Home > Misrule (Valentine #3)(9)

Misrule (Valentine #3)(9)
Author: Jodi McAlister

I float. I drift.

The darkness is entire, close and crushing, and the only thing that is not the darkness is the laughter, and so I cling to it, closing my fingers around the tail of a comet, dragged along by a shooting star. It burns me, my blood turning to liquid metal in my veins, eating me from the inside out. But if I let go, there will be nothing left of me, alone in a vast universe of nothing and no one.

I’m clinging to the star, but I’m somehow looking at it as well, my fingers curled around the rail of a balcony which seems to have grown rather than been built.

The rain sheets down, and the thunder rolls, but it cannot hide the sounds of laughter and music in the distance. The lost prince has returned to them, and the summer sky is celebrating.

I close my eyes. I trace the lines of her face in my mind, the wild spikes of her hair, the way she lifted her chin, the curve of her lips as she snarled the word liar.

I can see her there in front of me as clearly as if she were there. I reach out to her, and –

‘Linford?’

I crash back into my own body. I lose my grip on the tail of the comet but he catches me, his fingers long and strong and sure as they wrap around my right wrist.

My shoulder explodes with pain, and I detonate like a supernova, screaming and screaming and screaming –

‘Linford, Linford, I’ve got you, it’s all right!’

He puts his arms around me, his magical arms, and he holds me together.

‘… Finn?’ I say.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his fingers cool as he trails them over my right shoulder. ‘I forgot you got stabbed.’

‘You’re here,’ I say. ‘You’re here.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, pressing his face into my hair. ‘I’m here.’

We stay like that for a second, or maybe a century.

‘Are we …?’

‘We’re in your dreams,’ he says.

I take a few moments to breathe. The air is cool and clear and crisp, but perfectly still. We’re alone in a dark universe, him and me, suspended in nothingness.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says after a moment. ‘I know you told me never to come into your dreams again.’

I wrap my arms around him tightly in response. My face presses into the crook of his neck and I tangle my fingers in the blackness of his hair and even the constant throbbing burning of my shoulder doesn’t matter, because he’s here with me.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I’m crying, my salty tears leaving faint red tracks on his skin, because I haven’t hurt him enough already. ‘I’m so sorry, Finn.’

He only holds me closer. ‘I love you,’ he says, again and again and again. ‘I love you so much.’

‘I’m coming to get you,’ I say, pulling back a little so I can look him in the eye. ‘I promise, Finn.’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s too dangerous. But I’m going to find your sister, and the other kids they took, and –’

‘Finn,’ I say, pressing my finger to his mouth. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

I swap my finger for my lips before he can protest.

He breaks away from the kiss far too soon. ‘Someone’s coming.’

‘Here?’

‘No, not into your dream – where I am.’

I clutch at his hands. ‘Don’t go.’

‘I don’t know if they know I can do this, and I don’t want them to find out.’ He leans down and kisses me again, hard and hot and way too briefly. ‘But I found you once, Pearl. I can find you again.’

‘I love you,’ I tell him.

When I wake up, my shoulder is completely healed.

 

 

The next day is awful.

The first thing I notice when I wake up is my healed shoulder, but that feeling of surprise and awe and triumph – it really was Finn that found me, it wasn’t just some phantom of my exhausted brain, they can take him to a whole other universe but they still can’t tear us apart – lasts about two seconds, because then I realise what’s woken me up.

‘Where’s Pearl? Where’s Phil?’ I hear Shad ask the cops in the living room. ‘Are they okay?’

I look wildly around the room. My eyes fall on the pile of clothes in the corner, Phil’s and mine from last night – including her mother’s blouse! – crusted with blood.

I nearly reinjure my shoulder with the speed and force I dive at them.

I’ve only just managed to throw them under the bed when the tap comes at my bedroom door.

‘Pearl?’ Shad calls. ‘Pearlie, can I come in?’

The blood-spattered leg of my jeans is still sticking out. I shove it under hurriedly. ‘Yeah,’ I call back.

I’m terrified that the two cops will be behind him – ‘You don’t mind if we search your room, do we? It’s just procedure,’ they’ll say, and they’ll be very polite until about two seconds after they reach under the bed – but it’s just him, my big brother, who would refuse to believe I killed someone even if he literally saw me stabbing them.

‘Oh Pearlie,’ he says softly.

I put my finger to my lips. ‘Phil’s asleep.’

He nods and offers me a hand up. I take it, and he yanks me from the ground directly into a hug, a move that probably would have torn my arm straight off if Finn hadn’t healed me. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks. ‘When Dise called – God, Pearlie.’

‘I’m all right,’ I say.

We go out into the kitchen, where Helena is busy chatting to the cops. Her tone is bright and airy, and a spark of anger ignites in the pit of my stomach.

How dare she talk like that? How dare she ask them if they want milk and sugar in their tea? How dare she, when she – unlike everyone else in this room – knows what I went up against last night?

I only get angrier when, later, after Disey and Ms Rao have arrived and Shad is busy chatting with them and the cops, Helena pulls me aside. ‘What happened?’ she whispers. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I broke apart the Riders,’ I say. ‘But not before they killed Phil’s mother.’

Her brow furrows. ‘Riders did this?’

‘Well, not the bit about throwing her in the creek. Matilda did that. But –’

‘You got Matilda involved?’

Helena looks aghast, and that only makes me angrier. ‘Who else was I supposed to call?’ I hiss. ‘You?’

‘No, but –’

‘No,’ I repeat. ‘That’s exactly what I thought. Heaven forbid I call my own sister-in-law to help me with a problem she basically got me into in the first place.’

‘This is not my fault, Pearl.’

‘Really? You’re the one who sold me out to the Unseelie, Helena. Remember that? Remember telling the eternal enemies of the Seelie that I was the Valentine? Remember how that ended up with Jenny and Kel taking Phil? That’s the whole reason Phil got so furious that the Riders chose her to be their ironheart. Maybe it’s not all your fault, but you started this. Phil’s mum is dead and some of that is on you.’

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