Page 85 of The Unkindest Tide

“Yes,” I said. My tongue felt thick and my throat felt tight. I didn’t want to do this to her. I didn’t want to stand here and make things harder, for either one of us. I didn’t want to look the sea witch in the eye and tell her that I didn’t want to serve her.

Sometimes heroism sucks.

“What you want to do to the Selkies, what you want me to do to the Selkies . . . it isn’t fair.”

Slowly, the Luidaeg blinked. Slowly, she stepped toward me, until we were almost nose-to-nose, until I could feel her breath against my skin. I stood my ground. It was the only thing I could think of that might keep this from getting even worse.

“What do you mean, ‘fair’?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Is it fair that my children are dead? Is it fair that the night-haunts found them butchered on the shore, their magic and hearts carved away, so there was no sustenance for the flock in the feasting? I called my sister’s children to me when my own were lost, hoping to see their beloved faces on the wings of the wind, and all I found was weeping, because they weren’t there. Was that fair? When did you become so concerned with fairness?”

“When people kept pushing me into situations that demanded I figure out how to be a hero,” I said. “It’s not fair. The Selkies here aren’t the ones who killed your children. Most of them wouldn’t have any idea how to hold the knives. They’re scared and confused and they don’t want to give up everything they’ve ever known for the sake of a single day’s repayment, but they’re not your enemies. They’re your descendants. Sort of. Technically.” They belonged to her as much as the Roane had, as much as the scarce surviving Roane still did. They were her creations and her responsibility.

“Whether or not it’s fair is beside the point,” said the Luidaeg. “I said I’d do this. That means I have to do this. That’s the way it works for me. I can’t lie, and breaking my word on purpose would make me a liar. Do you want to see what happens to me if I try to break my geas? Because I don’t. I’ve . . . I’ve seen it before, and there was no point in you saving my life if you’re going to make me throw it away on some wild fit of idealism. Do you understand? I don’t have a choice. There’s no reason for us to have this conversation. It can’t change anything.”

“It doesn’t have to change everything, but I think we can change something,” I said doggedly. “I ran with Devin for years, remember?”

The Luidaeg lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, I’m used to following your wild and slightly ridiculous leaps of logic—sometimes I even enjoy them—but this one is losing me. Why does your criminal past make a damn bit of difference here?”

“Devin carved out a place for the changelings in the Mists when the Queen was actively anti-changeling, when no one wanted to give us the time of day.” When me being knighted had been the scandal of the century, despite the service I’d performed for that same Queen—and despite who my mother was. If I needed any proof that prejudice was unthinking and irrational, it was that. Too many people had known Amandine was Firstborn. I should have been treated like a princess, and instead I’d been a pariah. “He didn’t do it by lying, not all the time, not to everyone. Liars get caught. He did it by twisting the truth until it screamed, but never lying.”

The Luidaeg was ageless, immortal, and had been cursed for centuries with an inability to lie. How did she not already know this? But she was looking at me with a blankly inquisitive expression on her face, like nothing I was saying made any sense to her.

“Look,” I said, desperately, “you joke. You say things that aren’t flat statements of truth. You must have learned how to do that after you were geased. Right?”

“When Titania laid the binding on my tongue, it took me years to be able to answer anything more complex than a yes-or-no question,” she said slowly. “I couldn’t even say my name unless I was in the presence of the Roane, because I didn’t know what it was. I could lie to them. I could tell them my name was ‘mother’ in whatever language I liked, and my breath didn’t stop, and my senses didn’t dim. They were the ones who carried my name back to me, until I could say I was the Luidaeg, the sea witch, that I was Antigone of Albany, and that I was not going to forgive Titania for what she’d done. Not then. Not ever.”

I started to speak. She wasn’t done.

“She was the one who told the sister I can’t name to put those knives into the hands of my children’s killers. She was the one who wanted to see the children of Maeve wiped from the world. It’s her fault my babies are dead. And I won’t forgive her. I can’t forgive her. Not while she still binds me, because she forbade me to be a liar, and it was in honesty that I pledged to hate her until the stars went cold, and it’s with honesty that I hate her now.”

“The Selkies are not Titania,” I said. “Are you going to stand there and tell me the sins of our parents are things we can never, ever put down, no matter how hard we try? Because Pete is Titania’s daughter, and you seem to love her. I’m Amandine’s daughter, which is awful, and Janet’s granddaughter, which might be worse. People keep attacking Gillian because she’s my child, even though she’s never done a thing to any of them. Where does it end, Luidaeg? When do we stop even seeing each other, because we’re so busy attacking over the crimes of our ancestors? When do we get to rest?”

She stared at me, threads of black drifting through her seaglass eyes, and asked, “Would you be this calm if someone were standing here talking about your child’s body, your child’s murder? Would you be willing to listen to mercy masquerading as reason? Or would you want to raise the seas and drown them all?”

“That last one,” I admitted. “At least at first. I like to think that after a couple of centuries, I’d be able to see things more clearly—and you’ve had a lot more than a couple of centuries. But most of all, I believe, I truly do, that I could forgive the children of the children of the children of the people who hurt her. We have to start forgiving somewhere. If we can’t even do that, why are we still bothering?”

The Luidaeg took a deep breath, and then another, visibly composing herself. Finally, in a light tone, she said, “I should turn your organs into fish and watch you die as they suffocate inside your skin for speaking to me like that.”

“Should, but won’t,” I said.

She pulled her lips back in a snarl. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because you were lonely. When I showed up on your doorstep chasing a killer, you let me in, even though it was Luna who sent me, even though you didn’t have a lot of love lost for her. You let me in, because you were lonely, and you let me keep coming back, because you were lonely, and you let Quentin in, and Raj, and even Poppy. You don’t like being by yourself. I don’t think many people do. Your family died or left you or turned out to be assholes, and that sucks, I can’t even start to say how bad that sucks, but Luidaeg—Annie—there’s a lot of different ways to make a family. We’re your family, too. All of us.” I waved a hand, encompassing Quentin and Tybalt. “We’re your weird, dysfunctional, foundling family, and we love you, and I think you love us. So you’re not going to turn my intestines into eels or my heart into an octopus. You’ve spent too much time grieving to do that to someone you’d have to mourn.”

For a moment—just a moment—she looked stricken. Then, in a small voice, she said, “You know I can’t lie.”

“Yes.”

“You know I’ve said I was going to kill you. Repeatedly.”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “I try not to think about it most of the time. When I have to think about it, I figure we’ll find a way to break Titania’s geas before you get too close to the knives. It’s going to be okay. I really do believe that. But we need to figure out what to do about the Selkies. We can’t punish them for the crimes of their ancestors.”

“And I can’t let them swim free,” said the Luidaeg. “I made a promise. I have to keep it. We’re trapped, Toby. This is a closed cove: no one who swims here gets away.”

“No.” I shook my head. “We’re fae. We’re not trapped. I refuse to be trapped. We’re just not sure yet where the exit is.”

“May I?” asked Tybalt. His voice was surprisingly timid.

I turned.