I can’t let that happen again. I don’t have time to let that happen again, so I battle my way out before I get stuck there forever.
“I am still me, Nick.” I groan. “Even Devyn admits that now. I am a different species, but I’m the same person—my soul—the Zara part of me is the same. Only my body is different.” I pull at my skin, which is kind of dramatic. “That’s all that’s changed.”
He takes a step toward me and then stops himself. “No. No, that’s not quite true.”
I force myself to stand still, to not go to him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s more than that, Zara.” He looks at the sky like he’s searching for help from the stars. “You smell different. Not as bad as the other pixies, for some reason, but not like you.”
I actually laugh—a short sputter of a laugh, bitter and hard. “So you don’t love me anymore because I smell different? That’s not shallow or anything, right? What? Like if I buy some new nice-smelling body lotion from Sephora, we’ll be all good again?”
“Zara, don’t be ridiculous.” He coughs, almost a bark. “It isn’t shallow. We read about this, remember? Pixies don’t have souls.”
“I have a soul.” I cross my arms over my chest. My foot taps on the ground the same way my mother’s does when she’s beyond mad.
The wind gusts, smashes against us. A wind like this used to just about knock me over, but now that I’m a pixie I can withstand it. I brace myself until the worst of it passes, just staring up at Nick. I say it again because it’s important. “I have a soul, Nick.”
This is ridiculous, ridiculous and awful. I am standing in the cold, telling my supposed boyfriend that I have a soul when he’s the one who came back from the dead. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me.
Tears spring into his eyes, eyes that refuse to look down and meet my own. Instead he stares ahead into the snow.
“I have to go,” he says.
“You’re just giving up on us?” My voice squeaks. I hate it for squeaking, for the weakness there, and then I can’t hold in my emotions any longer. “I changed for you. I changed because I had to save you. I changed because I loved you—and you don’t even think I have a soul.” My voice breaks. “You don’t even love me anymore.”
“Zara …” His face softens a tiny bit. “I never said I didn’t love you anymore.”
Something frees up inside my chest. “You didn’t?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s just—Agh!”
Instead of finishing his sentence, he sticks his hands in his hair and actually pulls at it for a second. It stands up in crazy bunches. If things were normal I would reach over and smooth it back down.
He does what Issie calls the Captain Kirk move. He grabs me by the shoulders—not too hard, but like he’s trying to make sure I’m paying attention—which is what Kirk did on all those old Star Trek episodes from the 1960s or something. I don’t care whose patented move it is. I just like the fact that his hands are touching my arms, that his face has lowered toward mine, that he’s making eye contact, finally. Talking to me, finally.
“Zara.” His voice is deep, impassioned, and slower than normal. “You need to understand that you are not the same. It’s not just your smell. You kill things. You kill. You are … entwined … with that king now.”
“Astley?” I think of how there are two branches that represent our souls and how they really are entwined. Could Nick somehow know that? Just instinctively maybe?
He nods. “Devyn told me how he pretty much magically appeared when you were shot in that bar. He knew you were in danger. You and I? We never had that link. Not like that.”
“It’s just because he’s my king,” I start to explain.
“Exactly!”
I step away, pivot, stop, force myself to turn back at him, to really look at him. He’s so tall and strong looking. His tan boots plant his feet firmly on the ground, but he’s not confident about us anymore. My best friend, Issie, may be goofy but she is good when it comes to human psychology, and she was right—he is jealous.
“Astley being my king is not the same thing, Nick. It’s just—” I realize then that I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know if I’m telling the truth. I can’t imagine a world without Astley in it. He calms me down. He lets me be me without criticizing. “We are connected, yes. But everyone who is his subject is connected.”
“Do you realize what you just said? You just called yourself his subject. The Zara you once were would never be anyone’s subject. She would die before she’d be someone’s subject.”
I swallow. It’s true.
Nick’s hand touches my chin. “He has some sort of power over you, some sort of hold, doesn’t he?”
I break eye contact and whisper, “He’s my king. I couldn’t have saved you without him. He … he helped me.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Nick bites his lip as I look at him again. “I hate that you did this for me, Zara, that you are one of them now.”
I shake my head. “Didn’t you see any pixies in Valhalla? Weren’t any of them good?”
“You know I don’t remember anything. Why do you even ask me?”
“It would be easier if you remembered,” I sputter. If he remembered he would know we went through this already, that we kissed, that … And where would that leave Astley? I don’t even know. I mutter, “So much easier.”
“Obviously.”
“Okay. Think of it this way. Some of the pixies had to be good if they were in Valhalla.” I push on, voice rising with each word. “I am one of those. Astley is one of those.”
Nick cringes when I say Astley’s name, which is beyond annoying but understandable. “How do you know he is, Zara? How do you actually know he hasn’t been manipulating you this entire time for his own reasons? How do you know?”
“I know because it has to be true,” I whisper.
“Because?” Nick urges.
“Because if it isn’t I don’t know how I’ll survive. I can’t survive if I don’t have a soul, Nick. I can’t survive if I don’t think I’m essentially good. Flawed, obviously, but good.”