The Brightest Fell

by Seanan McGuire

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at Sylvester, and waited.

  It didn’t take long before he sighed and looked down at his feet. “Tybalt is with Jin,” he said. “There have been . . . complications.”

  “What do you mean, complications?” My voice was a razor slashing across the throat of the world.

  “Your betrothed is a King of Cats,” said Sylvester. He looked up again, meeting my eyes. “His magic is . . . substantial. When it misfires . . .”

  “Jin isn’t strong enough to massage out the cramp,” I said, feeling suddenly numb again. “She can’t get him to change back.”

  “No. But you might, were you at your normal strength.” He gave the hope chest in Arden’s hands a meaningful look.

  The last time I’d used a hope chest, I had entered a strange fugue state where a version of myself had offered me a choice of two knives, one that would turn me mortal and one that would turn me fae, and invited me to be the guest of honor at a stabbing. I had responded by grabbing both knives, driving them into my own stomach, and staying a changeling. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. I didn’t care. Lunging forward, I snatched the hope chest out of Arden’s hands.

  Nothing happened. I froze, staring at the treasure in my hands. In my gauze-swaddled hands. I wasn’t touching the wood. I could fix that. Awkwardly, I tucked the hope chest under one arm and started yanking at the fabric on my right hand with my teeth, trying to unwind it.

  “October.”

  I looked up.

  Sylvester was holding his sword out, blade turned sideways to make it clear that he wasn’t threatening me. “Use this,” he said.

  Mutely, I nodded, and before he could pull back, I slashed my hand across the edge of the blade with a ferocity born of desperation and too many years spent learning how to be practically invincible. The gauze parted easily. So did the flesh on the other side, metal slicing to the bone in a sensation that was as agonizing as it was familiar. I had been here before. The mansions of pain were no longer a mystery to me, and might never be again.

  Sylvester blanched. Arden turned away. Neither of them said a word. They knew why I was doing this. The kitchen was an island of silence, and I was the only thing that moved.

  My left hand was still wreathed in gauze, but that didn’t matter: one would be enough. Ignoring the pain, I slammed my bleeding palm down on the hope chest.

  Heat lanced up my arm, immediate and burning. It wasn’t painful, although it should have been. It was less like a forest fire, and more like the soothing, cleansing warmth of a hot pack against a strained muscle, turned up to a thousand. I gritted my teeth. The visions hadn’t come on yet. Maybe that meant they weren’t going to. The last time I’d done this, there had been goblin fruit and Firstborn blood in my system, making everything harder, divorcing me from myself. Here and now, I knew exactly who I was, and I knew exactly what I wanted.

  What I was, I thought, as loudly and fiercely as I could. Make me what I was.

  I could feel the hope chest responding to my demand, a distant, quizzical presence. It wanted more details. That was why it had given me the visions the last time, I realized: because it didn’t know how to communicate with me. It was too old, and too strange, and I was too young, and still too human. The edges of my vision started to blur as the hope chest began forcing a fugue state over me.

  No, I thought fiercely. No visions. Make me what I was. I pictured myself as I’d been when this all began, the color of my hair, the slope of my ears, the position of the watermarks in my blood. Sometime in the last several years, my mental image of myself had changed from the half-and-half girl I had always been, moving to match the more fae creature I had become. I still wanted to keep what was left of my mortality for as long as I could.

  And if this was the end of it, if I couldn’t guide the hope chest well enough to preserve it, that would be fine, too. I could save Tybalt. I could save my bruised and breaking heart. What was a little humanity when compared to that?

  The hope chest grew even hotter, flame lancing through my fingertips and up my arms. Now it did hurt, becoming an all-consuming burn that was almost enough to make me drop the wood. I refused, holding on tighter and closing my eyes, blocking out all distractions.

  I am Oberon’s granddaughter, I thought. He made you before he made me. Now do as I say.

  The heat intensified. I think I screamed. I couldn’t be sure. Every cell in my body was carbonizing. My blood was a river of lava twisting through my veins, scorching everything it came in contact with. I didn’t feel the hope chest leave my hand, but I heard it hit the floor a split-second before I landed next to it, falling hard to my knees and catching myself with my hands to keep my face from hitting the floor.

  It didn’t hurt. My palms had just slammed into the kitchen’s stone floor, and while the impact was jarring, there was none of the pain I would have expected from landing on a slashed-open palm. I opened my eyes. The hope chest was lying on its side. My right hand was covered in blood and my left hand was covered in gauze, but when I lifted my right hand off the floor and turned it over, my palm was unmarred.

  I sat up slowly, breathing hard, and unwound the gauze from my left hand. There were no scratches or punctures on my palm and fingers. I flexed my hand. Still no pain. Barely daring to hope, I reached up and felt the slope of my ear. It tapered to a point, not as sharp as Sylvester’s or my mother’s, but so much sharper than it had been. It felt like it was mine again.

  I looked up. Sylvester’s sharp intake of breath confirmed my transformation. Grabbing the hope chest—which was only warm now, not burning; I wasn’t asking it for anything, and the humanity I still possessed was mine to keep—I rose, as easily as if I had never been hurt.

  “Where’s Tybalt?” I asked.

  Arden held out her hands. I surrendered the hope chest to her without protest, but my eyes stayed on Sylvester, waiting for him to answer me.

  “He and Jin are in the garden,” he said. “I can take you there. Your Majesty.” He turned to Arden, offering her a shallow bow. “You have my eternal gratitude for what you have done today. This is a service to my house and to my heart, and it will not be soon forgotten.”

  “Sir Daye is a hero in the Mists,” said Arden. “I did less than my throne still owes her.” She looked to me. “Go. Save him. I know you can.”

  I couldn’t thank her, and so all I did was nod and turn to Sylvester, waiting.

  I didn’t have to wait for long. He sheathed his sword and started walking, leaving me to follow. I glanced to the table where May, Jazz, and Quentin were seated. May shook her head. She wasn’t moving. I couldn’t blame her.

  “Quentin, stay here,” I called. “If anything happens, find me.”

  “Sure, boss,” he said. There was an almost painful relief in his face—not because I was leaving him behind, but because it was starting to seem like this might be almost over. We might actually survive this.

  Sylvester’s stride was always long, but now he was hurrying, racing from the kitchen to the hall, forcing me to hustle to keep up with him. We were in our second parlor, crossing the knowe with remarkable speed, when I realized what he was doing. He was trying to keep me from asking questions.

  I grabbed his arm. He stumbled, apparently not expecting that, and turned to gape at me.

  “What?” I demanded.

  He hesitated before saying, “I don’t think this is the time. Tybalt—”

  “Would want me to know what you don’t want me to know.”

  Sylvester closed his eyes. “It’s not what I don’t want you to know, October,” he said softly. “It’s what I’m afraid to ask.”

  “What?”

  “My brother.” He opened his eyes again. “Where is my brother?”

  Oh, oak and ash. I had been so focused on Jazz and Tybalt that I hadn’t stopped to think of things from Sylv
ester’s perspective. I had left Shadowed Hills with Simon. I had returned without him. “He’s lost,” I said.

  There was a pause before Sylvester asked, “He’s dead?”

  “No. He’s lost.” Quickly, I explained what had happened: how the Luidaeg had taken August’s way home for the sake of a candle, how Simon had forced the Luidaeg to transfer August’s debts to him, as her father. How, once his way home was lost, Simon had regressed to the man he’d been under Evening’s control, calculating and cold, willing to do whatever was required to escape.

  When I finished, Sylvester looked at me and said, in a soft tone, “This is what I feared. He’s awake now, and free to do whatever he desires. What will keep him from waking his mistress? Before, Amandine’s disapproval was a weapon we could use against him, keeping him from committing even greater transgressions than those he already has. Now, he’s lost.”

  “I know,” I said. “I tried to stop him. He was trying to be a hero. He was trying to save his daughter.”

  “If only he had been a hero when he decided to endanger mine.” Sylvester started walking again. “When this is done, when your people are restored, it might be best if you stayed away for a time.”

  “Sylvester—”

  “Etienne can come to you for Quentin’s lessons. I’ve managed to keep Luna from knowing that Simon was awake. It helps that she would rather avoid your company, when she has the option. But she’s going to find out soon enough, and she’s going to be angry. Do you understand how angry she’s going to be? I love you. I can’t choose you over my wife. Not when she has every right to be furious.”

  “I understand,” I said, and I did, I truly did. We all had to choose which family came first. Sylvester was my liege lord and my mentor and my sometime father figure, but Luna was his wife and the mother of his child, and if she had reason not to want me around, I would stay away.

  Every time it seemed like my strange little family was starting to heal, something else would come along to split it apart. Maybe that was how things were going to be from now on. Maybe we were never going to be whole again. Sometimes things fall apart, and that’s just the way it is.

  Sylvester didn’t look like he shared my acceptance of the situation. He started walking again, still faster than was strictly necessary, the dogwood flower and daffodil smell of his magic crackling in the air around him as it rose in response to his unhappiness. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on the magic around me to read the situation.

  A blank wall came into view ahead of us. Sylvester touched it, and a patch of it went misty, creating a temporary door. He looked at me gravely.

  “I know you can do this, October,” he said, before he turned and walked away, leaving me alone.

  Right. I took a deep breath and stepped forward, through the misty wall, which turned solid again behind me, leaving me standing in the garden, surrounded by warm artificial sunlight that did nothing to cut through my cloud of trepidation and foreboding.

  Jin was sitting on a nearby bench. I walked toward her. She raised her head, wings vibrating, and smiled a sad, relieved smile when she saw me.

  “October,” she said. “You’re back to normal.”

  “Queen Windermere brought the hope chest,” I said, like that was normal, like everybody had queens running errands for their convenience.

  Jin nodded. “Good. I can’t reach him.”

  I didn’t need to ask who she meant. Even if I hadn’t known, the weary sorrow in her voice would have been enough to tell me. “Where is he?”

  She pointed to a patch of white-and-purple irises. I nodded and walked toward it, keeping my steps as light as I could. When I was close, I stopped and crouched, and peered into the depths of the vegetation.

  There was Tybalt, crouched low, paws tucked in tight against his body and tail wrapped around his legs. The look he gave me was pure animal fear. Once again, the urge to kill my mother surged up and threatened to overwhelm me, and once again, I pushed it down and away. This wasn’t the time. I needed to focus on what mattered. I needed to focus on finding one more way home.

  “Hi,” I said, lowering myself to the ground until I was stretched out with my cheek flat on the grass.

  Tybalt stayed where he was.

  I let my eyes drift half-shut, trying to find the strands of magic I knew had to be surrounding him. This wasn’t an outside transformation, like the one that Simon had hurled at Jazz the first time I had pulled a spell apart with my hands. It wasn’t a geas, either, forced into Simon’s blood and body by someone else. This was Tybalt’s own magic, being used against him by my mother and by the trauma he had endured.

  This would have been easier if I’d had access to his blood. Everything is easier, always, when I have access to blood.

  I froze. The idea I’d just had seemed farfetched, but what about this wasn’t? It was worth trying. Anything was worth trying, if it brought him back to me. This garden was mostly gentle plants, but Luna has never shied away from roses; they grew tucked among the ferns, low, lush-smelling tea roses spreading their tattered petals wide. Not sitting up, keeping my motions as slow and easy as I could, I reached over and ran my fingers along the nearest stem.

  The thorns were small but sharp, breaking my skin easily. I brought the hand back, faster this time, and stuck my bleeding fingers into my mouth before they could heal. Drinking in as quick and deep as I could, I focused not just on the blood itself, but on the specific memory I wanted: the moment when, in Arden’s halls, I had tasted Tybalt’s blood on his lips and felt Tybalt’s magic thrumming in my veins.

  All memory is contained in the blood. All memory, and all magic. The memory of magic wasn’t enough to give it to me—I’m no alchemist, and this was like a copy of a copy, faded, distant, and thin—but I fell through my blood memory and into his, catching a glimpse of my own face as I watched him die in front of me. Grief swept through me, strong enough to make my heart stutter. Not strong enough to wash away the triumph.

  This was what Tybalt’s magic felt like from the inside, all wild pennyroyal and feline musk. This was the shape of it. I looked at him again, small and trembling in the depths of the ferns, and I saw the thin traceries of his transformation snarled in the stripes of his fur, worked into the lines of his limbs. It was so simple. It was part of him, and it was locked in its current position, twisted by my mother and then frozen by his own fear, confusion, and power.

  “I love you,” I said gravely, and reached out, hooking my fingers in the air, hooking my magic into his, and pulled.

  Tybalt did not transform so much as collapse, a cat one moment, a man the next. Not entirely a man: there were stripes across his bare back and shoulders, extending all the way down his butt and across the tops of his thighs. That didn’t matter. That had never mattered to me. I scrambled to my hands and knees and dove into the bushes, gathering him close, ignoring the scent of crushed flowers as I pulled him against me and held him as tightly as I dared.

  I was crying. Finally, I was crying. I pressed my face against his hair and just sobbed, breathing in the scent of him, his skin and sweat and magic, mingling with the scent of blood and roses and green, growing things.

  It was hard to say how long I was crying into his hair before he raised his head, blinking bemusedly up at me. I sniffled. He lifted his hand, fingers trembling, and touched my cheek.

  “October,” he whispered.

  “We’re home,” I said, and we were. We finally, finally were.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT HAD BEEN THREE days, and I was finally able to let Tybalt out of my sight without finding it difficult to breathe.

  May and Jazz were in a similar situation. Jazz had insisted on going back to her antique store after two days in bed, and May had gone with her, despite this plan necessitating her being out of bed before one in the afternoon. Unspoken but ever-present was the fear that we were enjoying a br
ief respite from our separation, and that if we lowered our guard, even for a second, it would all come crashing down.

  The Luidaeg still had Officer Thornton in her guest room, and was slowly working on removing the traces of Annwn from his system. She didn’t know how long it would be before she could wake him up, much less start figuring out how much damage his time in deep Faerie had done. He might be lost forever, one more Rip van Winkle to lay at Faerie’s doorstep.

  I hoped not. I hoped he was going to be all right. We’d lost too many people already.

  There had been no sign of Simon since his disappearance from the Luidaeg’s apartment. I had reinforced the wards around the house, and for the first time, I was allowing May and Quentin to help me with them, turning our protections into a deeper, more complicated shell. Simon could still get through if he wanted to, but with three of us pitching in, we would almost certainly feel him coming.

  What we had here wasn’t safety. It was just the illusion of safety. It was still the only thing we had and, by Oberon, I was going to cling to it.

  Something rattled in the hall. I tensed, ready to yell for Tybalt, only to relax when Tybalt himself came around the corner, stepping into the kitchen. He smiled wanly at the look on my face.

  “I am not as breakable as all that, little fish,” he said.

  “That’s what you say now,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. It wasn’t easy. “Let’s skip the life-threatening adventures for a while, okay?”

  “To echo a wise woman I know, that’s what you say now, but when I object to your being covered in blood, how much credence do you grant to my objections?” He stalked across the room and slid his arms around my waist, joining his hands at the small of my back. “Fair’s fair.”

  “I’ll have you know that I didn’t get covered in blood once while Mom had you,” I said.

  He nuzzled my neck. “I would say I should be kidnapped more often, but—”