“You tell stories about us?”
“They really have kept you sheltered, haven’t they, child? Oh, it feels odd calling you that—you’re well older than my daughter, and despite the way you look, I’d wager good money that you’re older than I am to boot. Come on. Etienne and Chelsea are waiting for us.”
She beckoned for me to follow her down the hall. I did, taking my first sip of the cocoa as I walked. It was thick, rich, and good, with little marshmallows floating on top. It was also the first thing I’d had to eat or drink since losing all that blood, and it was hard not to start gulping. Only the fact that it was hot enough to scald kept me from doing exactly that, and I was still sipping almost politely when we stepped out of the hall into a small, brightly lit kitchen.
A round table covered in a black cloth patterned with festive pumpkins occupied the middle of the room. Two people were seated there. One, Etienne, I knew quite well, and even better now that he was no longer wearing the disguise that made him look like a human. The other was a teenage girl in a shirt like Bridget’s, hair black-brown and cut to cover her ears, glasses covering eyes that I could still tell had an unusual—for mortals—coppery sheen. Chelsea.
It wasn’t the first time I’d met another changeling, but it was the first time I’d encountered one in the wild, as it were, and it was difficult not to look away as a wave of sudden shyness overtook me. What would she think of me, when she’d been raised to think she was as good as either of her parents? That she had a right to choose Faerie, and force it to accept her as an equal?
“Um, hi?” said Chelsea, sounding equally shy, and I realized that if she was the first free-range changeling I’d ever met, I might be the first changeling, period, she’d ever been introduced to. “I’m Chelsea? You must be October?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my cocoa. “I must be. I mean, I am. I mean, that’s what my parents named me. We have a thing for calendar names in my family, and I guess they wanted me to feel included.”
“A charitable way of looking on an uncharitable act,” said Etienne dryly.
Bridget smacked him on the shoulder as she took the seat next to his. “Hush, you. The girls are sizing each other up, and it’s important we give them the chance to do that before you start being shitty for no reason.”
“I assure you, I have every reason,” said Etienne, voice going stiff.
“Da-ad,” said Chelsea. “You said you were going to ask October for her help. Don’t embarrass me in front of her.”
“My apologies, my heart,” said Etienne, and put a hand over his own heart as he smiled at her. Any fear I had left that this was some sort of trick or trap died with that smile, because I recognized it. I knew that look almost painfully well. It was the way my own father looked at me, or at August, when my mother wasn’t there to remind him that his sweetest smiles belonged to her above all others.
“I’m not embarrassed,” I said. “And I don’t feel like you’re embarrassing. It’s okay. Your . . . dad . . . says you don’t want to be a changeling anymore?”
“I fall asleep during the day,” said Chelsea. “Oh, and I’m up all night, whether I want to be or not. Morning classes are a form of torture.”
“For adults, too,” muttered Bridget.
Chelsea ignored her. “I can’t date. There’s no way I could keep an illusion up all the time around a human partner—and would they really be a partner if I was hiding something that huge about myself? I can’t go to the doctor. Dad used to have to pay this weird independent healer under the table when I got sick, so someone could actually make me better without us getting caught. Oh, and there’s the part where if anyone ever finds me, Dad gets arrested for treason, Mom gets executed and no one gets in trouble for it, because fae don’t think it’s murder when you kill a human, and if I’m lucky, they kill me, too.”
This was a bleaker response than I’d expected. I took another slow swallow of cocoa before asking, hesitantly, “What happens if you’re unlucky?”
“They brainwash and break me until I’m one of their happy, grateful little servants, honored to be asked to work for my betters, unable to recognize how much I’m being taken advantage of.” Chelsea stopped, eyes widening, as she appeared to realize what she’d just said—and more, who she’d said it to. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—you’re not—I’m going to be quiet now.”
“You meant it,” I said. “That’s all right. I know what I am.” I finished my cocoa, looking for a tray to put the mug down on.
Bridget caught the way I was scanning my surroundings, and said, “The sink’s dirty, dear.”
I stopped, staring at her. Did she want me to clean it?
She paused, apparently reviewing, then tried again: “The sink is currently being used to hold dirty dishes. The sink itself is perfectly clean, and suitable for your mug. Don’t worry about rinsing it, we have a very good dishwasher.”
“I didn’t understand all of that,” I complained, and moved toward the sink. Glancing into it showed a few plates and a scattering of silverware, so I set my mug down next to them, feeling very pleased with myself for navigating this small facet of mortal life. It wasn’t much. It was still more than I could have done yesterday.
Who knew what I’d be able to do tomorrow?
Crossing to the sink put me behind Chelsea, who twisted in her chair to watch me. “Dad says you’re nice.”
“I try to be.” A biddable changeling is a changeling with few bruises and a reasonably long lifespan.
“I know what we’re asking is a lot, but . . . he says your mother can turn people’s blood from one kind into another kind?” She frowned a little, sounding baffled. “That violates, like, six dozen laws of biology.”
I winced, glaring at Etienne over her head. He had been far too cavalier with Mother’s secrets, even knowing what they could mean for August . . . and for me. Perhaps Chelsea had no connections within Faerie now, but if I could do what he asked of me, what was going to stop her tongue afterward?
“It violates no laws, because it’s magic,” I said. “It’s also a secret. You can’t tell anyone what your father’s told you. People have been killed for less.”
“‘People’ meaning ‘changelings’?”
“Yes, but not only changelings. My family would be in danger, as well as yours.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “We talk about the fae like we’re all one kind of thing, but we’re not. Some of us are plants, some of us are mammals, some of us are made of water or wind that thinks, and I’m pretty sure some of us are technically very active rocks. We’re not reliably the same species. You and I look similar, and because we’re both half-human, we’re part of the same family tree, in a way, but your dad and my mom? Not the same species at all. My mother can’t teleport. She’s descended from Oberon alone, crafted from one of his horns, which he broke off in grief when one of his wives betrayed him. Without Maeve, he said Faerie would be out of balance, and so he took steps to correct it.”
Steps that had, eventually, resulted in him retreating into slumber, effectively leaving us forever. But he’d left my mother behind with her foster family and her siblings to care for her, and Faerie had thrived in his absence. Titania chose abstinence; no more Firstborn would come after Mother, who bore the dubious honor and grave responsibility of serving as the last among her siblings, and the most accessible idol for their descendants. We were all expected to look to her to see what we were meant to do and be, and that was just one of the many reasons why my birth had been so essential.