Page 94 of The Innocent Sleep

“That’s probably a good thing. They’re both going to be traumatized by this—I mean, everyone is, they’re not special, my stepmother is what happens when you give a narcissist infinite cosmic powers and no one who can tell her ‘no,’ she’s basically a mass traumatic event with legs—but they don’t need to be hurt by each other on top of that. Simon hasn’t always been my favorite person. Honestly, neither has October. That doesn’t mean he deserves the crap he’s been through. There’s a reason the Firstborn withdrew when we did.”

“Forgive me, but I’ve never quite managed to understand it.”

She shot me a thin, strained smile. “Our parents were gods. We were demigods, to steal the term from the Greeks. We made mountains. Our parents made worlds. And then our children, our wonderful, strange, varied children . . . you were powerful, yes, and glorious in ways we couldn’t have predicted, but you weren’t divine. Compared to us, you were so fragile, so easily destroyed. You lived faster, moved faster, added more urgency to everything you did, because you couldn’t imagine eternity the way we could. And that was fine. You didn’t resent us or hate us for being more than you were, because we were less than our parents. We weren’t the summit of everything. And then Maeve’s Ride was broken.”

Her smile faded, and she hissed with pain as she pulled her smoking claw from the lock and inserted the next one in the line. “Those of us who were her descendants lost our mother and our protector that night. My stepmother saw her opportunity, and allowed her own children new freedom to harry and attack us, driving us to the edges of the world, and while that was happening, our children began to resent the fact that we couldn’t protect them, and they couldn’t protect themselves. They started to hate us. Father didn’t actually help by sealing Stepmother away. Her kids stopped attacking us without knowing they had her to back them up, so he saved a lot of lives, but the resentment was there, and growing. Then he left, and there was nothing in Faerie more powerful than we were. We weren’t supposed to be running Faerie! We weren’t kids, but we weren’t heirs, either. We didn’t have the training. And all our kids were getting madder and madder about the things we could do and they couldn’t. So those of us who were still around got together and agreed that we’d do like our parents had done. We’d fade, and let our kids be the most important things in the room. Maybe then they’d sort their shit out. We’re too powerful to go around making problems for our descendants.”

“You never vanished.”

The Luidaeg grimaced. “I’m bound. And someone ordered me to stay accessible, so that I could become a proper monster. Some of us went into hiding, as you know, while others fucked off completely. And some of us died, of course. But Simon, man. That poor boy’s been the target of two Firstborn, off and on, for most of his life. It’s not a pleasant place to be. With those two fighting over him, it’s no wonder he’s messed up in the head.”

“What’s so special about him?”

“Amy had him, which meant he got a little more practice at telling us ‘no’ than most fae tend to have, Cait Sidhe notwithstanding, you stubborn assholes,” she said, and gave her claw a vicious twist. Something clicked. She withdrew that claw, and inserted the next. “And so when he ran into sister dearest, he told her ‘no’ to her face. That was unusual enough to be charming, and to be something she had to destroy. So she started trying to take him away from Amy. There’s nothing special about the poor bastard, except for the fact that he’s managed to survive. Like father, like daughter, I guess.”

My attempt at a smile came out somewhat twisted. Positive as it was for October to have people she cared about in her life, I still wasn’t sure how I felt about one of those people being Simon Torquill. Well, there were worse people she could have adopted and brought home with her. This experience could have left her with a new appreciation of her mother, for example. I probably couldn’t have been calm about that.

October was offering Simon her hand. When he took it, she pulled him to his feet, and they embraced, quickly, before turning to head toward us. August rose and trailed along behind, looking as if she wasn’t entirely sure of her own welcome. Raysel watched the Luidaeg with hopeful intensity, while Dean leaned against the wall near Garm, merely waiting.

When October came close enough to see what the Luidaeg had done to her hands, she blanched, asking, “Luidaeg, are you—?”

“I’m fine,” snapped the Luidaeg. “This hurts like a fucking bitch and a half, but it’s nothing I can’t handle, and if you just shut up and let me—get—this!”

There was a loud click from inside the lock, and the door swung open, apparently weighted so that it didn’t need anyone to touch it when it wasn’t locked. She made a triumphant sound and took a half-step back, shaking her blistered hands in front of herself. This close, I could see how badly burnt the skin on her fingers was, charred and blackened by the proximity to the iron in the door. She glanced at me, and I nodded. I’d keep my mouth shut about how badly hurt she was, at least until she wanted to say something.

“We’re out,” said the Luidaeg, voice bitter-bright with pain and irritation. “Now we storm the castle with . . . no weapons, not enough fighters, and two people who still think this is the way the world is supposed to be. Isn’t this going to be fun?”

“No,” said Dean, opening his eyes.

“I do some of my best work while dramatically underprepared,” said October. “Good job on the door.”

The Luidaeg looked at October without responding, expression going neutral before she nodded once, tilting the gesture upward instead of down, so that it was an acknowledgment rather than an agreement, and stepped out of the cell to the waiting hall.

The rest of us followed her. I waited until October was by my side again before I moved, pacing her, unwilling to let her out of arm’s reach while we walked into danger, and to her credit, she didn’t try to motion me away, but seemed to understand the reasons for my anxious closeness, and bumped her shoulder against my arm as we walked, acknowledging my presence. The hall was long and narrow, lined with iron doors and lacking any living guards. This wasn’t where you put people to wait for trial. This was where you put people so you could forget about them.

I sniffed the air, searching for the scent of Cait Sidhe under the rotting straw and iron. I didn’t find it, and while the iron was beginning to confuse my senses, it wasn’t yet so far along that I wouldn’t have been able to detect her presence. Wherever they had put Ginevra, it was, mercifully, not here.

I could feel the iron settling in my joints, making them ache, now that we were out of the cell and moving relatively freely. The others seemed to be feeling the effects in their own ways. October and August looked entirely fine, while Garm and Dean moved a little stiffly yet didn’t seem to be actively suffering.

Simon and Raysel, on the other hand, were breathing heavily and moving slowly, their discomfort visible and pronounced. After the second time Simon stumbled, October stopped and frowned at him.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

His smile was terrible, the rictus of a dying man. His voice, however, was steady enough as he said, “So much better than I was yesterday, or the day before, or four months ago, when you pressed the blood back into my body and compelled my heart to beat. Truly, October, I’m fine, and will only improve from here. I have never had this much to live for.”

I stayed where I was as the Luidaeg moved to stand next to her, mirroring her concern. “The Daoine Sidhe have always been more sensitive to iron,” she said. “I never worked out exactly why it should be so, only that it is. It does their First no more damage than it does to the rest of us, but her descendants burn with it. Dean’s Merrow heritage will have shielded him, at least a little. Simon will suffer.”

“I’m as Daoine Sidhe as my uncle,” muttered Raysel, voice too low for anyone else to hear. I turned. She was beside me, face pale and pinched, wincing with every breath she took. “But he’s the one who tortured me. Why is everyone so concerned about him?”

“People are complicated, Raysel,” I said. “Are you well, apart from the iron? Did October unbind your memories?”

“They were never bound,” said Raysel, bitterly. “Apparently I don’t get to exist in a ‘perfect’ Faerie, since Mother would never have fled her parents, and so I got tossed onto the family estate to rot where no one would remember me.”

I blinked slowly to cover my shock. “Blind Michael’s lands?”

She nodded, expression grim.

“You’ve been there this whole time?”