He stared at me. “This isn’t some ‘oh no oh woe I was impure’ thing, is it? You mean that literally.”
“I do.” I shrugged. “If October hadn’t been able to pull the Blodynbryd out of me, I think I would eventually have died from the fight that was happening inside my body. I hurt, pretty much all the time, and this is the first time ever that I can remember being awake and not having a fever.” He looked mildly alarmed. I reviewed what I’d just said, finally settling on the part I thought was most likely to have upset him: “October changed me because I said she could. My parents asked her to do it, but I would have asked her myself if I’d known it was possible. I still don’t know whether I picked the right bloodline. I think I did, but it’s going to be a little while before I know for sure. I hope I did, because I can’t try again.”
“Oh.” Dean was quieter now.
I looked at him as we walked. “And that’s what I mean when I say my blood was bad. I mean I would have died, and not been able to make amends for any of the things I did. It was hard to think sometimes, when the fever was really high. Really bad ideas could seem like really good ones. When Dugan told me that I could be a Queen if I just listened to him . . .” I shuddered. “I don’t even know why I would want to be a Queen. I didn’t have a good reason then, except that I was mad at my mother, and wanted the power to make her and October both suffer. So I went along with it, and I stole you and your brother from your beds, and I hurt you. Nothing I say makes up for that, ever. I would never do something like that today. I’m not the same person I was.”
“Literally,” he said. Then, in a hesitant tone, he asked, “Does that mean you believe people can really, truly, all the way change?”
“I have to believe that, or I’m saying that I’m going to be a m-monster forever, and forever is a long, long time. People have to be able to change.”
“Good. I’m glad you feel that way.”
I glanced at him, bewildered.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember, you said it was your uncle who locked you in the dark?”
“Yeah. I think maybe we would have been able to realize my body was eating itself alive a long time before we did, if I hadn’t spent so many years where no one could see me or notice what was happening to me. I did a lot of damage because no one had the chance to notice what a danger I was becoming, and that’s because of Simon. I hate him.”
“He didn’t do it to hurt you.”
I stopped to scowl at Dean. “You don’t know anything about my family.”
“But I do, when the family in question is Simon.” He took a deep breath. “He’s my stepfather.”
“He’s your what?!”
“My stepfather. He divorced Amandine—October and August both chose his side of the family—and he married my parents. He lives in Saltmist now, with them, and August, and my baby brother. I visit a lot, even though I don’t live there anymore. So really, when it comes to Simon, I know a lot more than you think I do. I know he took you, and your mom, because E—because the woman he was working for told him to. She wanted you dead. He said all this during the trial to determine whether or not they’d let you wake up. It would’ve been better if you’d been able to hear it, I guess . . . but he took you because he was ordered to, and he bent his orders as hard as he could to avoid being forced to kill you. That was what she really wanted: for him to kill you and have to live with the consequences. Killing you would have cost him everything.”
“So instead he cost me everything,” I snapped.
“Can you really say that, when you’re not dead, and your blood’s not fighting itself anymore? You get to live. It’s horrible what he did to you, and I know how sorry he is, and I know he’ll apologize to you himself if he ever gets the chance, if you ever let him, and I know ‘sorry’ doesn’t make anything better, just like you saying ‘sorry’ doesn’t give me back my finger. But you’re alive. You’re here.” He paused then, glancing at the dismal forest around us. “Which is maybe not the best illustration of my point, but you get what I’m trying to say. He didn’t kill you, and that means things can get better. For both of you.”
“I still don’t like him,” I said, and began walking again, pacing Dean through the trees. “You can’t expect me to forgive him just because you tell me he had good reasons to do what he did, just like I don’t expect you to just forgive me for what I did. I was hurt and confused and manipulated and not entirely in my right mind, but I still held your hand down and chopped off your finger, and like you said, ‘sorry’ doesn’t grow it back.”
Dean frowned at the ground. “Okay, we’re both making sense, I guess. How about this: if I pretend not to hate you when we’re around the kids, you try not to say anything nasty about my stepdad where they might hear.”
“You want to trade treating me like a person for me not telling them that Simon’s a monster? Done. My uncle isn’t here, and we have enough monsters running around this place that we’re going to have plenty of other things to worry about.” The trees were getting thinner. I paused, cocking my head as I listened.
My hearing used to be keener, when it still held the echoes of Mother’s stolen Kitsune skin. I don’t know how that worked, how she was able to pass down traits she’d never possessed herself, but that sharpness of sound had been gone when I woke up, and I didn’t think it was ever coming back. Maybe the version of me from before the elf-shot would have been able to hear the sound of wings passing overhead.
This one didn’t.
“I think we’re clear,” I said, and started moving again.
We emerged from the trees into another of those deserted gardens. It wasn’t the one I’d raided before; this one was larger, boundary defined by gnarled apple trees and the rickety remains of a rotting wooden fence.
Fat pumpkins and zucchini grew near the fence, while a scraggly patch of corn grew in one corner. Dean made a pleased sound and started for the fence, while I hung back. I had already been brave since getting here, and we’d all seen what that got me.
He looked back as he reached the fence, frowning at me. “Come on, Raysel. We already don’t have a basket. I need you to help me carry things.”
I nodded and started toward him.
And the sound of hoofbeats began in the distance.
I was close enough to the tree line to turn and run back before they got too close. Dean, on the other hand, was about fifteen feet away, open space stretching between us like a chasm that couldn’t be bridged. He froze, one hand on a gnarled apple, seemingly unable to move as the pounding of the hooves drew closer.
“Dean!” I hissed, hoping it would snap him out of his fugue.
He looked over his shoulder at me and shook his head, resignation clear, and I realized what he was doing:
If we had somehow alerted Blind Michael’s forces to our presence, they weren’t going to stop until they apprehended an intruder. But we hadn’t heard or seen any ravens, so odds were good that they didn’t know they were searching for two people, or what those two people looked like. If we both ran, they’d follow, and we’d both be taken. If Dean, who was already exposed, stayed where he was, I could get away to tell Medley what had happened.