Page 42 of The Brightest Fell

The corner of the Luidaeg’s mouth twitched. “That’s not the right question. I already told you that I don’t know where she is or where she went. Ask the right question.”

“Luidaeg, why did my sister, August Torquill, ask you for a candle?”

“Now there’s the right question.” She stood a little straighter. “Amandine’s line—your sister, your mother, yourself—is responsible for the loss of our King and Queens, and there are those who say that only Amandine’s line can set right what they made wrong.”

“Are you one of the ones who says that?”

The Luidaeg’s eyes flashed black for a moment before returning to green. “I think there may be other ways, but your line is the cleanest of them. The fewest deaths will be lain at the root of the oak and the ash if you fix what once was broken. Your mother never wanted to be a hero. She hated what her mother’s actions and our father’s blood had lain upon her, hated the expectation that she would sacrifice herself for the sake of others. She wanted to be a rose in a walled garden, and not one growing wild by the side of some crumbling, half-forgotten well. So she refused. She could have ended this centuries ago, and she refused.”

“You can’t blame Amy for the actions of her mother,” said Simon, stepping up beside me. “It’s not fair.”

“Oh, and do you know who her mother was? Did she tell you, failure, when she took you to her bed and promised to be true?” Simon looked away. The Luidaeg laughed. The sound was bitter. “I thought not. She may have loved you—my sister is capable of love, even if she spends it like a miser—but she’s not so capable of trust. I don’t blame Amandine for what her mother did. I blame her for what she, herself, chose not to do. I blame her for leaving us to clean up her mess. And I blame her for not preparing her daughter for what had to be done.”

The Luidaeg turned to me. “August came to me and asked me for a candle. She asked to be set on the Babylon Road, because she’d heard Blind Michael had in his keeping a changeling child powerful enough to be capable of opening doors into the deeper realms. She was convinced that Oberon had sealed himself in Mag Mell. Had all the scraps of prose and prophesy to prove it to herself, to be certain she was on the right trail. Had the burning need to prove herself to her mother.”

“What did she pay you?” asked Simon.

The Luidaeg looked at him calmly. “She gave me her way home.”

“You—” His eyes widened, and he lunged.

Fortunately for him, he was positioned so that I was able to grab him and keep him from getting to her. He was taller than me, but he wasn’t stronger; he’d never been a fighter. I, on the other hand, have always had pretty good upper body strength, on account of all the stabbing.

“Let’s not attack the immortal sea witch today, shall we?” I said. “The Luidaeg has to give you what you’re willing to pay for. That’s the deal. She doesn’t have a choice.”

“When I asked for it, I didn’t think she’d give it up,” said the Luidaeg. “Sometimes my prices are set to serve as a deterrent. She was supposed to go home. You were supposed to have taught her never to undertake that sort of quest alone. You were supposed to have been clever enough to counteract my father’s heroism.”

“You took my daughter!” shouted Simon. “You left her with no way back!”

“If she’d managed to find Oberon, she wouldn’t have needed her own way home. His would have been strong enough for the both of them, and then I would have been allowed, by the law of the exchange, to return her own. Really, it was her failure that doomed her, and not me.” The Luidaeg sighed, looking briefly regretful. “I screwed up. I thought she’d go back to you and find another way.”

“Instead, she went into the woods, and she didn’t come back,” I said. “Luidaeg, we need to follow her.”

The Luidaeg frowned. “That’s not something I can give you for free.”

“I know.”

“It has to cost.”

“I know that, too.”

“You’re too deep in debt to be let off lightly; if I had a choice, I wouldn’t bargain with you at all. Think hard before you do this, October, or—”

“Are you kidding?” I cut her off, taking a step toward her. In that moment, it didn’t matter that she was the sea witch, or that she was Firstborn, or that she could probably have killed me with a flick of her wrist. I didn’t care. “Please tell me you’re kidding, because I can’t believe you would think I hadn’t already thought about this. My mother has Tybalt, Luidaeg. She has Tybalt, and she has Jazz, and she’s going to keep them until I bring August back. Me. So, yeah, I am going to do whatever is in my power to find August, because without August, I’m dooming two members of my family to eternity in a cage. Do you understand? I haven’t got a choice. I have to do this.”

“And I’m her squire, which means I have to do it with her,” said Quentin, stepping up next to me. His jaw was set. In that moment, there was nothing of the child I had mentored and worried about for all these years; I was looking at the man.

“I want my daughter back,” said Simon, stepping up on the other side of me.

The Luidaeg looked between us, focusing on each of us in turn, and finally said softly, “You’re fools, all of you. Fools and heroes, and I don’t know if there’s a difference.”

“Sylvester used to say there wasn’t a heroic bone in my body,” said Simon. “I suppose I’d enjoy proving him wrong.”

“Mother preserve me,” muttered the Luidaeg, bowing her head for a moment. When she lifted it, her eyes were black. “Here is the cost of a candle, if a candle’s what you desire: I can’t close the way back, because you owe me, and I don’t give up on what’s mine. So I’ll give you what Amy didn’t. I’ll give you a deadline. Seven days out and seven days back, a fortnight to learn if you’re on the right track, and if by then your path’s not clear, you’ll come to me and stay a year.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to hear the binding in the rhyming cadence of her words. They wove over and around us, tying themselves tight before I could protest. Not that I was going to. If this was the only way to get Tybalt and Jazz back—to bring August home—then it was what I was going to do.

“Fourteen days. At the end of it, you’ll have your sister, or you’ll be my servants, unable to deny or defy me, doing whatever I ask. All of you.” The Luidaeg held out her hand, palm upward. “Swear.”