Page 64 of A Divided Duty

I couldn’t remember what I’d seen when we first entered the apartment. No matter how hard I tried to force myself to remember, all I had was a vague impression of the darkness at the bottom of a stagnant pool, light, and teeth. So many teeth.

“My mother is Firstborn,” I objected.

“Not anymore,” said the Luidaeg. “She’s still Firstborn, but she’s not your mother. And did you ever surprise her when you were younger? Ever come into a room and see her jump because she hadn’t expected you? Hadn’t somehow seen you coming?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I’d never been able to sneak up on Amandine, to the point that I’d been surprised when I realized I didn’t always know exactly where Gillian was and what she was doing: part of me had assumed that sort of awareness was just part and parcel of motherhood, that having a child made you constantly connected to their location.

“No,” I said, slowly.

“She always knew, and she put her face on for you.”

“So … why…” What I wanted to ask was too big and complicated for my current limitations. I grumbled in frustration, clutching Tybalt’s hand harder, and was relieved when he tightened his own fingers in response.

“I really am sorry,” said the Luidaeg. “I didn’t expect you, and Poppy is asleep, and I still should have been more careful. This is the sort of mistake we all made when we were children, and we’re not children anymore. It shouldn’t do any lasting damage. You didn’t look at me for long enough.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I turned my attention inward instead, focusing on slowly forcing my eyes to open. They resisted me, but bit by terrible bit, light began to trickle in between my lashes, soft and bubbly with my current lack of focus. I tried harder, and my eyes opened wider, until the light became the dim glow from the overhead bulbs, and the blurry watercolor world became the Luidaeg’s living room, clean and shabby and so perfectly mundane that it seemed impossible, under the circumstances.

The Luidaeg was sitting in her armchair across from the couch, back in the human-teenager guise she favored so frequently. Her hair was pulled into a single thick braid rather than her customary pigtails, still tied off with electrical tape, and she was wearing what looked like a black silk bathrobe rather than overalls, but she looked like herself. She looked survivable and small, and I had never been so glad to see her like that in my life.

I opened my eyes all the way, widening them until I felt the stretch in my temples, then relaxed, blinking at her.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“Not all the way, but enough that I don’t think my brain’s going to melt out my ears,” I said, and turned to look at Tybalt. His eyes were still closed, but he was breathing, and looked more like he was asleep than anything else. “Luidaeg, please don’t take this as me accusing you of anything, but did you break my husband? I sort of need him.”

“He just bounces back a little more slowly than you do, that’s all,” she said. “He’ll be fine. What happened to the two of you? You weren’t wearing that much blood when I set you on your way.”

“Most of it’s not mine,” I said.

“You know, coming from most people, that would sound ominous. From you, it sounds like you finally figured out how to keep your hands to yourself. Explain.”

Right. “Well, we wound up on the Road where you put us, and Tybalt stayed close enough that we didn’t get hurt or lost or anything while we walked to the skerry. Acacia led us to Luna. Who was severely injured, as was Acacia herself.”

“Sap or blood?”

“What?”

“Was my sister bleeding sap or blood? She can’t always decide whether she wants to be a woman or a willow tree, and when she gets hurt, if it’s shallow, she weeps sap. It’s not until she’s bleeding that you need to worry.”

“Blood,” I said. “Lots and lots of blood. Very red, very mammalian. She turned herself into a tree for about eight hours, and she was healed when she turned back into a woman.”

“Healed, but not restored,” said the Luidaeg. “Be careful of her, for a time. She is naturally what her daughter turned herself into, and until her body has time to remake the blood she lost, she’ll be almost entirely vegetable. She’ll feel slowly, have compassion even slower. She’s not automatically dangerous when she’s in this state, but she’s not as safe as she would normally be, either.”

“Are you saying that compassion is stored in blood?”

“No, only that Cacie got the blood from our father and the sap from her mother. Magic is what’s stored in blood: my sister’s sap-veined children have always been rather more limited in what their magic can achieve, because they can only reach for as much as they need to survive. It’s why Dryads flit in and out of trees and encourage plants to grow more quickly, but don’t transform people into forests for their offenses. The Blodynbryd are bloodless. All their small magic goes to the roses, and to the strange alchemy of their tinctures. They can be incredible healers, but they’ll never weave an illusion. They’ll never turn a hunter into a stag. Acacia was born a mixture of blood and sap. Luna was born in sap, but able to steal a bit of her father’s magic, and with it, the blood she so desired. She made herself as her mother was, and then she lost that change when she was separated from Hoshibara’s skin.”

“Huh,” I said. “So Acacia’s low on blood right now—and consequentially, low on feelings—but she’ll get it back with time, the way Luna didn’t. The way Luna never will.”

“Yes.”

“Good to know. Luna was also badly hurt, but bleeding sap, obviously, and I was able to heal her by feeding her my blood.”

“Be careful of that wording,” said the Luidaeg. “You didn’t heal her, you enabled her to heal herself. Don’t go talking about yourself like you’re some sort of panacea. There are people who will take that seriously, and they could cause you a lot of trouble.”

“I guess I don’t see the difference.”

“A normal Blodynbryd wouldn’t be able to use your blood like that. Luna can because she stole a bit of her father’s magic once, and taught her body how to borrow in a way that doesn’t come naturally for all descendant lines.” I must have looked utterly baffled, because she sighed. “Toby. I know you’ve given blood directly to a wide variety of people who you’d decided would be better off not being dead, and they’ve obliged you by not being dead. How many of them have been Daoine Sidhe?”