Page 60 of Be the Serpent

Titania stood, still wearing my best friend’s face, still not quite the dazzling woman whose blood Jessica had refused to remember. Talking to the night-haunts wouldn’t have made any difference, I realized abruptly, the same way someone might remember they’d left the oven on in the split second before a car accident took memory away forever. Jessica hadn’t been able to fully perceive Titania’s face, and so the night-haunt that swallowed her memory wouldn’t have been able to see it either.

Huh. For once, when I’d decided not to do the ridiculously dangerous thing, I’d been making the right decision. That was nice to know, even though I was about to have my own ass handed to me by the literal Queen of Faerie.

She stepped toward me, smile still on her face, as cold as any smile had ever been. Looking at her, I could finally see where Eira got it.

“So my husband set you up to kill me,” she said. “I suspected, when I saw you taking little sips of something you shouldn’t have been able to get in this world. Do you know what will happen if you do that for too long? He may have tried to warn you, but I doubt he fully understands the consequences of his own choices. He never has. The poor man gets lost so easily when I’m not with him.”

I struggled against the vines, glaring at her. They drew tighter still.

“I’m sure you know that I can’t kill you, or you would never have dared to come here on your own.”

My surprise must have shown in my face, because she blinked, and then laughed, sounding absolutely delighted.

“You didn’t know! Oh, October. I’ve known you since we were children—you in fact and me in fancy—and sometimes your willful plunge toward self-destruction still finds a way to surprise me. I can’t kill you. I can’t even do you harm, not directly. If you’d eaten the pancakes I made for you, you could have made yourself safe by making yourself mine, but I couldn’t force you to eat even if I wanted to. When my damned husband bound our precious girl to stay away from your bloodline, he bound me as well. Me, his queen! Who he should have chosen above all others! But he dallied with the Carter woman, who refused to remove herself as a broken tool was meant to do, and when she got with child, he bade me to do her no harm. He, who crossed outside our marital bed, bound me against harming his mistress!”

“So suddenly you care about fidelity?” I asked. “I know how many of the Firstborn weren’t his.”

Titania snorted. “I never kept my lovers long enough for them to inconvenience him in any way,” she said. “I got what I wanted and I cast them aside, but he was keeping her. Said my sister’s last gift had been to the girl, and that he wanted to understand why Maeve would react with kindness through her anger. Said he had to know her to know how he was going to repair the damage done to us all. Said she was important. I raged and I roared and I demanded satisfaction, and so he sent the girl and her child away to keep them safe from the harm he could not prevent me doing, but I could no more raise a hand against either one of them than I could raise a hand against you now.”

I pulled against the vines, which still refused to let me go. “This feels pretty raised.”

“You attacked me,” she said coolly. “I’m allowed to defend myself when someone attacks me.”

“You’re wearing Stacy like a sundress,” I snapped. “She asked me to kill her. You’re collateral damage.”

“And you have killed her, little rosebud,” said Titania, voice going sugar-sweet and cloying. “This is all down to you, and was always going to be. I look through the eyes of the masks I wear as through a clouded mirror. Everything is dim and distorted and controlled for the most part by their desires, but I can nudge. I can push them in the ways I want them to go, providing I allow them the freedom to grow into people I would never once have chosen to become. And when she met you, when I knew you for the bitch’s bloodline, I nudged her toward becoming your friend. I whispered in her dreams every night that you would be her dearest of companions, that you would enrich and enhance her life in every way known, and she loved you because I convinced her to.”

I stared at her. Her smile grew broader.

“I’m sorry. Was she one of the most important relationships in your life? One of the people who convinced worthless little changeling you that you were somehow worthy of love? And you see, this is why my husband always loses. You say ‘Do no harm’ to a hero and he sets his blades aside. You say the same thing to a villain and she starts looking for loopholes. I can cut you to ribbons without raising a hand or enchanting you in any way.”

I pulled against the vines again, eyes narrowed. “Stacy was her own person. You may have whispered love in her ears, but she still chose to listen, and she still loved me. You can’t taint that. You can’t unmake what we were to each other.”

“Can’t I?” Titania stepped closer, and her smile was all the crueler because the mouth that wore it was so familiar. “Here’s what you’re going to do for me, descendant of the great betrayal. You’re going to return to this insipid body’s equally insipid husband, and you’re going to convince him to remove his children from the dubious safety of your Queen’s halls. You’re going to bring them back here. And you’re going to let me have them, all four of them, so I can shed this face and move on to the next accursed life my husband would condemn me to. You can’t destroy me. You can move me forward another forty years, and make me a problem for the future. Until the children die, my geas is unfulfilled.”

“I won’t,” I spat.

“Then I’ll destroy everything you love that doesn’t belong to you,” she said. “The boy, you consider him a son, do you not? Well, Faerie doesn’t. Faerie says he’s mine. And the cat. He may be of Malvic’s line, but Malvic was of my keeping in his cradle, and I can have the cat as well, if I desire him.”

I stopped pulling against the vines for a moment, stunned by the revelation that the Lady of Flowers was so damaged, so fundamentally broken, that she had been willing to somehow warp an infant Firstborn to give herself a hold on his descendants.

She turned away from me, holding up her hand and studying her fingers like her manicure was more important than anything she was saying to me.

“The kitten as well, and the bird—and the little Torquill child you pursued so assiduously. All of them. Every person you love, save for yourself and . . . well, no. You don’t love your mother. Or the other babe she bore. Or the mortal woman who lay with my husband. Your Fetch, I suppose. I’ve not tried to harm her. I might not be able to. She filled her belly with your blood in her own remaking, and so she could be considered to be under my husband’s protection. It doesn’t matter.” The glance she tossed me over her shoulder was filled with nothing but poison.

“I can have them all, and no one can stop me. Bring me the children I need to destroy, and I’ll leave your family alone. You have my word. Keep them from me, and enjoy the fruits of your own harvest.”

She walked away then, leaving me alone in the tangle of vines. I struggled against them, unable to break free, until I heard the back door slide closed with a bang, and knew I was alone. Then, and only then, I sagged as much as the clasping vegetation would allow, and sobbed, helplessly. I couldn’t let go of my knives. If they fell into the bramble, I wasn’t sure I’d ever find them again, and I needed them. So I held them fast, and I cried, and I waited for the world to start making sense again.

I was still crying when the scent of pennyroyal and musk overwhelmed the lingering smell of roses.

“October?” called Tybalt.

I sniffled, trying to catch my breath so I could call out. Not quickly enough. The next thing I heard was a sharp inhalation, and then he was rushing into my field of vision, eyes wide and worried.

“October! What has she done to you?”

I sniffled again, mustering a watery smile. “Just tied me up a little. For the record, I’m still not into bondage.”