me, so I could move on without him. That I went along with it and threw my sister into the fray of faerie-kind in hopes of fixing my mistakes and mending my broken heart.

Uncle plows ahead, unaware of my inner struggle. “Yes. There was something done to you and Nix, before you were even born. And I think it’s behind what’s happening to your hands and arms. But I only know what your mom told me that Halloween when she dropped you both off . . . ​the first and last time I ever saw her.” Uncle takes off his glasses, rubs the lenses clean with the hem of his T-shirt, then slides the frames back into place. “We were rushed that night, but she managed to share a little about her life, being raised in that world. And I wanted so badly to share it with you and Nix, but my tongue was tied. First, by a vow of secrecy to her. She didn’t want you two to know the truth . . . ​ said it would endanger you. Then, Perish silenced me with magic. But now, I’m free to tell you everything. Things like how Imogen was a weaver. It was her gift. It was her curse.”

His voice cracks, and I think of how changed he was, just by that one encounter. I wonder how I could ever have been so careless with my sister’s love. How either of us could’ve taken the other for granted with such ease. Uncle barely knew my mother, and she barely knew him, yet they trusted each other implicitly: Mom with the most treasured parts of herself, and Uncle with his future, sidelining it for her children without hesitation. That’s how sibling love should be. Absolute. Unbreakable. Transformative.

How did Nix and I get it so wrong?

Half listening to his recollections of Mom, I sink into my own, since I knew her in a way he couldn’t. When I became part of Mystiquiel through the Architect link, I tapped into Mom’s spirit . . . ​ her psyche . . . ​and portions of her life imprinted on my mind. Not just hers, but those of every Architect before me. An eternal loop, a mindshare between mortal visionaries who’d been held captive at the mercy of a broken fairyland. It gave me such pride, that my talent was going to put an end to the imprisonment of our kind. Now, instead, Nix will be the heroine in our story.

“Imogen’s given medium was earth and blood.” Uncle’s voice weaves its way back into my thoughts. “Her blood. The puncture marks in her flesh never healed, open and waiting for the leaves, flowers, and roots of Mystiquiel to splice with her veins when new supplies were needed. They only closed after she managed her escape . . . ​she said within minutes they scarred over.”

I shut my eyes at his telling, recalling the intricacies of the magic from my own insights. Her blood merged with chlorophyll and sap to make a concoction that mellowed within her like wine, to be reborn as faerie thread. Upon its exodus from her open wounds, the drizzle of fine strands appeared crimson but dried to bone white, which she would dye with the pigments of nature.

The loireag—tiny beings with the bodies of hummingbirds, spindly human arms hidden under their wings, and the wrinkled faces of old women covered in pebbly warts—were mandated by the king to make Mom’s tools. They took twigs from the branches of white elms, set them in parallel lines, and hummed songs that turned their spittle to strings as tough as fishing line. These they bound around the sticks, providing Mom’s hand looms. She always pretended to be playing a harp as she worked—at least, with as much as she knew of harps from the fairy festivals she’d attended, since she wasn’t allowed any glimpses of human life until it was time for her to choose a mate.

“She wanted you both to have a better future,” Uncle continues as I mentally pad his words with intimate details only I know. “To be with humankind. When they led her out that first Halloween to seduce a mate into Mystiquiel, she already had a plan for escape in mind. But she knew she’d have to have someone on the outside to make it happen. Which meant she had to lure Owen in and conceive his child, even if he’d hate her for it.”

“But he didn’t,” I say.

“No. He was wise enough to understand that she had no choice, trapped in some strange purgatory—dominated as a laborer while simultaneously worshipped as a divinity—in that fairyland where she’d been born, a world where her own daughter would be birthed and groomed to replace her.”

I saw Mom’s handiwork in my mindshare. Tapestries, touched by Talon’s royal magic then imprinted upon the world to bleed into reality—coming alive to form sun, moon, stars, snowy mountains, forested hills, pebbled creeks, and riotous oceans—exactly as she captured in her silky woven settings. Mom spun the infrastructure upon which the lives of the eldritch thrived for over thirty years, and I’ve no doubt Nix is doing the same with her artwork. I’m the only one of our ancestors, in centuries, who’s failed.

I cough at the cracking sensation in my chest, trying to ignore how the odd, vacant feeling seems to be widening, how the emptiness has moved to lurk beneath my ribs—siphoning air from my lungs. My breathing feels off, more labored than I like. I tell myself it’s a reaction to the dust on the boxes. But even if it isn’t, maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe this is my retribution—the same “just desserts” I portioned out to Nix by trapping her in Mystiquiel and slamming the door, in hopes of salvaging my own wounded pride.

Uncle’s movement catches my attention. He returns to the hearth to delve into the ornaments, shoving aside several layers of tissue until he comes to a small box. I arrive at his side and he opens it to reveal a braided circle of red threads. I catch a breath and reach for it tentatively.

“Father’s wedding ring,” I whisper. I recognize it from another memory imprint, of the moment Mom and Dad exchanged vows—deep underground and out of sight of their fey captors. I wonder if Nix has experienced that mindshare moment yet. If she’s witnessed our parents’ great love.

Uncle places it in my synthetic palm. “They gave it to me the night they brought you both to me. A keepsake for you girls, in case the unthinkable happened and I had to tell you the history. I never understood how the ring’s magic worked. Imogen tried to explain. Said she captured a piskie mid-sneeze. But before she could expound, Owen panicked, worried the Goblin King was already close behind and they were losing time. They left to throw the Goblin Court off my scent, allowing me to escape with you girls.”

The memory imprint of Mom’s capture, of Dad’s death, slashes its claws through my gut and I wince.

Uncle squeezes my fingers around the ring so I’m holding it in my metal fist. I ache, because I want to touch it with my skin; I want to feel the only part of my father that survived. I open my palm and hold it up to my nose, nuzzling the threads. I can almost smell him: rain, wool, and human sweat with a mingling of copper.

Out of desperation, I peel off the ambulatory glove from my right hand. Uncle releases a shocked gasp upon seeing my fingers faded down to the middle knuckle. It doesn’t faze me, as I expected the degeneration to have reached this point. At least there’s enough flesh and bone left for me to put the ring into place.

I nudge it onto the fleshy nub, intending just to feel it there for a moment before taking it off again so it wouldn’t be lost once my hand completely vanishes. But the moment the circle reaches the base of my knuckle, the braided threads absorb into my skin until all that’s left is a scar. It has burrowed into me, exactly as it did into my father’s flesh. Does this mean the magic still lives inside?

Uncle gulps and traces the raised line of skin. “What kind of power is in this thing, Lark? Do you know?”

I tilt my chin in thought while pulling my metallic glove back into place. “The threads were made of Mom’s blood, but they were drawn out from a prick in her fingertip—so there was no interference by Mystiquiel’s roots or vines. After she bled the length long enough, she snipped it free, cut it into three strands, and soaked them in a potion made of Dad’s blood with a piskie’s sneeze stirred in. When they dried, she braided them.”

Uncle frowns, not comprehending.

I crinkle my forehead, and Nix’s eyebrow ring feels strangely heavy, as if every piece of jewelry should have the ability to be absorbed like Dad’s ring. “Perish once told me that the biggest difference between humans and the eldritch was the way we gestate our existence. He said that with our kind, everything we experience makes up the essence of our individuality. Even our veins hold traces, forming tributaries that connect our heart to visceral imprints—what we call memories—that are as unique as fingerprints. So our very blood keeps them pulsing and alive; that way, even once we’re gone, those parts of us live on.” I shrug. “That’s how Mystiquiel retains the memories of each Architect, since their blood goes into the making of the foundation. And that was Mom’s advantage. Through those connections, she understood the inner workings of the eldritch. She knew that Dad’s blood would retain his memories, and hers—which actually formed the ring—would do the same. And that with their blood united, Dad would have their entire story inside him, waiting to unwind at the proper moment. All she needed was to hide the ring, and to counteract the mind-scrape that the fey were planning for him. She understood that for every fey curse, there was a cure. That the same piskie dust that would erase his memories when paired with the command “Extirpate” could also restore those memories if the dust were teased out with a sneeze while the command “Replevy” was recited. So she formed a magical ring that would blend into his skin—”

“And harvested her own piskie dust,” Uncle jumps in. “As a means to trump the king himself.” He smiles sadly. “Brilliant.”

Pride washes through me for her ingenuity. If only it had been enough to save her and Dad. But I have their story now, tucked safe inside me. I wriggle my fingers in the glove, relishing the thought of their blood intertwining with my own—all our memories bonding together.

Uncle places a crocheted snowflake on the tree. “So we know the queen read your mom’s aura, before Imogen even realized she was pregnant. And once Talon knew she was having twins, he performed an enchantment . . . ​to mark the Architect so they’d know which of you to keep and which to cast out and make an orphan. Imogen was resolved not to let that happen. And she managed to stop it, for a while.”

I hang a few snowflakes myself—at last understanding Uncle’s insistence on decorating. It’s to help us strategize. He’s always been one who thinks more clearly through work. “But Talon’s enchantment did more than that. We don’t even understand how deep it all goes. But one thing I know . . . ​it bonded my and Nix’s dreams somehow.”

“Right. That, none of us knew.” Uncle steadies another snowflake, readjusting the ribbon hanger around the branch. “We couldn’t have known it yet, not until you were older. Not until you were . . .” He pauses.

“Separated by a magical veil?” I toss the question out, sounding more acerbic than I intend.

“Exactly. I’m guessing that whatever Talon did has joined you two so closely, you can’t live without one another.”

I let his hypothesis sink in, because it would explain why Nix and I could sometimes feel what the other was experiencing, or read one another’s thoughts when our pinkies were linked. There were times it felt almost as if we were the same person in two different bodies.

“Which means what’s happening to you is also happening to your sister. And by getting you back together, side by side and hand in hand, only then will you both be well again.”

I tap my lower lip, metal fingertip clinking against Nix’s metal labret, considering his words. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“It’s got to be why Perish sent for you,” Uncle Thatch continues. “He might’ve burned the bridge, but he’s offered us another way in.” Uncle drags a vial out of his pocket. An inky sludge splashes the glass walls as he shakes it.

“His blood . . . ,” I whisper.

“When I was in the kitchen pouring our cocoa, I squeezed out the sponge. This is our ticket back to Mystiquiel.”

I curl my toes in an effort to hold my hope at bay. Is it possible Perish actually does need me? Wants me back? “What makes you think he sent it? Did the tattoo tell you that?”

“No. It’s disappeared in the house somewhere and we can’t find it. But Clarey told me what it said in his BAHA earlier: ‘Go back to where you came from.’ What could that be but an invitation . . . ​from the king himself? Spoken to you, because your sister and you were conceived there.”

A frown tugs at my lips. “Yeah, I heard it, too. But it was Nix’s voice.”

“Okay, yet Perish must be behind it to have given the tattoo his blood.”

I reach out, my robotic thumb clinking the vial. “Things must be very bad if he’s opening the way for us to come back.” We look at the shimmering royal essence then at one another.

“So you know now that I’m not going to let what’s happening to you or your sister go unchecked. Right?”

I nod.

“I need a few more details. Clarey told me about you bleeding flowers on ground zero. Which means you started changing in early November. But when did the fading start?”

“Thanksgiving. When we went to the graffiti trail,” Clarey answers, entering the room with a dusty, cobwebbed box cradled in his arms. I frown at seeing the words “Last Halloween” in Nix’s handwriting across the side.

“Since when do we trim the Christmas tree with skeleton bones and miniature jack-o’-lanterns?” I ask, suspicious.

Clarey sets the box down and glances at Uncle. “This is the one you said to find, right?”

“Yeah.” Uncle Thatch turns his gaze on me. “It’s all Nix’s keepsakes of you, including some from the last day you were together.”

So “last,” in this case, means final. I step closer, tentative, as Clarey opens the box. The desolation overtaking my chest—the gaping maw suctioning my pulse and gutting my breath—ebbs with each item Clarey fishes out. First come sketches of me made by Nix’s hand, next my phonograph and Mom’s vinyl records, then metal sculptures of a bird’s nest, paper boats . . . ​so many other pieces of our lives together. Clarey unwraps them one by one, reverently, as if this shrine is as much to her as to me.

Lastly, he drags out the costume I wore that final night we went trick-or-treating together. The Halloween I was taken. With just a flick of my finger on the switch, the fairy wings spring to life.

“They still work,” I murmur, more of a question than an observation.

“Nix put a new battery in each year so she could run it in honor of you.” Clarey nods toward the lavender hoodie that’s folded neatly inside some tissue paper. “She took that and the wings on the trolley this past Halloween to sketch how she remembered you. Trying to reboot her retinas.”

When Uncle and Clarey first told me about Nix’s depression causing the hues around her to fade, how only her dreams were Technicolor, I was skeptical. I honestly thought that it was my life that had turned monotoned and bleak—because of my failure in Mystiquiel. That when all hope of me being the Architect Perish needed died, it bled me dry of purpose, and because I was so deeply rooted in the infrastructure of my settings, I drained the entire fey world of color.

I was convinced that’s what affected Nix, via our strange connection.

But now, seeing her keepsakes, knowing about her memorials to me, I think maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was her depression affecting Mystiquiel through me.

Either way, I’m leveled by the homage she kept, and can no longer deny our connection, beyond fey enchantments. The magic of sisterhood. My heart surges, the emptiness in my chest filling with something I’ve forgotten how to feel: needed . . . ​ necessary.

“You okay, kiddo?” Uncle asks. The worried crinkles edging his eyes provoke an unexpected surge of fear for my twin . . . ​and this time, I allow it to flourish, allow my love for her to resurface and rise, letting it choke out the envy I’ve fostered for so long.

“We have to get to her,” I say. Yes, I’ll always be a selfish creature, and maybe in some small way I hope to redeem myself, but even more, Nix should be with family and loved ones; this is where she belongs.

“That’s my girl,” Uncle says, squeezing me in a hug. Then, to Clarey: “Make sure you grab some food for the road and pack anything you think we’ll need. I’ll go gas up the Chevy for our trip to Cannon Beach.”

After Uncle steps out, I dig through what’s left in the bottom of the box, producing a wig of mossy, silver-leaved hair; a set of prosthetic ears; and a headband of horns he fashioned for me that Halloween night three years ago, because I didn’t just want to be a fairy. I wanted to be a fairy goblin queen, partly in honor of Mom’s picture book, but even more because I craved the monstrously beautiful—fragility merged with ferocity. Even back then I felt adrift because my outsides didn’t quite match my insides, and I was determined the costume would right that wrong for at least one night.

Today, seeing all these pieces revives a new emptiness—to have been so close . . . ​to have almost attained it all . . . ​and then lose it forever. Yet I hold the silent ache inside. It’s my shattered dream. No one else needs to know but me and my Goblin King.

“Hey . . . ​would you mind helping me put this stuff on?”

Clarey frowns thoughtfully. “You want a costume? Are you scared for them to see you again?”

More like ashamed. I nibble on Nix’s labret, holding back the answer. “The fey won’t feel threatened by you or Uncle,” I say, placing everything on the couch alongside Clarey’s makeup bag, “but I should be inconspicuous. I hurt them, and they’ll be on the defensive if they see me. They hate me now.” It pains me to admit it aloud because those creatures are beloved to me. Our minds and hearts were connected and inseparable at one time. At that thought, I bite my lip. “You know, I’m going to pack a few of my inventions. And you should think about bringing your harmonica.” When I was one with the world, I saw through my singular eye how Nix used her art and Clarey used his music to weave magical wards against the dangers they encountered. “We’ll need all our creative reserves in case there’s any trouble.”

Clarey nods wordlessly, then proceeds to remove Nix’s facial piercings from my skin. At one time, my nerves would have lit up at his touch. Instead, all I notice is the sensation of having the face jewelry gone. Like a weight being lifted, but also like a door slamming shut, one that will never open again—simultaneously stirring echoes of both relief and sadness inside my chest.

Next, Clarey uses spirit gum adhesive to glue the ear tips in place along with a prosthetic face shell from a vampiress costume he worked on this past Halloween for a costumer who ended up canceling the order; Nix asked to keep it, so it’s already been altered to fit her face. Clarey pats the mask into place, blending pieces to the edges of my mouth so my own lip shape shows, and then follows with the wig and two-inch-long false eyelashes the color of a dove’s feathers.

After handing me a fanged dental veneer and positioning the horns so that the silvery-vined hair hides the headband, he holds up a small mirror so I can view his masterpiece.

The mossy tresses are a perfect match for my pale eyebrows, and with the sharpened cheekbones, snarling teeth, and white lashes, I feel more like me. Even the shimmery gray skin tone offers a sense of identity I’ve been missing.

“When you get there, this stuff is going to become part of you for a while. Are you okay with that?”

“Absolutely,” I don’t hesitate to answer.

“Just want to be sure you’re prepared, because it’s a pretty weird experience.”

Weird for you . . . ​a wild and wonderful wish for me. I stare at the mirror, keeping that sentiment to myself as well.

Back when Clarey first made my fairy goblin accessories, he was just learning how to mold prosthetics, which is why there were only ear tips and horns. He hadn’t yet learned to carve realistic fingers. So he used the remainder of leafy vines from the wig to make hand covers. These he helps arrange over my mechanical appendages as the final touch.

The irony of me bearing the same metal-and-galvanized taint I introduced to Mystiquiel should be cathartic, a penance for the harm I caused those creatures who relied on me to offer a world in which they could live. Still, seeing myself look so much like their mutated selves—organic and synthetic elements twisted into unnatural and ungodly tangles of flesh, foliage, and carbon fiber—causes me to shudder.

“You sure you’re okay with all this?” Clarey asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, surprised by his concern. “I’m glad to see you still care.”

His thick eyebrows furrow. “I never stopped caring, Lark. You’ll always be important to me.”

“So I haven’t completely slayed our friendship.” I assign the label to his feelings, an acknowledgment for both of us that it’s all we’ll ever be, from this day forward. He doesn’t need to feel bad any longer about how things turned out. I accept who has claimed his heart now, just like I hope he’ll be able to do the same for who and what have claimed mine.

He offers a half smile. “Nah. You just mangled it a bit. Nothing a tourniquet and a few surgical sutures won’t fix.”

I snort in appreciation of the gruesome analogy. Then, wearing a sneer that reveals the small gap in my front teeth strategically centered between Clarey’s vampire fangs, I turn again to the mirror and am greeted by the Goblin Queen I almost was. The mate Perish deserved—every bit as frightful and alluring as him. I curse silently, because I’m not over him . . . ​not over any of it. For that reason alone, I’m not sure I’m strong enough to be there again. Yet once I’m done pulling on a blue tulle sequined fairy gown and adding wings that hang to the knees of my jeans underneath, I realize I have no choice but to be strong enough. With that in mind, I add Nix’s army boots in tribute to her.

I owe it to my sister to break our bond once and for all, so at least she can come home and be happy. Once we’re face-to-face, I’ll take her in my arms and we’ll forgive each other everything, and we’ll be close again, just like when we were kids. Maybe I can even convince Perish to release our family from the contract. Maybe he’ll trust me again now that my blood bleeds flowers. Since Nix and I are twins, surely there’s some untapped part inside of me that’s worthy of being the Architect she is.

No matter what happens, this final trek to Mystiquiel will be the end of something monumental. I’m just hoping, if I put everything right, it can be the beginning, too.