Page 52 of Be the Serpent

Then he twisted his hand, and with a loud snap, the prong broke off in his hand. He lowered it to the level of his chest, bringing his other hand up and beginning to knead the antler like it was clay. It yielded before his fingers, becoming a blood-streaked lump of yellowed ivory.

“There was a time when I would have been forced to strike you down dead for even asking this of me,” he said, almost casually, his hands still working. “When my ladies were both here and home, and we tried to maintain balance between us. We swore no oaths, but still, it was known that we could not be used as weapons, one against the other.”

“She swung first,” I said quietly.

His head jerked up, and he blinked at me. Then he looked back at the lump in his hands and went back to working it, smoothing away its lumps and ridges. “That shouldn’t matter. Faerie is our trinket to dangle like a star on a string, and all that it contains is meant for our enjoyment.”

“You said you’d have to kill me for asking,” I said, carefully. “I still don’t know what I asked. I wanted help. You could have just handed me a pair of nose plugs and wished me good luck.”

He shot me a weary smile. “I dislike being called upon to do this. If I’m going to do it at all, I’m going to do it properly, for the sake of the child she’s killed and the woman you’ve lost.”

He sounded so complacent that I wanted to scream. “Children,” I said instead.

“Pardon?”

“I said children.” I looked at him as levelly as I could. “You bound her five hundred years ago, and told her to move without a trace, which meant she couldn’t leave any Firstborn behind when she shed her skin and moved along to her next incarnation. I promise you this isn’t the first time. If you were to call all the night-haunts, I’m sure we’d find a dozen families and more who’d been wiped out by their own mother as soon as they were old enough to be thinking about children of their own. Only not, because they would all have been so young when they died that they’ve long since faded and been forgotten.”

“I don’t think—” protested Oberon.

I interrupted him, causing Tybalt to flinch in anticipation of the response my insolence was likely to inspire. “No, you never did, did you? How many Firstborn, sire? How many innocents? How many pieces of Faerie that never got to grow into the pillars they should have been? She destroyed them because you put her in the position to do so. Because you compelled her to do so. This is your fault.”

“Then it seems only right that I should assist in its undoing,” said Oberon solemnly, and opened his hands to show me the rough pot he had sculpted out of his own antler, complete with lid. He held it out toward me, clearly expecting me to take it.

I did. When the King of Faerie offers you something, you accept.

“Hold it open,” he said, and I did that as well.

Turning his hand so that his palm was directly above the mouth of the jar, which was no larger than the jars of pureed pears I used to buy for Gillian, he ran the edge of his opposing thumbnail over his skin. It parted easily, and blood gushed forth, fast and dark and smelling all the more strongly of the green. It was almost overwhelming. My knees shook, threatening to buckle.

“Stay as you are,” he ordered, and my knees stopped shaking. The thought of bending them was suddenly anathema. I could no more have moved than I could have spread the wings I didn’t have and launched myself into the air.

When the jar was full, he turned his hand over again and licked his palm clean, holding it out to show me the absence of a wound.

“Showoff,” I muttered.

He quirked the faintest of smiles. “You’ll want to put the lid on that as quickly as you can, before it attracts something,” he said.

I hurried to do as I was told. This automatic-obedience thing was getting old, and illustrated just how much control Oberon could have over his descendants if he wanted to. I liked it better than the sort of obedience Eira seemed to cause in her own children. Simon had wanted to do what she asked of him. Quentin’s parents had believed her when she told them blind fosterage was the right choice for them—for him. When Oberon told me to do something, I couldn’t stop myself, but I also knew I was acting on someone else’s orders. Still unpleasant. Not nearly as insidiously cruel.

“My blood carries no memory unless I will it so,” he said. “You needn’t worry about being overwhelmed by something greater than yourself.”

I blinked. That was absolutely something I would have been worried about, but probably not until I was already swallowing. He smiled at my expression.

“The situation is dire, but I have experience with heroes,” he said. “It will bolster and protect you from what my lady would do, but it will not overwhelm or devour you. Still, remember that the strength you carry is not your own, and do not grow to depend on it.”

I looked at him blankly. “I know how to ride blood, and how to borrow magic,” I said. “Sylvester Torquill taught me as best as he could, considering he thought he was trying to train a Daoine Sidhe. If you’ve pulled the memory out of this, what exactly am I supposed to be doing with it?”

“A sip, and my lady’s magic will not be able to touch you,” he said. “A swallow and your own magic will reach farther and grasp more greatly than ever it has before.”

“Okay, those are real ‘a dash and a pinch’ directions,” I said. “What’s the difference?”

“You’ll know it when you taste it.” His broken antler was already beginning to regrow, the jagged end smoothing out and stretching into a new prong, covered in soft, velvety tissue that would die and peel away when the growth was done. Sometimes biology is gross. “You can take the necessary steps to find her now, without harm to yourself.”

“Great,” I said, and closed my hand around the jar. I still couldn’t move beyond that. “Can I go?”

He looked quizzical for a moment before he seemed to remember what he’d done to me and nodded, curtly. “Of course,” he said. “Go then, little hero, and find my wife before she destroys the family of your friend.”

The tension left my legs, and I knew that I could move them again. I started to turn away, then caught myself, looking to Simon, who had remained motionless and silent throughout this conversation. “Can you please undo whatever it is you’ve done to my father?”