Something about the way she was looking at me made me deeply uncomfortable. I squirmed, and didn’t say anything.
“He said his knight had managed to overcome the Summer Queen’s magic, and that King Oberon had bound her against doing direct harm to the knight and her family. But the fae definition of ‘harm’ is very broad at times. Mother was yet concerned that Titania might do something terrible. She had heard the stories, you see.”
“Then she heard them wrong,” I said. “Maeve was the terrible one. All that’s good and beautiful in Faerie stems from Fair Titania. We owe her our existence.”
“No one in this room carries the blood of Titania,” said April. “I did once, when I was a true Dryad, but my sap is long since dried up and gone. We owe her nothing.”
It was a blasphemy, to speak so of Titania, and had April been anything other than a pureblood, I would have left at once rather than hear further such unforgivable things. As it was, I took a step back and glowered, all but waiting for Titania herself to appear and strike this phantom down.
“Mama asked if I was willing to sleep, for a time, and confined me to my server, after asking my other mother to grant her luck. Not the sort of luck that raises the dead—or creates them to begin with. The sort of luck that brings a mystery to the attention of the right eyes, regardless of what else may be happening. The sort of luck that brings her back to me.” April looked at Li Qin and smiled, a small, hopeful smile, agonizing hope in her eyes. “I called you my mother because you have been, ever since I first awoke in the server’s light. Mama made me, but you saw to it that I understood as much as I could of Faerie. You loved me. Do you truly not remember?”
“I am sorry, but I don’t,” said Li Qin, with what sounded like genuine regret. “I’ve never married. Shyi Shuai are rare in the Mists, and my position leaves me little time to go searching for courtship.”
“That was part of why Mama was concerned,” said April. “In the tales, Titania was always very concerned with the preservation and purity of descendant lines. Titania believed Faerie would not have rendered us so dissimilar if we had not been intended to hold ourselves apart from one another. We were also not meant to mingle with the humans, in her eyes, but that is more inevitable, even in a version of Faerie where she had somehow seized control.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A version of Faerie where she had somehow seized control,” repeated April. “I’m sorry, was that unclear? Titania is the source of all flower magic. Illusions and deceptions flow from her like water from a spring. Based on what we know of her from her previous time among her descendants, and the fury my friend the squire indicated she was experiencing, it seemed likely she would try to remake Faerie in her own image. I have checked the email queue while I was talking to the two of you. There are many messages from friends and allies in more-distant locations, asking for information they have not received. All contact with the Mists has been cut off since the middle of June. Some of them are quite alarmed, and a few have sent detachments to inquire. None of those detachments have returned to their places of origin.”
“This is not—” I began.
April kept talking, almost as if she wanted to be sure I couldn’t argue: “Silences and the Golden Shore are likewise absent from their allies. I hypothesize that Titania, furious as she is, can only sustain a revision of this size and complexity over us and our neighboring kingdoms. The Undersea adjacent to those areas has been completely silent since this began.”
“Of course it has,” I snapped. “The Undersea was destroyed over a hundred years ago. There’s nothing down there now but shipwrecks and smelt.”
“That is untrue, and I only wish you knew it as well,” said April, almost sadly. “When you activated my server, it should have drawn your blood. Did it not do so?”
“. . . it did,” I admitted.
“And assuming you are in any way the woman I have known, you would not have been able to resist putting your finger in your mouth. You have always claimed to hate and abhor the sight of blood, but you move toward it as a flower seeks the sun. Your power knows its source.”
A chill ran down my spine. I didn’t like her reading me that well, not when everything I was insisted that we were meeting for the first time. Still, she was right.
“I did,” I admitted.
“Did you see a memory that didn’t make sense?” She looked at me politely. “Something that might not have happened in the same way after Titania rewrote the world? She has no skill for blood magic, that one, which makes it all the more fascinating that her favorite child bore the most successful line of blood-workers in all of Faerie. Your line will eclipse hers, given time, assuming Titania allows you to survive. Do bindings made in another version of reality count here?”
I blinked, more slowly than I meant to, before I said, “I saw . . . you. I saw something that never happened.”
“But it gave you my name. You knew me when the memory faded.”
“Yes.”
“Then it was true at least in that regard, if not in any other. We share the calendar, October. You should know me.”
“Would that be true of everyone’s blood?” asked Li Qin.
April nodded. “Yes. Memory should remain, whatever is set atop it. Illusion does not replace reality.”
Li Qin pivoted on one foot and marched over to me, holding out one arm in a sharp, almost jerky motion. “That knife you have, I want you to cut me with it.”
“What?”
“If what she says is true and all this”—she waved her other hand wildly at the room around us—“is an illusion Titania created because she was pissed at some jerk-ass knight who got in her way, that means I have a wife out there.” Li Qin looked at me, expression grim. “I have someone I love, who loves me, and we have a daughter I don’t even know. Now, maybe the kid’s a liar, sure, but my luck seemed to indicate turning the server on would be a good thing, and that only makes sense if I was the one to make it possible for the thing to be found and activated in the first place. Sounds like that wife of mine is pretty damn smart. I’d really like to meet her. I can’t see memories in blood—my magic is purely water-based—but you can. So, you’re going to take a peek inside my veins, and tell me whether this kid is telling the truth or not.”
“I . . . I can’t.” I took a step backward, away from her. “I’m not trained, I don’t know how to control it, I could see—I could see anything, things you don’t want me to see. I could get lost in your memory. I could—”
“Can you get lost if you only take a drop?” she asked. “I’m not asking you to slash my palm open. I have nerves and tendons there that I need. I just want you to prick my finger. I want to know. Please.” She sounded almost agonized. “I have been so bored, for so long, and so lonely, and now someone says I have a family? I have people who love me? And you could tell me everything about them, but you’re scared? I’m sorry. I don’t care.”
My heart was beating so hard, it actually hurt. I stared at Li Qin, unable to find the voice for the objections that crowded my throat. This was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. A child couldn’t come out of a machine and force me to use blood magic. Titania would never hurt Faerie. Titania loved Faerie. That was why she’d stayed with us when Maeve betrayed us and Oberon retreated to his barrow to sleep. She’d stayed out of love. A mother’s love. The kind of love only a Queen could carry without breaking.