Page 76 of Once Broken Faith

“Come to the stage,” said Arden. “Given what you’ve done for us, you should be heard.”

Walking the last ten feet to the stairs that would take me to the stage seemed to take almost as long as walking from the back of the gallery. Karen and the Luidaeg were seated in the short row of chairs that had previously held us all; they looked very alone there, even when the Luidaeg offered me a quick, almost solemn smile and an equally hasty thumbs-up. I nodded to them, trying to keep my nerves under control, and took up the spot where I had stood to explain how the cure was formulated in the first place. It seemed like such a long time ago. It was definitely several ruined dresses and a lot of bloodshed ago.

I didn’t want to do this. I had no right to do this.

I had to do this.

“My name is October Daye,” I said, looking toward the audience. “Knight of Lost Words, sworn in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, daughter of Amandine the Liar.” When did I start thinking of my mother using the title the other Firstborn gave to her? Probably when I found out how much of my life she’d spent lying to me. “I, uh, have spoken to you before, so I guess you knew all of that. And I know the High King has told you what he learned from my blood, how Queen Verona and King Kabos decided to take this conclave as an opportunity to get rid of some people they didn’t find politically convenient. But what I really want to talk to you about is how they did it. See, they were royalty. Nobility, just like most of you, and they knew the Law. So they didn’t kill anyone. They threatened the sister of one of their vassals, and used that vassal as a weapon to keep their own hands clean. Technically, Kabos died innocent of all wrongdoing under our laws.

“How is that fair? He orchestrated the death of King Antonio Robertson of Angels. He was complicit in the attacks on me, and on King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats. He gave the orders, and he pulled the strings, and had he been brought before this court, he would have been innocent, because we put too much focus on the wrong things. We look at the letter of the Law. Oberon was a pretty cool guy, according to all the stories I’ve heard. He made the Law so we’d stop killing each other. How is it any different to stand behind a throne and give orders that can’t be refused? How is that better?” I paused, trying to read the room. Most of the faces looking back at me were impassive, giving nothing away.

I wanted to turn and look at the Luidaeg. I didn’t dare. “Elf-shot was created to get around the Law, but it still kills. I’ve encountered elf-shot modified to carry a slow poison, for use against purebloods. When it’s used against changelings, it doesn’t even need that to be deadly. It’s a killing weapon. Changelings . . . we probably outnumber purebloods in today’s world, because the humans are so close, and the human world is so tempting. We’re part of Faerie, too. We’re part of this community, too. And continuing to use a weapon that’s a guaranteed violation of the Law in spirit, if not in the way it’s written, is wrong. It’s as wrong as what Verona and Kabos did. It’s as wrong as murder.

“But I also want to talk to you about theft. The theft of time. I’m standing in front of you today, wearing this face, wearing these clothes,” I plucked at my borrowed jacket, “because my stepfather, a pureblood, transformed me into a fish to save my life. I’m not saying he was wrong to do it—I like being alive, and at the time, he didn’t see another option—but when he made that choice, when he made that very pureblooded choice, he destroyed my life. I lost my child. I lost the man I was planning to marry. Everything I’d worked for was over in an instant, because someone who thought of time like it was air forgot I had a shorter supply than he did. That I lived in a faster world. Well, we all live in that faster world now. If you have a cell phone, if you drive a car, hell, if you watch soap operas, you’re living in the fast lane. Elf-shot doesn’t take away fourteen years, like Simon did. It takes away a century. It kills changelings, and it steals time from the people who survive it. Imagine trying to catch up with the last twenty years of mortal innovations. Now imagine trying to catch up with a hundred.”

The arcade was silent, everyone watching me, some of them barely seeming to breathe. I thought Liz, the Selkie clan leader, was nodding, but I couldn’t be sure; she was too far away, and my vision was blurry with unshed tears. I wanted to wipe them away. I wasn’t willing to show that kind of weakness. Not here, not now, not with all these people listening for a change.

“Duke Michel used elf-shot to remove Duchess Lorden from the conclave because he didn’t want things to be different. He wanted to disrupt this meeting and take your choices away. Queen Verona and King Kabos used their vassal as a weapon to remove the people whose politics and policies they didn’t like from the world, because they didn’t want to live in a world where a crown was anything other than an absolute pass to do whatever they liked. All three of the people who’ve disrupted this gathering did it because they want to keep living in the past. They want to steal our time. Don’t let them.” I turned to the three people seated behind me, Arden and Aethlin and Maida. “That was all. May I be excused now?”

“Yes, you may,” said Arden.

I couldn’t find the words. I had said too much, and my tongue no longer wanted to obey me. So I curtsied, as deeply and formally as I could manage, and turned to walk back down the stairs and along the aisle, through the silent arcade to the door.

I had done all that I could do, and there were people who needed me. Whether they woke up tomorrow or in a hundred years, I was going to honor that.

TWENTY-TWO

GUARDS FLANKED THE DOOR to the tower. More guards stood at the door two floors up. That was a welcome change. Maybe if there’d been guards stationed here before, Minna and Verona wouldn’t have been able to get inside. Maybe Quentin and Walther would have been awake. Maybe Minna and Verona would have been alive.

And if wishes were fishes, then beggars would ride. I didn’t recognize either of the guards at the door, but they clearly knew me; when I nodded, they nodded back, and the one on the left opened the door for me. I stepped through, still barefoot in my borrowed coat. The door closed behind me, leaving me alone with the sleeping.

Five of the spaces were filled now. Nolan, in his Gatsby-era finery, was the closest to the door. I wondered whether he would have been a good Prince, if he’d been given the opportunity; whether he would have made Arden a better Queen. I touched the bier beneath him and walked on. I paused when I came to Walther, who was still wearing his alchemy gear, leather apron and sturdy canvas shirt with burns on the hem. He’d never wanted to get involved with this sort of nonsense. That had all been me.

“Sorry,” I whispered, and walked on.

Dianda looked angry, even in her sleep, the surface of the water and the glistening sweep of her tail throwing back the room’s lights like a prism. They’d probably need to change the water periodically, to keep her from getting moldy. Keeping a mermaid on land was never going to be an easy task. Maybe that was why she and Patrick had chosen to live in the Undersea after their marriage: easier to keep her healthy down beneath the waves.

The next bier stopped me in my tracks.

Quentin was lying there with his eyes closed and his arms straight at his sides. He looked so small that for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I looked at him and saw the gawky teenager with the dandelion fluff hair, the boy who’d refused to listen when I told him “no,” who’d argued and challenged and demanded his way into my life. Our relationship had been one long process of me telling him to go away and him cleaving ever closer to my side. He was the same age as my daughter, but unlike her, he was never going to turn human and leave me. That alone would have been sufficient reason for me to burn the mortality out of my blood. If he was going to sleep, I was going to wait for him.

“Damn your eyes for making me care about you,” I said. My words were too loud. I kept talking anyway. “You could have backed off, you know? All you had to do was tell Sylvester I was a weird recluse who didn’t want to let you do your job. He would never have forced you to have anything else to do with me. You could have been fine. You could have been free. Not yoked to a loser like me.”

Quentin didn’t say anything. He just slept. Maybe that was for the best. I took a shuddering breath and moved on to the last, and hardest, bier.

Tybalt was still too pale. Whatever Jin had done to convince his body that it wasn’t on the verge of death, she hadn’t been able to restore all the blood that he’d lost. She said he was going to live, and I believed her. Maybe he’d recover immediately upon waking, and maybe he’d need time to recover, but I’d never known her to be wrong about someone’s chances of survival. Thank Oberon for that. I wasn’t some frail, fainting flower, to wither away to nothing because my lover died. That didn’t mean I was ready to grieve for another lover, not with Connor still flying among the night-haunts.

“Hi,” I said softly, and sat on the edge of the bier, reaching out to take one of his hands and lace my fingers through his. I could feel the edges of the claws beneath his skin, and somehow, that was reassuring; somewhere in the last year, that had become the way a hand was supposed to feel. “Jin told me you’re going to be okay. Just in case you were wondering. Not that you can hear me, which I guess means this is a good time to tell you this.”

I took a breath. It shook, and felt like it was burning my throat. I forced myself to keep going. “The conclave is going to be over soon. They’re going to vote, or . . . whatever it is they do at something like this, and then the High King and High Queen are going to pass a verdict they think their vassals will be willing to live with. The vote doesn’t matter, but I figure they’ll at least consider it, because they don’t want to start a war. And maybe they’ll say the cure can be used, and everything will be fine, but maybe they won’t. I think we have to be braced for the idea that too many of the monarchs will be set against it, and the cure will be buried for another seventy years, or whatever seems reasonable to immortal people. They have time.”

Time. That was the problem. I paused before I said, more softly, “I know you’ve always said you love me like I am. I know you’d never ask me to change. But I meant what I said before. If the cure is buried, I’ll take the humanity out of my veins. I’ll learn to live as a pureblood, whatever that means. And I will be here when you wake up.”

What would I look like, with the last of my father’s influence sliced away? Would my hair turn golden, like Amandine’s, or would it just keep getting lighter? Would my skin bleach to bitter paleness, my eyes lose all claim to color, and leave me as an outline of a woman, looking for the artist who could fill me in? The copper in my magic would leave me completely, I was sure of that; it was already turning bloody. I’d smell like a slaughter every time I cast a spell or spun an illusion. I would see a stranger in my mirror, and iron would burn me so badly that I’d have to avoid it like the poison it was, and I didn’t care.

Maybe it was unhealthy to consider making a change that big for the sake of a man, but this wasn’t just about the man. This was about the boy on the next bier, the one I’d promised to usher into knighthood. This was about the mermaid who would have wanted me to look out for her family, and the alchemist who should never have been involved in this bullshit. Tybalt was my lover, yes, but this wasn’t about love. This was about family. This was about keeping my word to all of them. If I had to become a little less human to hold on to my humanity, then there was no question of what I needed to do.

I just had to be strong enough to do it.