“Yes,” said Acacia, with bewildered politeness.
“You’re the Firstborn of the Dryads, and of the Blodynbryd.”
“Yes.” The bewilderment was deepening toward puzzlement.
“I . . . My name is Rayseline? Rayseline Torquill? Your youngest daughter, Luna . . . she’s my mother?” Raysel swallowed, hard. “My parents aren’t divorced, even though I chose Daoine Sidhe when Toby offered to rebalance my blood to something that wasn’t trying to destroy itself. I think you’re my grandmother?”
“I am, child,” said Acacia, sudden softness chasing away her confusion. “I’ve seen you at the fire’s edge, these past few months, but I’m afraid that in my bewitchment, I took little notice. How did you come to be here?”
“The spell, same as everyone else,” she said.
“You two get acquainted,” said the Luidaeg. “I’m going to go and check on Toby.”
“Yes. The little hero.” Acacia frowned, stealing a glance over at me. “If I’m not much mistaken, she goes as green as grass.”
“I think you’re right about that, but she doesn’t know, so we’re not going to make it a thing,” said the Luidaeg. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready to move on.” She turned, then, and walked over to join me and Dean at the table, taking a seat next to Grianne.
“This is nice,” she said. “Sort of like a picnic in the human conception of Hell. Maybe next we can braid each other’s hair or, I don’t know, get the hell out of here, figure out who my wicked stepmother is planning to murder, break her nasty-ass spell, and fix the world.”
“Am I going to have to do it one person at a time?” I asked. “Because I’m exhausted and my head is killing me after four. I don’t think I can keep doing this.”
“Wow, a Toby who acknowledges her limitations, Titania really did pull out all the stops on this one,” said the Luidaeg. She picked up a roll, buttering it with small, fierce strokes of a knife. “But you’re right, you can’t keep doing this. Your sister might be able to help, if we can sell her on the idea. She’s a stubborn one, so I don’t know if we can count on it, but it would be worth trying.”
“August’s not going to help you,” I said.
She looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “No? And why not?”
“Because she believes the people who keep telling us that our lives are a lie,” I said.
“Continue.”
“August’s pretty smart, for someone who’s never been encouraged to be smart. She pays attention. She doesn’t rush in. And when a bunch of people show up with the same ridiculous story and evidence to support it, she listens. Which is why she’s not going to help you.”
“Explain,” said the Luidaeg.
“You’re telling me our world has only existed for four months. That everything before that is a lie Titania told for her own benefit.” I paused, long enough for the Luidaeg to nod. “Yeah, well, we believed the lie. Completely. And the last four months? Those weren’t a lie. Those were our life. August is my best friend. I love her. I was born to be her companion. She loves me. And unmaking this spell means taking me away from her.” I shrugged. “She doesn’t particularly want that to happen. To be quite honest, I don’t want it to happen either.”
Dean looked horrified. “But that means you’d be taken away from everyone else,” he said. “And August wouldn’t want that, either. Not the real August. Not the one who’s been living with my parents. Peter—he’s our little brother—talks about her. He says she’s really nice, and she likes him a lot, she’s always playing fair and making him feel welcome and she wouldn’t take you away from us. She wouldn’t take you away from your family just because she wants to keep the family Titania made up to punish us.”
I shrugged. “August doesn’t know any of that. I don’t know any of that, not really. Sure, you say it, but maybe we’re enemies and have always hated each other. How can we be sure we won’t hate each other again if the spell is broken?”
“There’s an easy answer for this,” said the Luidaeg, and called over her shoulder to where Acacia and Raysel were standing, heads close together as they spoke in low voices, “Hey, ’Cayci! What do you remember about the last four months?”
“I was with my husband and our youngest daughter, and everything was fine, except for his strange reluctance to comfort me when I was cold,” she said. “I loved him very much. I remember that. I know now that I haven’t loved him in a long time, that I didn’t grieve him when he died, but for those four months . . . I loved him.”
“There.” The Luidaeg turned back to me, the expression of triumph on her face almost masking her concern. “Whatever else happens, you’ll remember the four months as you lived them. You say you love her? Then you have to let her be who she actually is. If she loves you as much as you say she does, she’ll do you the same favor.”
Dean abruptly paled. “My parents . . .”
“Are fine,” said Ginevra. “I had to practically threaten your mother before she’d agree to stay below. I was not trying to babysit her and Tybalt when we didn’t know how this was going to go. Strange as it probably sounds to you, this”—she waved a hand, indicating the gloomy hall around us—“is the best-case scenario. We’ve managed to find Toby and the Luidaeg, and while Titania’s certainly going to be responsible for some hefty therapy bills going forward, she doesn’t appear to have physically harmed anyone. If anything, she set up a logical situation, and then she let people wind up where it made sense for them to be if that was the way the world had worked all along. Cait Sidhe don’t exist anymore? Fine, all the Cait Sidhe are in the Court of Cats. The Undersea’s been cut off for a hundred years? Okay, anyone who was underwater when the spell came down is cut off, and anyone who couldn’t have been born if not for the Undersea gets shunted here, to Blind Michael’s skerry, where everyone knows time works differently than it does everywhere else. You could have been here, exactly as you are, for a century. You don’t prove anything about the Undersea’s continued existence.”
“She always was more dedicated to looking clever than she was to doing the work to actually be clever,” said the Luidaeg. She looked at me again, slow and measuring. “You should sleep while you can. You need it more than you know, and there’s not going to be much time for sleep once we get back to the mortal world. Everything’s going to happen really fast once it starts happening. And you’re going to have to figure out which side you want to be standing on when the dust finishes settling.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked, uneasily.
She shook her head. “No. I sort of wish it were, because then it would be something I could make good on, but no. It’s just a statement of fact. There are a lot of people out there who love you, and not all of them will be as patient as I am. We still have a little time for you to sort your shit out and get on the right side of this question. Now if you’re done eating, get some rest.”
I frowned and rose, pushing gingerly back from the table. Acacia and Raysel were still deep in conversation, and neither of them looked up as I approached. I cleared my throat. Acacia finally raised her head, blinking slowly.