Page 10 of The Brightest Fell

“For refusing to be the child I needed you to be,” she said. “I tried to save you, my father knows I tried. I tried to do it without hurting you because you fought me when I went too quickly. I had already unwound more than half the damage I had done to you when my foolish brother-in-law came to carry you away. If you had been less recalcitrant, if you had been willing to let me have my way, when I knew better for you than you knew for yourself, you would have been human by the time he arrived.”

That was the second time she’d implied that things would have been better if I hadn’t held onto my fae blood. “Are you seriously saying things would be better if I were mortal? Mom, that was sixty years ago. I’d be lucky to be alive now!” Mortals can live to be sixty and beyond, but my luck has never run to the good, or to the safe. If it hadn’t been for my changeling resilience, even before I started healing at an accelerated rate, I would have been dead a long time ago.

“I know,” she said serenely.

That was the last straw. “If you wanted me to be human, why the hell did you save me when I got elf-shot?”

“Because the roses begged,” she said. “It seemed a shame to disappoint them, when they asked so sweetly.”

“Right,” I said. “Okay. No, Mother, I will not be taking the job. I’m sorry. It’s been too long, and I don’t want to deal with you, and I need you to leave now.” I felt bad even as I spoke. It wasn’t August’s fault that our mother loved her more than she loved me. Maybe my sister was out there somewhere, trapped, suspended in some terrible limbo, like Luna and Rayseline had been after Simon orchestrated their kidnapping. Maybe she needed me.

But I didn’t need Amandine. I could refuse to work for her and go looking for August anyway, on my own terms. I could bring her home without ever involving our mother.

“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” said Amandine. She slipped a hand into the froth of petals on the side of her dress. When she pulled it out again, she uncurled her fingers to show me two long, slender seeds, like something I might dig out of an orange. “I would ask you to change your mind, but that would be very much like begging, and I do not beg my own children to do what they should have done willingly. You will learn your place, October. I only regret that I have failed you so completely that the lesson is necessary.”

“Get out of my house,” I snarled. I stuck my hand behind myself. Tybalt dropped a knife into it. I wasn’t going to attack my own mother—I didn’t think I was going to attack my own mother, especially not when I had formally granted her the hospitality of my home—but I’d be damned before I went unarmed for another minute.

Amandine sighed. “No,” she said, and tossed the seeds into the air. The blood and roses smell of her magic was suddenly everywhere.

The seeds germinated instantly, bursting into tangled masses of thorny vines that whipped through the kitchen, wrapping themselves around everyone who wasn’t Amandine. There was a splash as Jazz’s pot of cocoa hit the floor. Jazz yelled, as much in surprise as from the pain of the hot liquid hitting her feet. Then the thorns were breaking our skins, and there was something more important to worry about than a little spilled milk.

The pain was hot and intense, racing along my nerves like lightning. I inhaled, preparing to scream—

The pain stopped. Completely. It was replaced by a soothing numbness, and by absolute immobility. I couldn’t even move enough to squeak. I tried to look for the shape of the spell, to unweave it as I had other bindings, but it slipped away from me like water.

Of course it did. Amandine is Firstborn—my Firstborn. My magic is a pale imitation of hers. Any tricks I know how to perform, I inherited from her. No matter how powerful I become, how much practice I get, her spells will probably always be the only ones I can’t unwind. I was caught.

We all were. Tybalt was behind me, outside my frame of vision, but I could see May and Jazz. They looked terrified, wrapped in their cocoons of calming thorns. Only Amandine was free to move around the room.

She walked to the kitchen table, clearing it of mail, newspapers, and dishes with a sweep of her arm. Something smashed when it hit the floor. She didn’t appear to care. “Even as a girl, you were willful,” she said. “You never wanted to listen. You never wanted to mind me, even when minding me would have been the proper thing to do. I thought it was the humanity in you, so I forgave it—I was making it worse, wasn’t I? That meant it must be what I wanted. But look at you now. Barely clinging to your mortality, and still you refuse to mind me. It’s a flaw in your nature. You’re a part of my punishment. Well, I’m sorry, October, but you need to learn how to mind your mother.”

Amandine reached into her dress again, this time coming up with a handful of thorny twigs that looked like bits of briar. She placed them on the table in two tidy piles, stacking them on top of each other like she was preparing for a game of pick-up sticks. Then she snapped her fingers. The twigs writhed and stretched, weaving together until they had grown into two small wicker cages.

“You think me a monster, I’m sure. Heroes always think the people who tell them ‘no’ are monsters. Heroes and children have a great deal in common.” She plucked two bunches of Queen Anne’s lace from her skirt and tossed them into the cages, where they expanded and fluffed out, becoming blankets thick enough to protect the eventual occupants from the thorns under their feet.

Nothing would protect them from the thorns in the walls. Whatever she intended to shut up there would be cramped, and confined, and unable to move.

I strained against the thorns binding me, reaching again for the shimmering threads of her magic, wishing I could scream when they flowed away from my mental hands. I was starting to see the terrible shape of her intentions. It couldn’t be real. I refused to let it be real. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Amandine walked across the room, stopping to caress my cheek with one hand. Part of me—the part that was still her frightened, abandoned little girl—relished the touch. She hadn’t touched me like that since I’d made the Changeling’s Choice, all those years ago. The greater part of me raged. She had no right to touch me like that. No right at all.

“My poor child,” she said. “You really have no idea how outmatched you are, do you?”

She stepped past me, out of sight. There was a snapping sound, and the smell of blood and roses grew stronger, suddenly underscored by the mixed scents of pennyroyal and musk. When she came back into view, she had a struggling tabby tomcat by the scruff of his neck. The spell of the thorns had broken when she transformed Tybalt against his will: he spat and writhed, digging his claws into the alabaster skin of her arms over and over again. It didn’t do him any good. She was healing as fast as he could hurt her, and only a few drops of blood were able to escape and fall to the floor.

Amandine walked calmly back to her cages, the purpose of which was suddenly, terribly obvious. She dropped Tybalt into the larger of the two and slammed the lid before he could leap out. A knot of thorns wrapped itself around the latch, sealing it.

“No Shadow Roads for you, cat,” she said, a smug smile on her face. “My magic is greater than yours, at least while you stand within my ring of roses. Best calm yourself, or it will not go well for you.”

Tybalt’s response was an infuriated yowl before his paw lashed between the bars, claws cutting lines down her cheek.

Amandine sighed, the scratches already healing. “Or you could choose to be trouble, and learn what waits for recalcitrant cats. It’s entirely up to you.”

I struggled against the vines that held me—or rather, I struggled to find the strength to struggle. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t even blink. All I could do was watch in mute horror as Amandine turned her back on Tybalt and walked across the room to where Jazz was pinned by her own encircling cage of vines.

“Skinshifter,” said Amandine, looking back at me. “Your Fetch is a reflection of yourself. I would have thought any child of mine would have slightly better taste than to love someone who keeps their ties to Faerie on the outside—but then, you dallied with that Selkie boy before you moved on to better beasts, didn’t you, darling? I blame myself. With a human for a sire, there was nowhere you could go but down.”

She grasped Jazz’s chin firmly in her hand. The spell weakened enough for Jazz to widen her eyes in terror before Amandine was holding the beak of a vast black raven. She moved quickly, sweeping her other arm around to pin Jazz’s wings against her sides.