Page 31 of The Iron Vow

She was about to answer when a faint jingling sound reached her ears, making her jerk up. The ice cream truck didn’t stop here very often, but she’d know its cheerful melody anywhere. And suddenly, she wanted an ice cream more than anything in the world. “Can I get a Creamsicle?” she asked her daddy, who laughed.

“Ice cream? Now? You’re going to have cake tonight, you know.”

“Please?” the little girl begged. “I won’t spoil my dinner. Please, Daddy?”

He chuckled again, but then a strange look crossed his face. Straightening, he gazed slowly around the pond, as if he could hear something the little girl couldn’t.

The jingles were already beginning to draw away. Impatient, the little girl tugged on his sleeve. “Daddy?”

He shook himself. “Oh... Meghan.” His voice was strange, his eyes still on the pond in front of them. But he dug into his pocket, pulled out a green bill, and handed it to her. “Here you go,” he murmured without looking down. “Better hurry or you’ll miss the truck.”

For a moment, she almost didn’t go. Why was he acting weird all of a sudden? But then, she remembered ice cream, and how badly she wanted it right then. She snatched the bill from his fingers and hurried away, across the park, toward the tantalizing jingle coming from the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.

But when she reached the parking lot, there was no truck. There were no vehicles at all except their own yellow station wagon, sitting alone in the space. Confused, the little girl gazed around, wondering why she was there. There was a dollar in her hand that her daddy had given her, for...something. Where was he?

Suddenly frightened, she turned and ran back toward the pond.

As she sprinted up the hill, she heard someone singing.

The rest of the story is a little scary, and some of the details are not pleasant, so I won’t go into them now. But that day, the little girl’s father disappeared from her life for a while. For a long time, the little girl and her mommy were alone. And the girl was afraid. Because now she knew, even if it was just subconsciously, that something was out there. Something she couldn’t understand. Something that was coming for her.

Eventually, the little girl got a new family—a new father—and a few years after that, a new brother. And though she loved her new family very much, she never gave up hope that she would find her real daddy again, someday. She kept hoping that he would come home.

And when she discovered the other world, suddenly she understood what might have happened, all those years ago at the pond. And she held out hope that, somewhere in the strange, frightening world, her father was there. Waiting for her.

It took a long time, and the girl went through many struggles, but because she never lost hope, eventually, she found her father again.

Hope is a powerful thing. It keeps us from giving in to despair. It keeps us from giving up. The fey might tell you that hoping for what cannot be is foolish, but in the Nevernever, even when the situation might seem desperate or impossible, holding on to hope can make the difference between lying down in defeat and finding the strength to carry on. Sometimes, you won’t have strength or will or magic when the Nevernever throws its worst at you.

Sometimes, hope will be all you have to rely on...and it will have to be enough.

12

THE DREAMS OF THE KING

For a few heartbeats after Gilleas spoke, there was only silence.

“No,” Varyn said at last. His voice trembled, and he staggered back from Gilleas. “No, that...that can’t be true. I’ve lived in Evenfall my whole life. I remember...everything. What you’re implying...” He trailed off, looking desperately at Other Nyx, as if her denial would somehow make it right. “We’re real,” he insisted, still staring hard at the other assassin. “Gilleas is wrong. He has to be wrong.”

Slowly, Other Nyx shook her head. “It...it makes sense,” she whispered, and her eyes strayed to her twin, who met her gaze silently. “I have wondered for a long time now...how Evenfall could have survived. How we could still be here. Even with the glamour from the king’s Nightmares, it seemed...improbable. But even before, that memory gap has always troubled me. And now, I have proof staring me in the face. Evenfalldidn’tsurvive. The Lady won, and I...never made it home.” She gazed at Varyn, her expression softening with grief and pain. “None of us did.”

I dragged in a shaky breath. This whole situation was so surreal; I was having trouble making sense of it all. But if what I was hearing was true, the entire realm of Evenfall, and all the fey we had met so far, were nothing but shadow and memory. My insides roiled; I felt faintly sick. I couldn’t even imagine what Nyx and the Evenfey were going through, the sense that their whole world, their entire existence, was a lie. Nothing made sense. How were we even here? Wewerereal. “Are you sure about this, Grimalkin?” I asked the cait sith. My voice came out shaky, and I swallowed hard. “We don’t have any real evidence of what Evenfall could be—this is a theory.”

“A theory, yes.” Grimalkin’s tone was unapologetic. “But a true one. Gilleas knows, as do I.”

“He is right.” The thin Evenfaery rose slowly, painfully, and turned to his desk. One claw touched an open book on the corner almost fearfully. “For years, I wondered why I could not find the way to open Evenfall, to end this world of nightmares. My rituals and calculations...they should have worked.” The talons pulled the book off the desk, flipping through the pages with feverish intensity. “And yet, no matter what I tried, I was met with failure after failure.”

He slammed the book on the desk, splayed claws holding it open to a certain page. “I kept trying,” he continued. “I knew there had to be a way. Twice, I almost succeeded. There were two instances that should have worked. I remember them clearly. The first, I traveled to the place I believed was the location of the actual seal. Where, on the other side, the Lady and her circle had performed the ritual that would damn us all.

“It was a deadly place,” Gilleas went on, “swarming with fey who had been turned into Nightmares or had gone mad from the lack of glamour. They seemed attracted to one spot, one small circle of land that had nothing on it. Could they somehow sense the real world on the other side? I was willing to bet that this was the place where, if I could just put a tiny crack in the seal, it would break. Or at least, glamour would start to flow into Evenfall again. But getting to that place was extremely difficult. I spent a long time raising an army, gathering those brave or skilled or desperate enough to make the journey with me. I assured them it would work. I all but promised them I would break the seal and return Evenfall to what it used to be. They believed me, or they wanted so much to believe me that they risked their existence for the chance. When I thought I had the numbers, we charged the site of the seal. The Nightmares came at us, so many of them. I lost...so many.” Gilleas covered his face with a talon. “But we struggled and clawed and fought our way to that one spot, and those who remained continued to fight while I performed the ritual.

“I thought it would work.” With a sharp crackle, Gilleas’s talons crumpled the pages beneath it, before he hurled the book to the floor. “I poured everything I could into that spell. Everything I had learned and researched and struggled with since the day I found the library. I knew it was correct. I knew it would work...and yet, it didn’t. The fey who had made the journey, who had agreed to protect and defend me, who sacrificed themselves to give me the chance to open Evenfall...they were dying around me. And I could not make it work. Not even by the smallest of cracks. No matter what I tried, I could not affect the seal.

“In the end, I was forced to flee,” Gilleas finished, and from the shakiness of his voice, I suspected he was on the verge of breaking down. “I left them all,” he whispered. “When my entire force was slaughtered to the last faery, and I was the only one left, I ran. I fled with my failure, with the guilt of letting those brave warriors die for nothing. I returned to the library, furious and grieving, wondering what I had done wrong. Why hadn’t it worked?” He snatched the book off the floor, digging his claws into the pages as he shook it. “It should have worked. I vowed that next time I attempted such a thing, I would put only myself in danger. But it was years, decades later, that I worked up the courage for a second attempt.

“This time,” Gilleas went on, “I took no chances. I did my research. I learned everything I could, not only about the seal, but about Evenfall and the Nightmare King. By that time, more fey were starting to trickle into Hollownest from the over world. Perhaps they were drawn to legends of the library, whispers of a safe haven relatively free of the Nightmares. Or perhaps they were seeking answers themselves.” One talon gestured in Other Nyx’s direction. “It was around this time that our moon elf warrior and her Order showed up, fighting their way through the monsters and Nightmares to reach the city. They provided a measure of safety for those looking to reach Hollownest and continued to protect those who made it this far, while ensuring that my work was not disturbed, of course.”

Against the wall, Other Nyx gave Gilleas a tiny, solemn nod of respect, which he returned before turning back to us.

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