The false Queen narrowed her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “You can do better than that.”
I shook my head, hoping desperation would convey my honesty. “I can’t. When I pulled the Siren blood from your veins, it was lost. I don’t have it to restore to you. I’d give it back if I could, I swear I would. Please don’t take this out on my daughter. Please let her go.”
“You simply need the right incentive to unlock your abilities,” said the false Queen. She reached into the cascading folds of her dress and pulled out a blunt arrow, no longer or thicker around than a pencil. Someone had tied a bundle of owl feathers to the end in a vague attempt at fletching. The point gleamed, as oily and shimmering as the base of the false Queen’s gown.
I stared and continued staring as Tybalt stepped out of the shadows at the back of the dais, his eyes glowing green, his hands hooked into claws.
“You took as much from her as you did from me,” said the false Queen, and moved before either of us could react, jamming the “arrow” into Gillian’s shoulder. My heart lurched as a veil of sudden déjà vu engulfed me, making it difficult to breathe. Gillian shrieked, the sound cutting off as she slumped forward, already unconscious.
Tybalt roared, lunging not at the false Queen, but at my child. He swept Gillian into his arms and leapt to the floor, stopping when he reached me. I reached for the sides of her face, lifting her head, checking for her pulse. She was still breathing. Her heart was racing, hammering so hard that it felt like it was going to burst, but she was breathing.
“What did you do?” I moaned. I turned. The false Queen was gloating, seemingly unconcerned by the loss of her hostage. “What did you do?”
“Either you’re a liar and you’ll restore your child, proving you can do the same for me, or the human brat will die, as she should have done the moment she rejected our world,” said the false Queen. “I have done nothing wrong.”
Jocelyn frowned at her. “What about me?” she asked. “You promised me.”
“Hush,” said the false Queen. “You’ll get your turn.”
I ignored them both, pulling the arrow from Gillian’s shoulder—thank Oberon that it had a smooth point, and not a proper arrowhead—and dipping my finger into the blood. I didn’t dare taste it, not with the elf-shot running through her veins, but I only needed to sniff it to know there was nothing left in her but humanity. I couldn’t change what wasn’t there.
Elf-shot kills humans. My daughter was human.
I moaned, low and agonized and unthinking. “Walther,” I said, raising my eyes to Tybalt’s, seeing my own despair mirrored there. Tybalt didn’t know Gillian, didn’t love her like I did, but he had buried his first wife and their child, and he knew what it was to feel the ground crumbling beneath his feet. “The cure.”
“She won’t make it as far as Berkeley,” he said, voice hushed. “I could carry her, but not alive, Toby, I’m not fast enough.”
I stared at him and knew two things for the absolute truth: that he would never lie to me, and if I ordered him to carry my daughter’s corpse through the Shadow Roads, even with the added danger of the Baobhan Sith lurking somewhere in the dark, he would do it. For me, if I asked him to try, he would do it.
And I couldn’t. There had to be another way, there had to—
I leaned in close, close enough to whisper, “The Luidaeg, and then Dianda. Save my child and then save my ass. Go.”
He pulled back, understanding clear in his banded green eyes. Then he turned and ran for the wall as fast as his legs would carry him, diving into the shadows, taking Gillian with him. She wouldn’t know to hold her breath. She wouldn’t know anything, because she was asleep, and she was dying, and he was running a race against the impossible.
I turned, slowly, back toward the false Queen and Jocelyn. The false Queen looked thoughtful. Jocelyn was pouting, actually pouting, like a child denied a treat they really, really wanted to have.
“I see,” said the false Queen. “So committed to your lies that you’d let your own child die rather than give back what is rightfully mine. I thought better of you. You call yourself a hero, and yet you behave like the very basest of villains.”
“You kidnapped my daughter.” I took a step toward the dais. “You tried to lure me into a forbidden place.” Another step. “You elf-shot my friends and my little girl, knowing the potion would begin to kill her as quickly as it could. You want a villain? Look in the mirror.” I held up the elf-shot arrow I’d pulled from Gillian’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to go back to sleep. You shouldn’t be here.”
“But I am. Don’t you wonder who woke me?”
I froze. The false Queen smirked.
“You aren’t as adored as you think you are, and not everyone loves this brave new world you struggle to create. Changelings have no place in polite society. Elf-shot is a tool to be used, not a disease to be ‘cured.’ You overstep in every possible direction, and then you wonder why anyone would react poorly.” The Queen leaned forward. “Oberon made you and your ilk to be tools, living hope chests for the masses, because even he could see that Faerie needed to be cleansed. The mortal taint should never have been allowed to take root the way it did. You’re a thing playing at being a hero, and it’s time you learned your place.”
“And you’re a fool who never learned to throw a damn punch,” I said wearily. The false Queen’s eyes widened.
I rushed the dais.
She was a small, frail-looking woman. I knew that to be at least partially a lie—all Sea Wights look like they’re on the verge of collapse, and most of them can sling sunken ships around like pebbles. I also knew that she’d been a queen for a full century, and queens don’t fight their own battles. Queens sit back and let other people do their fighting for them.
My shoulder caught her in the middle of the chest, sending her careening back against her throne. She hit with the distinctive snapping sound of breaking bones, and I was furious enough to feel a small thrill of triumph at that noise. I might not be able to hurt her emotionally the way she’d hurt me, but I could—by Oberon—hurt her physically. That would have to be enough.
Jocelyn screamed, shouting, “Get away from my godmother!” before slamming something sharp and cold into my side. I staggered away from the false Queen, looking down in shock to see my own sword jutting out of my abdomen.
Jocelyn was glaring at me, cheeks flushed and arms shaking as she struggled to keep her grip on the sword. She had swung it like it was a baseball bat, and I couldn’t fault her technique: it was damned similar to my own.
“You get away from her,” she repeated with less heat. She was starting to sound uncertain; she was starting to sound scared. Whatever she had expected when she agreed to this little adventure, she wasn’t getting it.
I looked from her to the sword and back again. Finally, gritting my teeth against the pain, I asked, “Was it you who told her where Gillian was? Did you tell her where the car would be, when it would be safe to touch my daughter? Is this all your fault?”
“You rejected my mother because she was too human, like she chose that,” Jocelyn retorted. “You acted like she could have been anything she wanted to be, and decided to be less than fae, when you could have fixed things for her any time you wanted to. And then you never even gave me a chance. You never came to me. You went Home, and you closed its doors before I was old enough to go. You made sure I had nothing.”
I started to respond, and paused, hearing a capital letter where it didn’t belong. “Your mother was one of Devin’s kids?”
Jocelyn’s response was to grab the hilt of my sword and twist. I gasped, trying to take a step backward, away from the pain tearing at my guts. The way I heal has saved my life a dozen times, but it also means I’ve experienced injuries that should have been the worst things I’d ever feel, and they keep getting topped by the next one to come down the wire. Feeling my insid
es sliced to bits while my daughter was somewhere far away, dying in the dark? Was a new topper for the list.
“My mother is Tracy Wilson,” hissed Jocelyn, through clenched teeth. She twisted the sword again. The world flashed white with pain. I dropped to my knees on the dais.
The sudden change in my position was enough to wrench the sword from her hands. That was a nice change. It was in too deep to be pulled free, but at least she wasn’t twisting it anymore. I gasped and scrabbled for the blade, trying to grasp it and yank it out of me.
The false Queen’s foot caught me in the middle of the back, shoving me forward, driving the sword deeper. I would have been embarrassed to be caught this flat-footed by two noncombatants, but I was too busy trying not to vomit or black out from the pain.
“Someone else you failed to save,” she taunted blithely. There was a ragged edge of pain in her words. I had put that there. Whatever I’d broken in her chest was digging into her flesh, maybe puncturing a lung, and she didn’t heal the way I did. No one heals the way I do. All I had to do was stall, and eventually she’d have to stop tormenting me in order to seek medical help.
Of course, that would leave Jocelyn and the sword, and that assumed she’d need to go for help before my guts were on the ground, but sometimes it’s nice to be an optimist.
“I don’t believe they call you a hero,” said Jocelyn. “You’re just a coward who doesn’t want to do what she was made to do. Your Queen is asking you to help her, and you keep saying ‘no,’ like that’s even allowed. You make me sick. I’m glad I helped her snatch that worthless bitch you pretend is your daughter. She’s as mortal as they come. I don’t know what happened to your real baby, if you ever even had one, but I’m a hundred times better than her.”
“A thousand times,” said the false Queen, the smooth purr of her voice only slightly broken by a wheeze. “You, at least, hold Faerie in your veins. Remember that. You are, for that alone, her superior.”
I tried to focus on my breathing. Unlike the wounds dealt by the Baobhan Sith, the wounds my sword made were healing the way I usually did, fast and unrelenting. I could feel the skin knitting around the blade. That was bad—there was going to be no way to pull it out without slicing myself up again—but it was also good, since Jocelyn was going to have one hell of a surprise if she tried to go for the sword a second time.
“So make her do what you promised.” The whine was back in Jocelyn’s voice. I was extraneous to the scene the two of them were playing out, I realized: I was part of the scenery. That was normal, where the false Queen was concerned. For her, I had only ever been a means to an end, a tool to be used or a danger to be disposed of.
Keep her busy, kid, I thought, and closed my eyes, breathing through the pain.
Tracy Wilson. Sweet Titania, it had been years since I’d thought about her. She had been—presumably still was, since Jocelyn spoke about her in the present tense—a Gwragen changeling, a little less than half-blooded, the result of a marriage between a Gwragen half-blood and a Gwragen quarter-blood. Her parents had believed their commonalities would outweigh their differences. They had been wrong. She had been bitter even for one of Devin’s kids, unforgiving of the smallest slight, ready to pick a fight on even the slightest provocation.
The only reason he hadn’t thrown her out was that she’d left of her own accord, heading down the coast with a human musician who’d promised her a life of adventure, excitement, and free beer. We’d all been glad to see her go. Of all the people I felt I’d failed during my own somewhat misspent youth, Tracy Wilson didn’t make the list. She didn’t even come close. That was reassuring, honestly, even as I was trying to stop myself from bleeding out in a deposed monarch’s knowe.
Oh. Blood loss. Yes, that was probably part of the problem. Even I can’t bleed forever. But I was bleeding enough. I bit my lip. The plan that was forming in my mind was a terrible one. It wasn’t going to work, and if it did, it was going to get me hurt worse than I already was. It was still a plan, and it was the only thing I had.
I grabbed the sword, making an exaggerated moaning sound as I tried to pull it free, slicing my palms in the process. Another gush of blood poured out on the dais. It was getting to where I couldn’t smell anything else. For what I was trying to accomplish, that was a good thing. As long as I could actually survive it.
How long had it been? Long enough for Tybalt to carry an unresisting mortal through the Shadow Roads to the Luidaeg’s door? Long enough for him to come back? There was no way he’d leave me here to deal with this by myself, not when he had a doorway and a breath left in his body. That helped me keep going, keep yanking on the sword and trying to pull it free.
A hand gripped my hair and yanked my head up. Jocelyn met my eyes and smiled, too brightly.
“You don’t like having that sword there, do you?” she asked. “I can fix it. And all I need is for you to do one teeny little favor for me.”
“I don’t do favors for people who hurt my family,” I wheezed.
Her hand caught me, hard, across the face, splitting my lip and setting my nose bleeding again. I swallowed a mouthful of blood, letting it warm and stabilize me. The taste was cloying, filling the entire world, but I didn’t let that stop me from swallowing again, trying to draw every drop of strength I could from it.
Jocelyn’s smile vanished, replaced by a scowl. “I wouldn’t have had to hurt her if she’d just been willing to call you,” she spat. “I asked her over and over again, why won’t you make up with your mom? She sounds nice, you should let her come to visit, you should try to forgive her, you should make things right. I tried. But she didn’t want to listen, and so I had to find another way.”
There was something I was missing, something to connect a thin-blooded changeling with an ax to grind to the former Queen of the Mists, who should have been sleeping her years away in another state, another Kingdom. Their alliance didn’t make sense. The false Queen should never have realized Jocelyn existed. Jocelyn didn’t have the resources to brew or steal Walther’s elf-shot cure—which any good alchemist could replicate now that the formula was out there in the world—and even if she could have, there was no way she’d have been able to get into the palace in Silences. What was I missing?
“Look at me!” Jocelyn’s voice rose into a shrill scream. I wrenched myself out of my thoughts and focused on her face. The fairy ointment around her face was smeared and thinning, slowly being absorbed into her skin.
I smirked. It was the one thing I could think of that was most likely to enrage her, and the longer we could keep this show going, the longer the false Queen would stay focused and gloating over my helplessness. “I’m looking,” I said. “How long before you can’t return the favor? Looks like the world’s going to get real blurry for you, real soon.”
Her hand flew to her face, fingertips stopping just shy of the skin around her eyes, which were suddenly wide with alarm. “That won’t happen if I’m here. I’m safe if I’m here.”
“That’s not how fairy ointment works, kiddo,” I said. “Maybe you’ve never been in a real knowe before. But a place like Home, that’s built in the mortal world and concealed with illusions, that’s not the same as the Summerlands. Where you are now, it’s not real to the human part of you. That ointment wears off, you’re flying in the dark. Hope you brought a flashlight.”
Jocelyn made a wordless sound of frustration and dismay, letting go of my chin and turning to run for the back of the dais. I barely had time to relax before the false Queen’s foot bore down on my back again, her heel grinding into my spine. The motion forced me forward, driving another few inches of steel into my gut. I made no effort to stifle my groan.
“You can’t talk your way out of this one,” she hissed. “You’re going to give back what you stole from me. You may be willing to let your daughter die—but then, you already proved that, didn’t you? When you made her mortal, you condemne
d her to the grave like every other human. You threw her away, and now you pretend at anger because I picked up what you no longer wanted.”
She leaned closer, her breath hot against my ear. “She’s trash. She was always trash, and all you did was prove it.”
Thoughts of plans, of waiting for help to come and make this easier, of patience . . . they flew out of my mind, replaced by raw and burning rage. I slammed my head back as hard as I could and was rewarded with a shriek and a loud cracking noise as my skull impacted with hers. I shoved myself to my feet, grabbing the hilt of the sword in the same motion, and attempted to draw the blade from my own body.
Pulling a sword from a scabbard can be difficult, depending on the angle and the seal between blade and case. A scabbard is designed to house a weapon. Everything about it is meant to make the process of drawing the sword as easy as possible.
My body is not a very good scabbard.
The false Queen staggered backward, one hand over her bleeding nose to keep the mess from spraying everywhere. Then she saw how much trouble I was having getting a good grip that wouldn’t require me to slice myself open lengthwise, and she laughed. Really laughed, loud and joyous and utterly unforgiving.
“You’re no hero,” she jeered, voice rendered thick and burbling by her bruised lips and broken nose. “You’re a joke. You’ve always been a joke. It’s a miracle you were ever able to cause me any trouble at all.”
I yanked the sword free, ignoring the pain that accompanied the motion, and was rewarded with her shocked expression in the instant before I swung it, hard, toward her throat. She vanished in a cloud of rowan-scented smoke. Rowan . . . and cinnamon, again. Cinnamon mixed with cardamom. Those had never been elements of her magic. Who was helping her?
“Oh, come on!” I shouted, recovering my footing. I turned on the dais, sword held defensively in front of me. “I thought I was a joke. Why are you running, if I’m such a joke? Come back here and face me like a queen!”