Page 17 of A Divided Duty

“I’m not happy that she needs the time, no. I wish she had been less direly wounded, that she could heal here as well as she’s healing in your home. But I’m happy not to have her here as she was before she was elf-shot. If that makes me a terrible person, so be it. She tried to kill her mother. She did kill the Lady of the Tea Gardens. I could never have felt safe with her in the knowe alongside my daughter, not having seen her as she was in those days.” Etienne sighed heavily. “I’m glad to know she’s doing better now. I want her to keep getting better, however long that may take.”

“Luna doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Luna can’t forgive her for leaving, you for helping her leave, or Sylvester for allowing her to go. Luna can’t even forgive Queen Windermere for allowing the claim of offense, when she had no fair way of refusing it. In Luna’s eyes, you’ve all conspired against her.” Etienne looked at me, clearly miserable. “Luna is furious and in pain, and in her pain, she lashes out and hurts her husband in ways which then reflect out onto all of us. I don’t think she’ll know peace until her girl comes home again.”

Chelsea looked away, not saying anything, and in that moment, I understood the impulse to stay silent. There didn’t seem to be anything productive left to say.

“How’s Bridget?” asked Tybalt, steering us toward a hopefully happier subject.

“She’s well,” said Etienne. “She’d love to see you both, if there’s time, and any baby pictures which you may have.”

“Poor fool,” I said, with a smile. “Take us to your chambers.”

He waved his arm, opening a portal, and we all piled through, leaving the hallway outside Sylvester’s study behind.

FIVE

BRIDGET WAS CHARMING AS ever, a bubbly, amiable presence who made everything both calmer and clearer; it was easy to see why Etienne had fallen in love with her to begin with, and why he’d fallen in love with her all over again after he found out about their daughter. Life in the Summerlands clearly suited her. The lines around her eyes were getting shallower as she dined on a diet of fresh Faerie foods, and drank our sweet wines, and breathed in entirely unpolluted air. The Summerlands can distort the flow of time, especially for changelings and mortals. As long as she stayed here with her husband and daughter, Bridget could potentially live for hundreds of years without a drop of fae blood in her veins.

She clucked and cooed over our baby pictures in a truly gratifying manner, before asking us the question we were learning to dread above all others: when we were planning to give Miranda a little brother or sister.

Tybalt coughed. I hemmed and hawed and finally said, in a remarkably well-controlled voice, “I don’t know if we will be. I didn’t enjoy pregnancy very much either time I’ve done it, and honestly, one baby to worry about is more than enough for us. Maybe in a few years.”

“It must be nice to have the time to wait,” she said, shooting a look over at Etienne. “To not feel like there’s a ticking clock dictating the limits of your fertility.”

Chelsea wrinkled her nose. “Mom, gross. Just because other people are having babies, that doesn’t mean you need to go getting some sort of baby-fever thing. You and Dad don’t need to have another kid. You’ve got me.”

“Yes, but it would be nice to experience raising a child together in truth, and not only in a world made for us by a monster,” said Bridget. She looked at Etienne again. “You were my fairy tale made flesh, Chelsea, and I’m a folklorist. I’m always ready to tell another story.”

Tybalt coughed into his hand. “This is beginning to sound like a conversation we have no place in,” he said, to me. “Are you ready to go and see if your liege and his brother have finished their discussion?”

“We really should get back,” I agreed. “And I’d like to say goodbye to Simon before he goes back to Saltmist. He doesn’t make it to the surface often enough these days.”

“Can you blame the man?”

“I can’t.” I turned back to Bridget, smiling. “So I think we’re gonna go. The lemonade was great, and so were the cookies.”

“I used a secret family recipe that’s been printed on the package for the last hundred years,” she said. “Chelsea, are you going to stay home for a bit, or go back to October’s?”

“I promised Raysel and the others that I’d be back so we could finish our movie,” she said. “We’re watching Ever After. None of them have seen it, and you know it’s one of Drew Barrymore’s best performances.”

“I know better than to get between you and a Cinderella retelling,” said Bridget fondly. “Come kiss your mam, and then you can go.”

Chelsea did as she was told before she waved her hand, opening a portal to the hall outside the study. The smell of her magic was similar to Etienne’s, sycamore smoke and calla lilies, but unmistakably not the same. “Everybody out!”

We stepped through the portal to the hall. Chelsea followed, letting the portal close behind her.

“Sorry about the parents,” she said. “Mom’s getting a little weird about the whole ‘baby’ thing, and Dad’s so used to how fertility works for the fae that he doesn’t think there’s any chance of them having another kid. I don’t care that much either way.”

“You don’t?” asked Tybalt.

“Nope. I’m moving out soon, it’s time for me to focus on college, and I can’t keep commuting from Shadowed Hills forever. I’m thinking of commuting from Muir Woods instead.”

“Did Arden offer you a court position?” I asked.

Chelsea smiled, looking remarkably pleased with herself. “She needs a court chauffer,” she said. “For when she or the prince aren’t available to transport visiting nobles. It’s not a standard position outside of Tuatha households, but she remembers her father having one, and she’d like to do the same.”

“And I’m sure you having a literally impossible range doesn’t have anything to do with her wanting to get your loyalty locked down and under oath,” I said dryly.