Page 24 of Sleep No More

How could I resist knowing?

I drew the blade across my fingertip and, when the blood rose, brought my finger to my mouth, catching it before the wound could heal. Once again, in veils of red, the world went away.

There was less of a feeling of resistance now, as if I had started breaking holes with my first glimpse into my own blood, and it was losing integrity every time I went back.

I am stepping into an outdoor courtyard that has clearly been the scene of a battle, a sword in my hand and a white dress covering my body. People are dead on the ground. The smell of blood fills the air. The man I saw before paces back and forth in front of a low platform, a complicated expression on his face.

Dropping my borrowed sword, I run for him, barely keeping my footing. He turns at the sound of my approach, and relief replaces complexity as I throw myself into his arms.

“I love this dress. Can we do this to all my clothes?”

“Sadly, no.” He lifts me and twirls me once around, like I’m some sort of princess. “I see you’ve managed to get blood in your hair.”

“You knew what you were marrying before we got here. We are still getting married, aren’t we?”

“That seems to be up to you,” says the woman on the platform before us. “You chose your path. You stood before me with a willing heart. You came back. So, are you getting married?”

“Assuming my groom’s still interested,” I say, and the man April called “Tybalt” snarls. He keeps hold of my hand as we both look up at the woman.

This is a memory. This is my memory, even if it feels like it belongs to someone else, and so I can’t recoil, can’t pull away. I want to.

I know her. I have never seen her before, but I know her. She is my mother’s sister. Tall and beautiful, with long, blue-black hair that falls to her hips and eyes as deep as the sea. Her dress is a strip sliced out of the sky, somehow wrapped around her and pinned in place. She smiles at the sight of me, displaying shark-sharp teeth.

The sea witch. Banished daughter of Maeve the Traitor and Oberon the Lost, whose deeds are legend, whose words are cutting and cruel, who destroys lives and family for fun. And she’s smiling at me as she says, “Good,” and whistles, high and shrill.

The clearing goes quiet. Nothing else would be a wise choice. She could destroy us all with a thought. There are no other Firstborn in attendance—Father is close, seated with a man I do not know, but Mother is not here.

The sea witch waves, as for attention. “Hi,” she says. “My name is Antigone of Albany, better known as the sea witch, and as I am the highest-ranking child of Oberon currently awake on this continent, I claim the right to perform this marriage. Does anyone wish to contest me?”

I do. I want to contest her so very, very badly. My aunt Eira, my mother, both stand above a disgraced, exiled creature of the deeps. But no one says anything, and it seems they’re all willing to let this continue and this is wrong, this is wrong, everything about this is wrong, I refuse to consider a world where I could be married by a monster—

But Tybalt is looking at me again, aching adoration in his eyes, and I am undone. How could I refuse a marriage, even one conducted by the sea witch, when he looks at me so? I want this. I want this so badly . . .

As if the thought controlled the moment, the scene skipped ahead, moving through no small amount of conversation, and when it stopped, the Luidaeg was smiling at me again, warmer than I would have thought possible, given the stories I knew about her. She began to speak, and I sank back into memory.

“You know, I never thought we’d make it this far. I always expected something to get in the way before we could get here. That some disaster or other would step in—and look around, it tried. The world has thrown every obstacle it could think of in your path, and you’ve just gone over them all, haven’t you? Because here we are, the least likely of families, and I can’t say we’re giving anything away or gaining anything today, because you both belong here already. Where we are is your home and has been for a long time. Do you understand how impossible that is? How ridiculous this all is? This can’t have happened, and yet it did, and now we get to see what happens next.” She pauses to look around. “Whatever happens next is probably going to require the services of a dry cleaner.”

People laugh. “This is where I’m supposed to talk about how well-suited the couple are to each other, but let’s be real here: they’re not. This should never have worked. They should never have found enough common ground to be friends, much less fall in love. I wouldn’t have been voting for this.” She shifts her gaze to me. “If you’d asked me when we met, I wouldn’t have placed my bet on today. And that’s okay. We live in stories, but we’re not stories, and sometimes the best endings are the ones no one sees coming. I’ve already asked if anyone wants to argue with me being the one to perform this wedding. Does anyone want to argue with these people being wed? If you do, now’s the time to say it.”

There had to be a reason I was still in this particular memory, one more thing the blood wanted me to know, and so I grasped it as tightly as I could, and waited for this to come to a conclusion.

“That’s as long as I’m expected to wait, and I’ll be honest, if anyone was going to object, I expected it to be the bride.” Again, laughter. “All right. My father, Oberon, and my mother, Maeve, both agreed that their children should have the ability to bind our descendants together, to keep the lines of succession clear. In their name, and in the names of your Firstborn, Malvic, first King among Cats, and Amandine the Liar, I, Antigone of Albany, better known as the Luidaeg, say you are wed in the eyes of all of Faerie. May the rose and the root shelter you; may the thorn and the oak protect you; may the branch and the tree grant you peace. Your bloodlines are joined, now and always, even if you choose to part.”

The red haze shattered as I snapped, gasping, back into the shape of my own skin, the cool air of the little room with the server at its center. I dropped the knife as I turned to gape at April. She cocked her head, looking calmly back at me.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Cait Sidhe?!” I demanded. “You really expect me to believe I was married by the sea witch to a fucking cat?!”

April blinked, several times. That was mostly disconcerting because every time she closed her eyes, her whole body vanished for several seconds, leaving the space where she had been standing empty. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Mother warned me that Titania would make her own amendments to reality as you knew it, but did not include such pejoratives.”

“April, the Cait Sidhe have been extinct for centuries,” said Li Qin. “They were killed in the great purging, along with all the other shapeshifters. Titania’s Faerie is pure. No beasts walk among us. Even the descendant lines who carry such attributes have been driven from society, pushed to the outskirts and forced to find their livings there.”

April stared at her, horrified. “The Cu Sidhe? The Roane?”

“The Roane were of the Undersea, and the Undersea is lost to us,” said Li Qin.

April flickered, apparently agitated by this piece of information. “This is . . . this is worse than Mother feared it would be,” she said. “This is horrific. And you all accepted it? Believed that this was how the world was meant to be?”