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nothing you can do, Ialach. The Wild Hunt will go on without me and I know I am the luckier for it.” Being a cowboy wasn’t as distracting now as it had been. Taunting my comrade with those stupid peasant words now would’ve been cruel. I was cruel—had been cruel. I was Unseelie, born and bred to malice. Yet when I saw true malice when the humans killed their mother, our mother, I knew the Dark Courts knew nothing of genuine cruelty. Nothing but pretenders to the throne were we. I’d saved what remained of my old self for the humans and I’d done things to the ones we’d caught—terrible yet justly deserved things--that kept some of the hungry shadows in me alive.
    Ialach deserved none of that though. If I were to die, I’d die speaking as I’d spoken for most of my life. Better he have memories of our past lives than the one we lived now. “You will not die,” he said between clenched teeth. “You bastard. You will not .”
    “No?” I felt the stirring of the dark amusement of old. The Seelie were so determined, so noble, so fearless, yes, in the face of death itself. So very Ialach. Still, I liked to think I had corrupted him, if only a little these past ten years. Then more waves of pain came and I shut up, intent on biting off my lower lip before humiliating myself by screaming.
    “No,” he said, the determination as palpable as my pain. “When the sun sets for the final time I do not want to be alone. Even your constant ear-shattering imitation of speech is better than that.”
    I focused on him to see the pretense of humor creasing the sun-creased skin around his eyes. Actual humor from a nose-in-the-air, death before dishonor, shimmering robes, white horses, constantly with the never-ending…the never -Oberon’s shriveled worthless balls- ending ethereal singing High Court Fey. I had taught him something after all. Or he had taught me something—that you can be enemies so long that you are actually closer than friends. He taught me that word as well. There was no word for friend in the Dark Court—ally, comrade-in-arms, former ally (sorry-is-that- my -dagger-in-your-back)—but not friend. I grinned, tasting my own blood, and asked, “Can you make sure I die with my boots on, pardner?”
    Let him remember this moment with a laugh or a groan or, best of all, annoyance, but let it be this moment…not my death. And I was going to die. I had no doubt of that. If we had our magic left to us, I might have had a chance, but we did not. When the world died, we had felt the shake and death rattle of it in Under-the-Hill. Our home might be a step to one side on the human’s reality, but it was also a reflection of the Earth itself. Reflections are the first to go. Our home began to die as well. Those legends and fables returned to our memories as the truth they were. Many of us managed to remember the way and galloped our steeds to the world of man to see what was wrong? What could be done?
    Everything and nothing.
    The human race’s unnatural magic obliterated ours. What we’d once had, we had no more. Our weapons and armor faded away. Any charms, spells, or pure destructive streams of magic were gone. We were no more than humans with pointed ears and a severe allergy to silver. It was pathetic. We discovered we couldn’t go home again—not that it mattered. Time Under-the-Hill passed as a river compared to a stone on the bank that was earth. If we had had the magic left to re-open the door, we would have found nothing. Not death, but nothing at all. Earth had died, but Under-the-Hill was only the memory of a gravestone. Those of us that had left had barely escaped in time. Under-the-Hill had washed away, we knew, for no one there had ever followed us out.
    I closed my eyes, clenched dirt and sand in my fists as the silver-agony spasmed through my body.
    Fairy tales…I had been thinking of fairy tales. Humans remembered us better than we remembered them. Iron and silver, some of them recalled our