“I don’t understand how this isn’t causing harm,” I said. “I get how she’s justifying it to herself, but that doesn’t make it true. She’s causing harm.”
The end of the bed dipped as the Luidaeg sat. I focused on my breathing, not letting it get unsteady or too fast. Not just in a room with two Firstborn. In a bed with two Firstborn.
Oh, I was so going to die.
“You know, the Toby I know spent some time as a fish because my sister wanted her out of the way, and the man she’d sent to do the removing couldn’t go through with it,” she said, mildly. “Instead of killing her like he was supposed to, he transformed and left her, and that was the most merciful thing he could have done under the circumstances, and she hated him for it for a really long time. How dare he take her away from her family for fourteen years. How dare he change her without her consent. But he was thinking in centuries, and she was thinking in days. Titania doesn’t even think in centuries. She thinks in millennia. In her mind, I’m sure, this is a form of mercy. She did no harm.”
“I don’t agree,” I said stiffly.
“If it helps, neither do I. But this isn’t what you want to ask me.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m good at listening to the questions people aren’t actually asking. Go ahead, girl. Ask me what you really want to know.”
“You talk about the other me like you . . . like you know her. I mean really know her. Can you tell me about her?”
“Ah. That’s what I was expecting.” The Luidaeg exhaled, chuckling. “I can even give you this one for free, because it hurts as much as it heals, and that means no payment is required. Yeah. I know October. I met her when she was just a kid, when Amy—her mother—was hiding her in the human world, pulling the fae out of her veins one drop at a time. I met her, and I saw what her mother was doing to her, and I told Sylvester Torquill what was happening that same day. Sometimes I’ve wondered what would have happened if I’d been able to find his brother and put the burden of October’s future on his shoulders. Simon was in service to my sister by that point, tangled tight in poisoned thorns and half-lost to himself, but he still loved his wife, and he was October’s father in the eyes of Faerie. I might have saved them both if I’d asked him to do his duty by the child. But I didn’t, and so that wasn’t the life we lived.
“The Changeling’s Choice isn’t a thing in this Faerie, because it’s been made already for all the changeling children, but where I come from, when a changeling is born, and gets old enough that their magic starts to show, their fae parent offers them a choice. Are you human, or are you fae? And if they choose fae, they’re whisked away to the Summerlands, never to see their human parents again.”
“What if they choose human?” I asked cautiously. Surely that didn’t happen. Surely no one would look at the choice between magic and mortality and choose the slow, lumbering, mortal way.
“They die,” said the Luidaeg bluntly.
I couldn’t see her face, and so it didn’t do me any good to stare at her. I did it anyway, aghast at her calm reply. “How is that a kinder world?” I blurted.
“Did I say our world was kinder? Because I don’t think I did,” said the Luidaeg. “It’s not. It’s horrible and it’s cruel and it’s wrong, and when Amy was born with the power in her hands to make that choice a real one, I thought it would end. I thought we’d be able to have our changeling children and take them home forever, or free them to the world they preferred. It’s still a one-way choice, and that’s still wrong, but it’s better than the grave. And then Amy refused to take up the calling her magic demanded, and August was gone and you had no idea what you were, and the changelings kept dying, and Faerie didn’t heal. Our problems go a lot deeper than one bloodline’s power to resolve, kiddo. But no, the Changeling’s Choice isn’t kind. It’s just the way we can reconcile love with the need to keep Faerie safe and hidden. Can you tell me how stealing children away from their parents in the night, leaving those parents no way to grieve or move on, and forcing those children to become servants for people more powerful than them is kinder than the way we do things? I think both systems are horrible.”
She leaned over then, touching my hand, very lightly. “My October has been trying to make things better, as best as she can. She wants changelings to be able to live their lives according to their own terms, and she wants the Choice to be a choice. She’s a hero. I know you’re scared. I know you’re afraid of losing everything you think you have right now, and I won’t pretend that you’re wrong to feel that way. When you get your memory back, you’re going to learn a lot of things that will probably horrify you after spending time in Titania’s sanitized wonderland. But my October’s a hero. She’s saved our world more than once. Hell, she’s saved me. She’s still inside you, whether you remember her or not, and she’s going to come out when we need her. I believe in her, and you are her, so I believe in you.”
“I’m not a hero,” I said. “I’m a lady’s maid.”
Her laughter was short and bitter. “As if servants have never been heroes? They’ve turned the tide of more than one war with unlocked doors and well-timed poisons. You can be a hero no matter where you’re standing in the fray. There are people who need you, and people who love you, and people who would be, quite sincerely, lost without you.”
“Tybalt,” I said, the word bitter and half-familiar on my tongue.
“Kitty-boy,” agreed the Luidaeg. “You remember more there than you want to let on, don’t you? Can’t say as I blame you. Gin says Titania dealt with the complication of the cats by making it so they all died out centuries ago. Right now, all you know about the Cait Sidhe is legend and rumor, and now here’s one of them looking at you like . . . okay, let me guess. Like he wants to peel your skin off your flesh and use it to make himself a nice new pair of boots.”
“Everyone seems to think saying his name should be enough to make me swoon and demand my memory back, but he keeps glaring at me. He’s so angry. I can’t understand why I would . . . why would anyone want to give up a life where they’re happy to be with someone who’s so mad at them?”
“He’s not mad at you, kid,” said the Luidaeg. “If I know the cat—and I do know the cat, better than I honestly want to, and I can thank you for some of that—but if I know the cat, he’s panicked and terrified, and so mad at Titania that he can’t see straight. He’s mad at the spell, Toby, not the person under it. If he seems mad at you, it’s not on purpose. I’m not trying to push you to accept or feel something you’re not ready for yet, but you’re very important to him. Possibly the most important person in his world. He waited a long time for someone to come along who could love him back the way he needed to be loved, who wouldn’t leave him, and that’s supposed to be you. Right now, he’s probably afraid it’s not, and that’s got to be tearing him up inside. Try not to blame him for feeling the way he does. He’s got big feelings. They get the best of him sometimes.”