Page 34 of Sleep No More

I stopped, staring at her. Did she want me to clean it?

She paused, apparently reviewing, then tried again: “The sink is currently being used to hold dirty dishes. The sink itself is perfectly clean, and suitable for your mug. Don’t worry about rinsing it, we have a very good dishwasher.”

“I didn’t understand all of that,” I complained, and moved toward the sink. Glancing into it showed a few plates and a scattering of silverware, so I set my mug down next to them, feeling very pleased with myself for navigating this small facet of mortal life. It wasn’t much. It was still more than I could have done yesterday.

Who knew what I’d be able to do tomorrow?

Crossing to the sink put me behind Chelsea, who twisted in her chair to watch me. “Dad says you’re nice.”

“I try to be.” A biddable changeling is a changeling with few bruises and a reasonably long lifespan.

“I know what we’re asking is a lot, but . . . he says your mother can turn people’s blood from one kind into another kind?” She frowned a little, sounding baffled. “That violates, like, six dozen laws of biology.”

I winced, glaring at Etienne over her head. He had been far too cavalier with Mother’s secrets, even knowing what they could mean for August . . . and for me. Perhaps Chelsea had no connections within Faerie now, but if I could do what he asked of me, what was going to stop her tongue afterward?

“It violates no laws, because it’s magic,” I said. “It’s also a secret. You can’t tell anyone what your father’s told you. People have been killed for less.”

“‘People’ meaning ‘changelings’?”

“Yes, but not only changelings. My family would be in danger, as well as yours.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “We talk about the fae like we’re all one kind of thing, but we’re not. Some of us are plants, some of us are mammals, some of us are made of water or wind that thinks, and I’m pretty sure some of us are technically very active rocks. We’re not reliably the same species. You and I look similar, and because we’re both half-human, we’re part of the same family tree, in a way, but your dad and my mom? Not the same species at all. My mother can’t teleport. She’s descended from Oberon alone, crafted from one of his horns, which he broke off in grief when one of his wives betrayed him. Without Maeve, he said Faerie would be out of balance, and so he took steps to correct it.”

Steps that had, eventually, resulted in him retreating into slumber, effectively leaving us forever. But he’d left my mother behind with her foster family and her siblings to care for her, and Faerie had thrived in his absence. Titania chose abstinence; no more Firstborn would come after Mother, who bore the dubious honor and grave responsibility of serving as the last among her siblings, and the most accessible idol for their descendants. We were all expected to look to her to see what we were meant to do and be, and that was just one of the many reasons why my birth had been so essential.

“Oh,” said Chelsea. “So Faerie’s less like a single-species monoculture and more like a functional isolated biome?”

“I don’t know what most of that meant, so I’ll say yes, but whatever it means, if I do this, you won’t be related to your mother anymore. You’ll be the same species as your father, and not human at all. One kind of blood can’t actually be transformed into another, but it can be removed. And it can’t be undone.” I didn’t know much about Mother’s work, but what I did know was that something so wholly stolen was gone forever. Whatever they had been when they were born, not a drop of mortal blood remained in either my father or my uncle, and you can’t balance what isn’t there.

Bridget leaned over in her chair to hug Chelsea fiercely. “Don’t be afraid of what she says, my darling. We always knew this would be the end for us, and there’s nothing to fear in it. I’ll still be your mother, as long as there’s breath in my body and a life to live upon this Earth.”

“Family isn’t all about blood and relation,” said Chelsea, and I nodded, for it was a fact I knew very well: I wasn’t related to my own father, and I wasn’t adopted by him either, simply his in every way that could possibly matter.

“All right, then.” Chelsea stood, pushing her chair back, and turned to face me before saying, formally, “I am asking you to please change me to entirely fae, with no human in me at all, so I won’t be a changeling anymore, and Father can take me into Faerie, and I won’t have to hide.”

“I’ll present her as a cousin from the Golden Shore, to explain her familiarity with human customs and her occasional lapses of acceptable knowledge,” said Etienne. “I’ve been making plans for a while.”

I was sure he had been. He was one of the most meticulous people I knew. But the existence of Chelsea made something else make even less sense than it had before. I frowned.

“If you don’t hate changelings and think we’re beneath you, why did you take Quentin as your squire?” I asked. “I’ve never met someone so convinced of the importance of being a pureblood.”

Etienne grimaced. “It wasn’t entirely my own choice,” he said. “Your father’s keeper asked me to take the boy, as a favor to her, and one does not refuse the Rose of Winter if one wishes to live a comfortable life. The boy belongs to some distaff branch of her descent, off in the frozen wastes. He’ll have no power when he’s grown. Where he got this attitude, I don’t know. I’m doing what I can to leaven it as I teach him how to swing a sword and how to weave an illusionary shield that can take an arrow. Beyond that, he’s outside my influence.”

“Huh.” I turned back to Chelsea. “I can’t promise it’s going to work, or that it won’t hurt.” Dimly, I remembered Mother tweaking the balance of my blood when I’d been a child. It had been like fire in my veins, like ants made of acid running through my body and tearing at my heart. I sometimes wondered, if I’d been able to handle more of the agony, would she have made me more fae than I was now? Had my weakness denied me centuries of time by my sister’s side?

“I can take a little pain,” said Chelsea, sounding almost cocky.

“That’s good.” I pulled the knife from my belt. Flecks of my own dried blood clung to the blade. Looking at it turned my stomach. Chelsea didn’t look much happier, and I hurried to reassure her: “Don’t worry, I’m cutting myself, not you.”

“That’s not as helpful as I think you want it to be,” she muttered.

I ignored her, trying to remember the last time I’d seen Mother modify the balance of someone’s blood. She’d stopped taking me with her as soon as I was old enough to ask questions and attract notice from the householders; she was Firstborn, but she had told me more than once that someone of sufficient importance could have demanded she give me to them for a pet if I’d caught their fancy, and claiming offense in such a situation, as her position would compel her to do, would hardly be worth the fuss it would cause. It had been easier and safer to confine me to the tower. Out of sight, out of the way, out of danger.

The cutting was a part of it, I knew that; she always cut herself before she changed someone’s blood. She never had to cut much, needing only a little blood, but she was Firstborn and not part-human; I expected to bleed substantially more than she did. But that wasn’t where she started, was it?

This wasn’t alchemy or some marshwater charm built on sympathy and the interaction of raw materials. This was just magic. Everything she needed, she had with her. Even the knife was technically optional, I supposed; she could have raked her arms open with her fingernails, or bitten the insides of her cheeks until she bled. Neither of those things were fun, but neither of them required tools.

So what did she do first? What step was I forgetting?

I looked at Etienne, who was taking a drink from a mug identical to the one my cocoa had been in. He swallowed, then sniffed the remaining liquid before setting the mug aside. With that, I remembered.