Page 76 of Be the Serpent

“Alive, and too direly injured to escape Blind Michael’s lands. Two girls, one with a chance to survive if only she could get free, the other with no way of escaping.”

“You’re justifying and you know it,” I said. “Luna asked her for permission, and that’s the only reason I can forgive her at all, but Hoshibara was a child. She didn’t know what she was agreeing to.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“It’s been too long. She’s not with the night-haunts anymore. But I know she was too young to die the way she did.”

“That’s on Blind Michael, not on Luna,” said Sylvester. “I’m not here to defend her, but I’m not here to blame her for more than she should carry, either. When I met her, she was living as a Kitsune, cut off from the green world she had always been a part of before, trying to navigate existence as a mammal, lost in a place where she knew no one, understood nothing, where her father’s name was a curse used to terrorize children. She couldn’t even tell people where she had come from without mentioning him, and if she did that, she was something to be afraid of. Her heart was beating for the first time. Can you even imagine how disorienting that must be? To have a heartbeat, when you never needed one before?”

“No, but I know what it feels like to stop having lungs, when you always took them for granted.” Sylvester reddened, turning away again. I watched him closely. “Maybe if I’d known, if I’d approached Simon as a parent, or even as an uncle, rather than sneaking around behind him, I wouldn’t have to know what that feels like.”

Sylvester sighed. “We can’t change the past. I’m trying to apologize, October. I’m doing a poor job of it, I can see that, but . . . I’m trying. Will you please at least let me try?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll let you try.”

“That’s all I have the right to ask of you.”

“Yeah. It is.” I shrugged. “You said you’d try. Keep going.”

“For Luna, mammalian emotion was something new and novel, something that came with the skin she had taken, that changed the way her mind worked so completely that she didn’t tell me of her true origins until she learned she was pregnant. She had never felt love before, she said, not the way she did now. She had known affection, and cared for her mother, but she didn’t burn as a mammal burns.”

“So?”

“So when she lost her Kitsune skin, she lost the ability to love the way we both need her to,” he said. “I do my best to placate her, to cater to her needs, because she is my wife, and while she may not love me right now, or ever again, I love her completely, and I always will. I have hopes that, given time, she may recover some of what she’s lost—without stealing another person’s skin to do it. I want my Luna back, and sometimes I feel as if I’m living with a stranger.”

Because he effectively was. Still, it was a sobering thought. How would I respond if something similar happened to Tybalt? We’d been together for so much less time than Sylvester had been with Luna, and yet I already knew that I would tear down the sky if that was what it took to bring him back to me.

“So much of what she’s doing, what she’s done, has been her lashing out in confusion,” he said. “I may have enabled it more than I should have, because she’s still my wife and I still love her, and I want to find a way for us to exist together. But you’re too dear a price to pay for that, and I’m sorry.”

My eyes burned with tears. I blinked them away, turning my face back to the door. “The apology is appreciated, if not entirely well timed,” I said. “Can we talk about this more later? We could grab coffee or something. On neutral ground.”

Sylvester jerked upright slightly, then smiled at me. “I would like that very much.”

Tybalt came staggering out of the shadows, hair ruffled and clothing askew. “October!” he exclaimed, heading straight for me. “We have to go!”

“Go where? And what happened? Why do you look like you were just in a barfight?”

“Because I essentially was,” he replied. “She’s here. Outside the orangery. Everyone who wasn’t evacuated before her arrival is either fighting for her or against her, depending on who claims their fealty.”

I blanched. “All right, we—”

“We can’t take the shadows,” he said. I stopped, blinking at him. “You shouldn’t have sent me back into them. You knew they were compromised. You knew she had her tangled briars there, ready to catch hold.”

“Tybalt, what—”

“You should run now.” He said it with absolute serenity, like it was the most reasonable thing in the entire world. “She can’t claim anyone whose fealty is too far opposed to her—not easily. And my fealty is first to my Court, and then to my heart. Well, the Court is partially of her making, and true love’s kiss doesn’t break every curse. I’m fighting as hard as I can. I won’t be able to fight much longer.”

My stomach twisted. Titania was in his head again? I didn’t have enough of Oberon’s blood remaining to pull the compulsion off of both of them, and without freeing her, we were all doomed.

“You’ll fix this,” said Tybalt. “I know you will. Now, both of you.” His lips twisted into a feral smile. “I suggest you run.”

I grabbed Sylvester’s hand and I ran down the hall as fast as I could, towing him behind me. There was a snarl, and I knew Tybalt had departed for the Shadow Roads.

“Light would be awesome, please!” I yelled. “Light, and a clear path to the orangery!”

The lights overhead flickered and brightened, chasing shadows away. I kept running.

Sylvester finally broke my grip and pulled up next to me, a quizzical look on his face. “Will the knowe rearrange itself to suit you?” he asked. “Is that why your visits to Shadowed Hills sometimes leave the parlors all askew?”