“I don’t know that,” I said. “Maybe my magic lies to me all the time. I’ve never used it enough to find out.”
Li Qin frowned. “How is that possible?”
“I was . . . I’ve never been allowed to do blood magic,” I said slowly. “Mother said it would be too much for me, and unseemly for a changeling to experiment so, and Father was willing to abide by her will. I think . . . August has tried to share her lessons with me, but Mother’s nose for blood is so sensitive that any pinprick would catch her attention. When my menses started, she banished me to Shadowed Hills for two weeks. The week of the bleeding and the whole week after.”
It had been one of the most pleasant experiences of my life. Melly had fussed and clucked over me for the whole of my stay, insisting I stay in bed and allow Kerry to wait on me like I was important enough to take care of, like I was August.
“She still sends me away when the time comes for me to bleed. She can’t be near me.”
“Does she banish August?”
Li Qin’s question was mild. I frowned as I nodded.
“Of course. But August is a pureblood. She bleeds only every other year. I bleed every sixth month.” Kerry told me that was less than a human would, which was horrifying. The thought of spending half of each month away from my sister was repugnant. But it was necessary for my mother’s health, and if that had been my reality, I would have gone.
For her, I would go anywhere.
“How many times have you ridden your own blood, October?” asked Li Qin.
“Twice,” I admitted. It seemed odd, when I said it so baldly. Surely I would have tasted blood before this, even if only out of curiosity, if only when I had been too young to work and my primary duty had been serving as August’s constant companion? She was enough older than me to have been a woman grown while I was a squealing child, but she had loved me from the start, been kind to me, picked me up when I fell, held me tight while I wept over skinned knees, and wiped away the blood as they scabbed over and healed. Somehow, in all those wild and heedless days of my childhood, I had suffered no injuries which painted my tongue.
My tongue! Surely I had bitten my tongue, or pulled free a loosened tooth, or done something to give me a third tasting of the blood to point to, something that wasn’t complicated and shelled in sugar. But no. Far back as I reached through my memory, I could find none of those small incidents or accidents.
That, more than anything else, was what made me begin to question whether April’s version of our world might not have been a true one. Everyone has trouble remembering their childhood. Everyone forgets the unpleasant pieces, the grinding agony of learning to walk or speak, the stretches of seemingly endless boredom, the injuries. But what I found in my own past was like a paragraph written by an author anxious to get to what they considered the good part of the story: broad strokes only, as detailed as the plot required, and not a single sentence more.
There should have been something. And its absence was as glaring as any clue has ever been.
“. . . only twice,” I said. “Both today.”
“What did you see?” asked April.
“The second time, I saw you, in a room painted white and purple, with stuffed rabbits on a shelf. You told me your mother always brought you rabbits when she went away, and that she would have to bring you many rabbits this time, because she didn’t warn you before she left. I think . . . I think she was dead?”
“She was,” said April, with no inflection on the words. “I was unaware that flesh-and-blood people were not capable of disconnecting from the network and rejoining at a later point without loss of fidelity. You were able to assist me in bringing her back online, later. What did you see the first time?”
Even remembering what I’d seen in the blood felt almost too intimate to share aloud. My cheeks reddened and I looked down at my feet as I said, “There was a man. He had very green eyes. The way he looked at me was . . . No one has ever looked at me like that. Not just like he loved me, but like I was the only reason he was willing to let the world keep existing. I had something important I needed to tell him. Something really, really essential, and I was worried about how he was going to react.” I shook my head. “I never got to find out what I was going to say, because that’s where the memory fell apart. I’ve never seen him before.”
“Did he have dark hair?” asked April.
I nodded.
“That was Tybalt. I was unable to attend your wedding, due to the constraints placed upon my mobility by my mechanical nature, but I am assured that you had a fantastic time, and I was given several photographs and videos of the cake, affording me the opportunity to enter the data stream and taste the ambient idea of it.”
“Magic is fun,” said Li Qin, when I looked baffled.
That didn’t help with the bafflement. I focused on April. “I’m not married. I would know if I were married.”
“I didn’t,” said Li Qin.
“It was a detailed and complicated production, getting you to the altar,” said April. “Had your squire’s parents not agreed to host the ceremony, I am not entirely sure it would have occurred. If you think I may be misleading you, you have a knife. You could split your skin and see for yourself.”
I stared down at my hands. The temptation was definitely there: if what she said was true, that man, who had looked at me with such adoration, was somewhere in the world for me to find. And what difference would that make? She said Titania had remade Faerie in her own ideal and image. If that was so, believing in the truth of April’s reality would mean denying the one in which I lived now, the one where I was happy. It wouldn’t restore the world as it had been. It wouldn’t give me back that version of myself. Why would I want to know?
How could I resist knowing?
I drew the blade across my fingertip and, when the blood rose, brought my finger to my mouth, catching it before the wound could heal. Once again, in veils of red, the world went away.
There was less of a feeling of resistance now, as if I had started breaking holes with my first glimpse into my own blood, and it was losing integrity every time I went back.
I am stepping into an outdoor courtyard that has clearly been the scene of a battle, a sword in my hand and a white dress covering my body. People are dead on the ground. The smell of blood fills the air. The man I saw before paces back and forth in front of a low platform, a complicated expression on his face.
Dropping my borrowed sword, I run for him, barely keeping my footing. He turns at the sound of my approach, and relief replaces complexity as I throw myself into his arms.
“I love this dress. Can we do this to all my clothes?”
“Sadly, no.” He lifts me and twirls me once around, like I’m some sort of princess. “I see you’ve managed to get blood in your hair.”
“You knew what you were marrying before we got here. We are still getting married, aren’t we?”
“That seems to be up to you,” says the woman on the platform before us. “You chose your path. You stood before me with a willing heart. You came back. So, are you getting married?”
“Assuming my groom’s still interested,” I say, and the man April called “Tybalt” snarls. He keeps hold of my hand as we both look up at the woman.