Page 88 of Be the Serpent

“Sure,” said Cassandra. “I was going to ask him if he and the kids wanted to stay at my place tonight. I know I wouldn’t want to go home if I were them.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I turned and made for the orangery door before anything else could come out of left field and slow me down. I needed to talk to Arden. I wanted to check on Simon and the others. I did no one any good by staying where I was, and so I moved.

The air outside was still heavy with the scent of blood, although the smell of roses was almost entirely gone. I could find it if I breathed in sharply enough, lingering under the mingled scents of all the other magic that had been slung around during the fight, but Titania herself was gone. So were most of the combatants. Only Arden, the Torquills, the Luidaeg, and Oberon remained.

Arden smiled wearily when she saw me emerge from the orangery. “I figured we were the people you’d be in a hurry to talk to,” she said. “Didn’t want to make you run all over the knowe looking for us.”

“I appreciate it,” I said, and looked around. “Where’s Jin?”

“She left some things here when the knowe sealed itself off after my father stopped his dancing,” she said. “She’s gone to make sure they’re still in her quarters, and to see if we need anything in the infirmary. She isn’t willing to leave Shadowed Hills and come home to the Woods, but she’s got a few other local Ellyllon she can talk to about maybe coming here and serving as my resident healer.”

I made a noncommittal noise. I knew Arden well enough at this point to read the glint in her eyes and recognize it for a scheme: if Jin wasn’t a member of the Court at Muir Woods by the end of the year, I would be honestly surprised.

Arden raised an eyebrow. “Got something to say, Sir Daye?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I am just an ordinary knight, making my ordinary way over to speak to the ordinary sea witch.”

“Since I’m the only sea witch you have on a regular basis, I’ll allow it,” said the Luidaeg.

“So while I would love to stay and chat, Your Highness, I need to go attend to my aunt.” I booked it over to Oberon and the Luidaeg, who had somehow become the less-frightening figures on this particular field.

The Luidaeg watched my approach with no visible emotion in her face. Oberon, on the other hand, looked perturbed, and concerned. I stopped, eyeing him.

“What?”

He paused, apparently taken aback by my blunt approach. Even after all this time, he still didn’t know me very well. “You have tasted our beginnings,” he said. “I worry for what this means.”

“I thought you said you had pulled your memory out of the blood.” I gazed at him steadily. “I don’t know that I would have accepted your ‘gift’ if not for that.”

“Unlike my daughter, I remain allowed to lie,” said Oberon ponderously. “You had the means to kill my wife at your hand, and I gave it to you. I did not do so intending that this should come to pass. I had no idea she was close enough to interfere with our lives.”

“Really?” I shook my head. “Everyone else is here. All the power players of Faerie have been showing up in the Bay Area since before I was born. I half-expect to find Maeve here, too. At this point, that would almost make more sense than the alternative.”

“If she is, I do not know it,” said Oberon gravely. “I swear to you, granddaughter, I had no idea of Titania’s location, and I have just as little notion of Maeve’s. The same holds true now. Titania left this knowe as soon as she awoke following her binding, and once she passed outside the sphere of my awareness, she vanished like the morning dew.”

“Convenient.” I hadn’t come over here to pick a fight with Oberon, no matter how tempting it was. I turned my back on him, focusing instead on the Luidaeg.

Maybe it says something about me that picking a fight with the sea witch felt like the safer of my available options, but here we are. Here I seem to be over and over again, no matter how hard I try not to be. I’ve never met a windmill I wasn’t willing to tilt at.

“Did you know.” It wasn’t a question.

“Which part?” The Luidaeg cocked her head. “That there was something strange about Karen, who can walk in dreams when no one has done that for centuries, who can see the future in a fantasy? Yes, I absolutely knew that. Did I know it was because she was secretly Firstborn, and a direct daughter of Titania herself? I did not. If I had known, I would never have helped you save her.” She smiled, sweet as sugar. “I would have let her rot in my brother’s lands before I raised a finger for one of that bitch’s babies. I love Pete, and I’ve loved others of her children, although not many, but on the whole, it’s best to let them die young and innocent and without blood on their hands. The fact that I helped her, and you, should tell you how much I didn’t know.”

I nodded slowly, accepting her words. “Okay,” I said.

But she wasn’t done. “Did I know your darling Stacy was secretly Titania in disguise, forced into a commoner’s garb by my own father for crimes he never shared with me? I mean, apart from the fact that knowing that would have meant knowing the thing I already told you I was ignorant of, on what world would I have had any reason whatsoever to suspect that might be the case? I didn’t even know he could do that. It makes me wish he couldn’t lie, since if he could hide himself and my stepmother behind walls without windows, how do I know my siblings are actually dead, and not wandering lost and unaware in this horrible mockery of a world?”

She shot Oberon a glare that could have stripped paint. I blanched. That was one family fight I wasn’t getting in the middle of, not for love nor money.

She still wasn’t done. Looking back to me, she continued, “Did I know you could unbind even his spells? Even geasa lain down by the father of us all, without whom there would be no Faerie, would be no me, would be no you? No. But I suspected, and I hoped. I’ve been grooming you for decades, helping you learn your limits and exceed them, moving the goalposts every single time you thought you could go no farther, accomplish nothing more, and I’ve been doing it because I thought there was a chance that with the proper motivation and amplification, you’d be able to unmake something similar to the web he tangled Titania in.”

It took me a moment, but I got there. Slowly, I said, “You were hoping I’d unbind you.”

“Can you blame me? I can’t lie, I can’t harm the claimed descendants of Titania, I can’t refuse to use my magic for anyone who’s willing to exploit me and meet the price. She turned me into a monster, October.” A thin thread of anguish crept into her voice. “I was always a danger to the unwary, always a predator, but I never targeted people, I never went after anyone who didn’t get in my way. And then Titania said ‘No, not enough, your gifts are too great, you have to serve as I say you serve,’ and she made me a weapon in the hands of her own children, and she left me this way. I want to be free more than I want anything else in this world, and that’s why I never told you, and that’s why you can’t do it.”

I blinked. “What?”