Page 13 of A Divided Duty

I also wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t been. When he’d been serving her, Simon had been so desperate to please her that he would have done anything, including coming up with the most diabolical ways possible to hurt his brother’s family. I was coming to love Simon as a part of my family, but that didn’t mean I had any illusions about the man he’d been before. We don’t get to forget our pasts just because we choose to seek a better future.

“I lost just as much as you did when I went looking for you,” I said, voice stiff and words careful. Luna didn’t care about hurting me, not anymore. I still had to care about hurting her. Until the moment I was ready to burn the last of my bridges with Sylvester, I had to care. “I lost my entire life. I lost my daughter. And then I went and built myself something new. I figured out how to live again, and how to love again, and that the only way Gillian was ever going to let me be a part of her life was if I gave her the space she needed to work through her justified anger. Because she’s right when she says I chose Faerie over her. I chose duty over her. I lost everything, Luna, so don’t go pretending you’re the only one who suffered at all during those fourteen years. I am not saying that what I went through was worse than what happened to Raysel. She was a child. Children should be safe and happy, not locked in endless darkness because the adults are fighting. But I didn’t put her there, and everything I’m doing now is so that maybe, someday, she can come back to you. You can’t force her. If you force her now, you’re going to lose her forever.”

“Are you threatening me?” asked Luna, sharply.

“No, just telling you the truth,” I said. “You agreed, when we all got back to the real world, that the four months we’d spent in Titania’s Faerie wouldn’t count against her term of service. We should have four months left before anyone even asks her whether or not she feels like her debts are discharged. You can’t really intend to force the issue in three days.”

“I spoke out of haste when I said that,” said Luna. “I was disoriented by the return of my memories, I still thought myself half in the safety of my father’s halls.”

“You called those halls a prison, once.”

“I was a foolish child when I thought of them as such. I should have recognized them as the haven that they were. Far away from the mortal world. Far away from the warring courts and the machinations of cruel Firstborn.”

I decided not to mention the fact that both her parents were Firstborn. Like me, Luna had a closer relationship to the First of our kind than was strictly normal, or advisable.

“If I had gone home when I realized I was with child, Raysel would never have been harmed,” said Luna. “My father’s magic would have granted a measure of peace to the blood within her, with no need to change a drop of it into anything other than the brilliant blend that she was born to be. Simon would never have been able to touch her, no matter who ordered him to do so. Everything could have been perfect, if I had just carried her home when she was still safe within me.”

Behind her, Sylvester looked absolutely stricken. I guess having your wife say she would have been better off if she’d run away while she was pregnant with your only child will do that to a person. I couldn’t even imagine the look on Tybalt’s face if I’d said something similar.

“But you didn’t do any of that,” I said. “And as Titania has so helpfully just shown us, you can’t turn back time, whether or not you want to. This is the world we get to live with. Raysel was hurt. Raysel is hurt. She deserves the time to heal. Please. Luna, if you love the girl at all, if you care about her feelings and what she wants, please, let her finish her term of service. Maybe in another four months, she’ll say she’s ready to come home.”

“You just don’t want to lose your little servant, do you?” she demanded.

I laughed, almost hysterical, unable to stop myself. “As servants go, she’s pretty useless,” I said. “She didn’t know how to do anything when she first came to live with us. May’s been teaching her how to do things like laundry and the dishes, but she’s never going to be the kind of houseguest who makes things easier just by being there. And that’s okay. I get to decide what it looks like to serve my house, and for Raysel, I’ve decided that service looks like working to get better. Like talking to her therapist and going outside and having friends. I want her to be able to have the life she wants to have, and not the life anyone else has planned for her.”

I knew almost as soon as I had spoken that I had said the wrong thing. Luna’s face hardened. “You mean you know my daughter and what she needs better than I do,” she said.

“No, I didn’t mean that at all,” I said, trying to salvage some small fraction of her goodwill. “I just mean that sometimes it’s easier for people who have a little distance. The Luidaeg has done better with Gillian than I could ever have hoped to do—”

“You think I’m a bad mother.”

Yes. “No, no,” I said quickly. “I think you’re hurt, too, and you need some time to heal before you try to take care of someone else. I think you need to stop focusing so much on what you want Raysel to be, and more on how you can make it safe for her to be whoever she is.”

“You don’t know my child better than I do.”

“Right now, I sort of do. I’m sorry, but what you want from her is bad for her. She can’t come back here and be your devoted little girl. She can’t be part-Blodynbryd again. She can’t be someone she’s not. But she’s a wonderful young woman. She’s smart and she’s funny when she feels safe enough to be, she’s an absolutely terrible cook, unless she’s making shepherd’s pie. For some reason, her shepherd’s pie is always perfect. There are so many wonderful things about Raysel, and you’re going to risk missing them all.”

“Listen, you little bitch.” Luna took a step toward me, causing Tybalt to growl deep in the back of his throat, warning her off whether or not he intended to offer her that kindness. “You have had my daughter away from me for a year. She has been outside of my halls and my hands for a year. You don’t get to keep her for another four months on a technicality, no matter what that hopped-up little bookseller—”

“Luna,” said Sylvester warningly.

“—no matter what the Queen in the Mists says,” amended Luna smoothly. “I don’t want you here.”

I shot a quick glance at Sylvester. This was his chance to prove he understood what was at stake, and if he didn’t take it—if he couldn’t take it—I wasn’t sure there was any point in continuing to fight for my place in his service.

“Luna,” said Sylvester again, more quietly this time, almost resigned. “Sir Daye is a knight of my household, and she has never done anything but honor her oaths, not even when it would have been easier for her to set them aside. Her service has been impeccable. It doesn’t matter whether you want her here. I want her here. She is my knight. You have no right to deny her place.”

Luna shot him a shocked look, eyes going wide. She couldn’t have looked more betrayed if he’d hauled off and hit her. “You would choose her over me?”

“No,” he said, with aching honesty. “She is my knight, and you are my wife. I can’t choose either of you over the other, because you play different roles in my world. But in this conflict, in this fight, she’s in the right. You can’t cast her out of the place where she belongs. Not unless she does something to betray us.”

“She’s keeping our daughter away from us!”

“She’s doing as Raysel has requested. She’s honoring our daughter’s wishes like they matter, like Raysel is allowed to want things. Raysel is wanting things again, things that aren’t based on hurting people! Do you understand how incredible that is? She’s getting better, because October is giving her the space she needs to get better. We can’t take that away from her in the guise of loving her. That would be…” He paused. “That would be cruel, Luna. I don’t want to be cruel to my child, and I don’t think you want to be cruel to her either. How could you want that? You love her. I know you love her.”

Luna stared at him. “I had no idea you felt that way,” she said.

“I didn’t know either,” said Sylvester. “Not for sure.”