Page 48 of Be the Serpent

“Looks like it.” She crossed to the wardrobe, rapping her knuckles against the wood. “You decent in there?”

“Halfway,” said an unfamiliar voice, lighter and higher than Jin’s had been when she went into the wardrobe. “Is it safe to come out?”

“Not sure I’d say that, but it’s a lot safer than it was.”

The wardrobe door cracked cautiously open, and a narrow face as unfamiliar as the voice appeared in the gap. Her skin was a rich medium brown, her eyes a few shades darker, and her hair darker still, verging on black in the low light. She glanced anxiously between us, then slipped out, wings buzzing in a constant expression of her nerves. They were longer than they had been, and looked closer to being able to support her weight, although they weren’t quite there yet.

A few more molts and she’d get the sky back. Ellyllon are unique among the winged fae in that they start out able to fly, lose the ability as they grow, only to get it back if they manage to live long enough. It seems like a cruel trick for Faerie to play, but then, more and more, I suspect cruel tricks are the entire point.

“Where did everyone else go?” she asked.

“Back to the receiving room.”

Jin made a sour face. “You know, I’m not sorry to have a body that changes every few years, but sometimes it can be real inconvenient,” she said. “Like when you’ve just been reunited with someone you haven’t seen since they were a kid. It’s not the best way to have continuity of friendships.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t be,” said the Luidaeg. “Can you find your way back to the receiving room?”

“I don’t know.” Jin shrugged. “We were running and then there was a door none of us had ever seen before, but Walther was bleeding and Mr. Brown was in some kind of shock, and it seemed like a good idea to get out of there as fast as we could—”

“When did you lose track of Stacy?” I asked.

“The Prince came through with Walther in tow, and Cassandra ran to meet them,” said Jin. “As soon as he put his arms around her, Stacy got very pale and asked them to move apart. He refused. She put her hands on the sides of her head and bent forward, breathing hard, like she was going to throw up on the floor. Mr. Brown ran to help her up, and then he hit the wall, and there was a very bright light, and the smell of roses, and she was gone.”

“Was someone else there?”

Jin looked at me and frowned. “Yes . . . and also no. I don’t know. It felt like someone else was there. Someone pulled Walther and Cassandra apart, and shoved the older boy and his father away, and then there was blood and everyone was screaming and we ran just as fast as we could.”

“She’s still holding on,” said Tybalt, voice gone grim. “She’s fighting. Luidaeg, is there any chance she wins this fight?”

The Luidaeg looked at him, and shook her head, answer in her eyes. “If my father did what he says he did, then no,” she said. “The mirror’s cracked. The curse is come upon her, and now is her time to either repent and rise or refuse and sink again, remade in a new image. Much like the Ellyllon, but with less purity of motivation, I think.”

Jin blinked, wings buzzing and throwing glittering dust into the air all around us. I closed my eyes for a moment. If what the Luidaeg was saying was correct, and I believed the inevitable conclusion that everything we’d heard today was pulling us toward, then my friend was already gone. She was nothing more than a night-haunt, an illusion of the person I’d loved, worn like a mask over a far older and more terrible truth.

The Luidaeg seemed to follow the line of my thoughts, because when I opened my eyes she was watching me gravely. “Jin, you should go,” she said.

“What? Why—”

“Go,” snapped the Luidaeg, eyes flashing black as she turned to look at the anxious healer.

Jin swallowed, hard. “I’ll see myself out,” she said, and ducked for the door, all but running back into the hallway on the other side.

The Luidaeg waited until the door was closed behind her before she spoke again. “I saw my father hand you a knife at the wedding,” she said. “I know he didn’t take it back. Do you have it with you?”

“I do,” I said, and touched the knife belted to my hip.

“Show me.”

Pulling the knife from its sheath felt like a promise I didn’t want to be making, as if by doing so, even when asked, I was committing to using it for its intended purpose. The Luidaeg held her hand out and I dropped the handle into her palm, letting her take the blade from me. She lifted it toward the light, squinting.

“Hmm,” she said. “I think it’s antler, rather than bone, but it should still work.”

“Oh, go—Wait, what?”

“Antler. You know what those are, don’t you?” She offered the knife back. I took it. “They’re the handles on the stag. Not that I’d suggest grabbing them if you don’t have a damn good reason, since the best-case scenario when you do that is being stuck on the end of a pissed-off stag. Bone would be better, but I guess Daddy has a renewable source for antler. He drops them every spring, right around Moving Day, and we used to use them for all sorts of things. There’s a piece in every hope chest.”

“You’re telling me that I’ve been carrying around a piece of Oberon?” I demanded, staring at the knife in my hand.

The Luidaeg nodded, apparently untroubled. “He isn’t good at showing people he likes them, but he must like you, if he’s giving you one of those. He tends to keep them close, given what they’re used for.”