Page 90 of A Divided Duty

Tybalt nodded, expression grave. “I do understand. Some things are difficult to bear, especially when they were never meant to happen. Shall we go?”

Raysel and I both nodded, and, still holding me up, Tybalt turned to go back out the door he had just arrived through. We followed, letting him take most of my weight, and bit by bit, we left the Children’s Hall behind.

Raysel let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a burst of laughter when she saw the star-filled sky above us, no longer filtered by the shattered remains of the roof. She pulled away, taking deep breaths and exhaling hard, like she was trying to push every molecule of the Children’s Hall out of her lungs.

Tybalt, on the other hand, pulled me closer to him, bracing me, and in a low voice, asked, “How much blood did you lose?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I was focusing on Raysel, and I got most of it by chewing a hole in my own cheek. Could have been a little, could have been a lot. I’m light-headed enough to think that it was probably a lot.” There was no sense in lying to him. He knew me too well for that, and he would figure me out one way or another. If I was honest, we could move past this a lot quicker.

“Little fish…” He sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t run away from me looking for opportunities to bleed.”

“We both knew Raysel was going to need help, and I’m not going to be sorry that I helped her,” I said firmly. “I know that’s not what you’re asking me for.”

“It’s not,” he said. “I wouldn’t have stopped you if I had been beside you. I would just prefer to catch you when you fall, not arrive after the fact to find someone else has already lifted you from the floor.”

It was a reasonable request, and not a new one. I flushed, feeling a little bad about making him ask again. “I’m trying,” I said. “You know I’m trying.”

“My patience, among other things,” he said, and looked over at Raysel. She was still looking up at the sky, but she was no longer breathing like she wanted to exhale everything that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours. “Rayseline? Are you quite ready to go home?”

She turned toward him, brightening, and smiled. “I would really, really like that,” she said. “Can we go home? Now? Please? I want to tell Chelsea that I’m okay. I want to tell everyone that I’m okay. I want to…” She paused, a complicated expression crossing her face. “I want to tell my father that I’m back. Can I call him?”

“Any time you like,” I said. “He’d really love to hear from you—and I promise, he had no idea what your mother was doing. He’s worried out of his mind right now.”

“I know,” she said, softly. “I mean, I know he didn’t know. I didn’t know he was actually worried about me. But she told me she acted alone, and I … I believed her. I know he didn’t know what she was planning to do to me.”

“So let’s go home and you can call him,” I said.

Raysel nodded and walked back over to us. I looped my free arm through hers, pulling her along as I started toward the trees, Tybalt keeping pace. And for a moment, I thought—I really thought—that we were going to be able to just walk out of there. We’d go find Acacia, and she’d help us get back to the Luidaeg’s apartment, and we’d take Raysel home so her girlfriend could yell at her until the sun set again. Miranda would cry and I would feed her and everything would be wonderfully normal and dull and perfect. That was all I wanted. To go home to normal and dull.

“And where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”

Well, crap.

NINETEEN

RAYSEL WENT RIGID AT the sound of her mother’s voice, shoulders locking and head snapping up like she’d just heard the bell tolling for the end of the world. Her hand clamped down on my arm hard enough to hurt. That would have been enough to set me off, even without what followed:

She started to whimper. The sound was high and shrill and petrified, the keening of a fox with its leg caught in a trap, just waiting for the hunter to arrive. I reached over and carefully pried her fingers away from my arm, then turned, lit candle held high, to face the architect of all this misery.

Luna Torquill, youngest daughter of two Firstborn. She was standing between us and the Children’s Hall, backlit by the torches held by three of Blind Michael’s former children, their unfamiliar shapes made unsteady and indistinct by the dancing firelight. She wasn’t injured anymore. Instead, she was dressed in a short gown made of rose leaves held together by strands of cobweb, her pink-and-red hair pulled over one shoulder in a thick, perfect braid. There weren’t even any scars on her arms. She looked at us without pity or compassion, and hatred flared in my heart, hot enough to be almost sickening.

“We’re going home, Luna,” I said.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said dismissively. “You’re none of my concern, little changeling who didn’t have the sense to let your mother save you from your fate. I’m here for my own child, the one who can still be saved.”

Raysel’s whimpering continued, growing higher and shriller in pitch. Tybalt stepped in front of her, glaring at Luna. I moved to the side, until our shoulders were almost touching, until the two of us together all but hid Raysel from her mother’s sight.

Luna sighed like we were doing something endlessly tiresome, like she couldn’t believe we would be so brutally foolish. “Come now,” she said. “I’m standing on my father’s ground, with his faithful at my back. There’s only two of you. You know you can’t defeat me here. You can’t defeat me anywhere. You never could.”

“Shut up!” It took me a moment to realize who had yelled, and then I turned, staring at Raysel in disbelief. She still looked absolutely terrified, but she wasn’t whimpering anymore. Instead, she was glaring in the direction of her mother, her hands balled into fists so tight that I knew her nails were biting into her palms. I could smell the blood.

Raysel didn’t seem to notice. She stepped forward, and Tybalt and I stepped apart, a living curtain parting as we let her take the stage. She glared murderously at Luna, and I knew I would sooner drop dead where I stood than live to see Miranda or Gillian look at me like that.

“You took me from my home,” she snapped. “It wasn’t Shadowed Hills, but it didn’t need to be, because it was a place where I was finally home. Where I was finally safe. You took me from my home, and you acted like it was some magical favor you were doing for me, like we were going to have some wonderful adventure! Instead, you handed me off to strangers who took me and threw me into the dark, where someone else’s magic started twisting me into shapes I never asked for! You hurt me, and all because I wasn’t the daughter you wanted me to be! Well, Mom, you weren’t the daughter your mother wanted, either, once, and she didn’t hurt you!”

“No, she just forced me to hurt myself if I was going to get away from her! But you’ll never get away from me! You’re going to be remade in my father’s image, and you’re going to stay here forever, and we’re going to be a family!”

Her father’s image … The answer snapped into place with a click that felt like it echoed through my whole body. I must have gasped aloud, because Tybalt suddenly looked at me with wide-eyed concern. I kept my focus on Luna.