I heard snickers go around the courtyard. There was nothing the Fae enjoyed more than a good show—the bloodier, the better—and I intended to give them just that.
Tremaine’s cheeks grew two blooms, crimson fire-flowers of rage that told me I’d managed to throw him off balance. “How dare you come back here and hurl insults at me after what you did!”
“I’m not staying long,” I told him. I saw my mother flinch, but I could deal with that after I’d said what I’d come to say.
“I’m not Fae,” I told Tremaine, raising my voice so everyone gaping at us could hear.
Tremaine’s mouth curled cruel and sharp as a fishhook. “Tell me something I don’t know, Aoife.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I shot back. “I know that you want me on your side so much you can taste it. I know that with a power like mine, you could destroy the Summer Court and get what you’ve always wanted—the favor of your queen. Real power. That’s what I have, and it’s what you want so badly it burns in your blood.”
There was only silence now, except for the wailing of the wind. The entire Winter Court was waiting. On a high balcony, I saw a flutter of white and red as the queen appeared, staring down at us. A bright-eyed cardinal sat on her shoulder, also staring. I wasn’t silly enough to think she’d missed a word of what Tremaine and I had said. Octavia didn’t get to be Winter Queen by being unobservant.
“I’m also not human,” I pressed on. “Thorn is in my blood as much as Iron. I can’t live in the Iron Land or I’ll go mad. Nor can I live in Thorn, because I’m not one of you. I can’t live the life of a Fae. I’ll grow old while you all stay exactly the same.”
“I assume you have a point,” Tremaine snarled. “Make it, why don’t you?”
“I propose a truce,” I pressed on. “I will be a citizen of both lands, ruled by neither. I’ll do favors for you, Tremaine—when I feel like it—and in return, you stop. Stop trying to trick me, stop grasping for power, stop trying to manipulate Octavia and my mother.”
He surprised me by not immediately shouting. A calculating look stole across his face and one hand tapped his velvet-clad leg. Then, as quickly as the wind whipped fallen leaves across the courtyard, he stepped within arm’s length of me and extended his hand. “You have a bargain.”
This was it, then. A Fae bargain was serious business, and he’d made it in front of everyone, even Octavia.
I took a step of my own and gripped his hand. It was cold and smooth, like snakeskin, and I could feel the incalculable strength behind his grasp and see the flash of the silver blade he kept spring-loaded in his sleeve. I wasn’t naive—I knew if we hadn’t had an audience, that blade would have found a new home in my still-beating heart.
“You’re not as stupid as you look,” Tremaine muttered. “You better hold to what you say. I will be calling in your so-called favor.”
“I’m not the one who has a problem with lies,” I said. I pulled him close, so close that we could have felt each other’s heart beating. “And if you ever get up to your old tricks,” I whispered in Tremaine’s pointed shell of an ear, “if you ever try to deceive me or use me or use someone I love to harm me, I will show you things so much more ancient and hungry than you are that your mind cannot contain them. And they will devour you. And the last thing you hear will be my victorious laughter. Are we clear?”
Tremaine pulled back and regarded me, not with a sneer but with a degree of circumspection I’d never witnessed before. “Now, that,” he said, a smile forming, “that was the tongue of a Fae speaking.”
He dropped my hand and threw me a lazy salute. “Well played, Aoife. Enjoy wallowing in the mud with your humans.”
“Oh,” I told him, “you know I always do.”
As Tremaine stalked back into the palace, my mother came to me and threw her arms around me. “Don’t stay away too long,” she mumbled into my hair. “I’ve only just gotten to know you.”
I squeezed her just as hard, feeling how small and frail she was under my grasp. But it was misleading—she wasn’t frail. She was the strongest survivor I knew. She had weathered the years of iron madness and the machinations of Tremaine. She’d be alive long after Archie and Dean and probably even Lovecraft itself were gone.
Often, when I was young, I’d try to see something of myself in my mother—nose, eyes, hair, voice. I’d never seen anything, until this moment. The strong will that drove us was the same. I might get my stubborn nature and inquisitive mind, my green eyes and my insane hair from Archie, but the will to live, to survive at all costs, came from Nerissa. Her Fae blood was her gift to me, and I carried it in my veins no matter what was on the surface.
“I love you, Aoife,” Nerissa said softly, and then stepped back. Her eyes glimmered, but the tears didn’t fall to crystallize on the snow. “Run along, now. I imagine your brother’s waiting.”
“I’ll be back,” I told Nerissa. “I won’t leave you.”
Nerissa didn’t say anything. She simply swiped at her eyes and then turned away, the pain clearly too much.
As I walked out of the courtyard, I raised my eyes to Octavia on her balcony. The cardinal took flight, a bloodred blot on the white sky, and as the Winter Queen watched it, she gave me a terrible and predatory parting smile.
* * *
I stepped out of the hexenring in the orchard disoriented and with my head pounding, as usual, and looked for a stump or a rock to sit on for a moment to collect myself.
“Having fun with your little Fae friends?”
I screamed and nearly jumped out of my skin. “Dammit, Conrad! What’s wrong with you?”
“You’ve been skulking around all week looking like you were ready to take off,” he grumped. “I followed you to see if you were running away.”
I sat down on one of the massive stones that had at one point composed the foundation of the cider house and massaged my forehead. I couldn’t have another dustup with my brother. Not now, not while I was still shaking from the memory of the Winter Queen’s smile.
“And would you have stopped me if I was?”
Conrad shrugged. “I don’t want you gone, Aoife. I just don’t understand why you do the things you do.”
“I can’t ever explain it,” I said. If I told Conrad the truth, I’d lose his trust forever. Still, the urge was almost overwhelming. “I just …” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “I have a lot to make up for.”
“You don’t owe me a thing, Aoife,” he said. “If anything, I owe you. I tried to kill you. I hurt you, and you’re the only one who’s ever stuck by me.”
“Don’t take that weight,” I said, almost too quickly. “Don’t blame yourself for that, Conrad.”
“I don’t,” he said, giving me a wan smile. “I just don’t want you to think you’re the bad guy, Aoife. No matter what you do, I’ll still be your brother.” He sat next to me and pulled out a letter on good paper that smelled of woodsmoke and rich ink. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, any chance my little sister will celebrate with me?” He handed the envelope over and watched as my eyes danced across the letterhead. Miskatonic University Office of Admissions.
Dear Mr. Grayson
,
We are pleased to offer you admission to our undergraduate class starting in the fall term of 1956
.…
“How did this happen?” I said, feeling a curious mixture of sadness and surprise bubble in my chest. I was happy for him, but he hadn’t even hinted that he was thinking of leaving. “You didn’t apply anywhere,” I said. “You didn’t graduate from the Academy.…”
“Archie pulled some strings and made sure my transcript was filled out by private tutors,” he said. “I imagine next year he’ll do the same thing for you.”
“But a university?” I said. “Back among all those people yammering about Rationalists and heretics? People who think we should be burned alive for what’s in our blood?”
“Miskatonic isn’t like that,” Conrad said. “Archie went there. It’s a place wher
e they value real science and real reason, not that frightened screeching that comes from the Bureau of Proctors. Besides,” he added, “the Bureau might be on the way out, if the past few weeks are any indication. There’s all kinds of hearings, high-ranking types are being arrested.… The world’s changing. I want to be part of that.”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,” I said softly. What would I do without Conrad? We might fight all the time, but I needed him. He was the stable one, the rock. Without him, I would be anchorless.
“Look, Aoife,” Conrad said. “I’m not you. I don’t have the ability that you and Archie do, and I never will. I don’t understand what makes either of you tick. This is my chance to fit in, to finally make something of myself that’s not just being the third wheel dragging the rest of my family down.”
He put his hand over mine. “You don’t need me. Your destiny is this big thing, big as the stars, and mine is here, weighted down by iron. That’s all. That’s all I was ever trying to say.”
He shoved the letter into his pants pocket and got up, starting back across the orchard. I watched him go, feeling as if someone had ripped out some essential organ and cast it away. Then I jumped up. “Conrad!”
I ran and caught up with him when he stopped. “I need you, stupid,” I said, giving him a shove on the shoulder. “You’re my brother, for crying out loud. My family.” The tears started, and I let them come. “The only family I had, for a really long time. You’re the one who protected me, even when you went mad. You’re the one who wrote me that letter, Conrad. You saved me from myself. I can’t …”
I was going to say more, how I couldn’t ever thank him enough for that, even if he was stubborn and curt and sometimes mistrustful, but he grabbed me and pulled me into a bear hug. “Stop crying,” he muttered. “You can be such a girl sometimes.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “Big college man.”
He gave a small laugh. “Going to try, anyway. I figure if I stay on campus and come back here, I can stave off the iron madness.” He started walking again, and I fell into step beside him.
“Did you ever think you’d be destined for a quiet life?” I asked.
“Did you ever think you’d have anything but?” he asked me with a grin.
“Good point,” I told him, and we shared a silence that was unstrained for the first time in months as we walked back toward home.
Cal and Bethina were sitting around the aethervox when I entered the kitchen. I cleaned the mud off my shoes and hung up my jumper, and they still hadn’t moved.
“What’s all this about?” I said.
Bethina shushed me with a wave, so I joined them at the table and bent my head close. The reception was terrible, every third word a burst of static.
“Repeat: Congress has called for an emergency shutdown of the Bureau of Proctors after evidence revealed that its former director, Grey Draven, was caught … using Bureau funds … prison for his political enemies … many prisoners found not to be viral … suspected of consorting with terrorist organization known as the Brotherhood of Iron. President McCarthy has denounced Draven as a traitor, though there are some members of the House also calling for the president’s impeachment, as the full scope of his knowledge of this conspiracy is not yet known.”
I felt my mouth open, and looked up to see that Cal and Bethina shared my look. Bethina shook her head. Her curls, which had gotten longer and more unruly, bounced like a copper waterfall.
“Always knew that man was crooked as a coat hanger,” she said. “My mother said politicians are all crooked at both ends and bent in the middle.”
“They’re actually talking about disbanding the Proctors,” Cal said. “Can you imagine?”
“Might give poor folks some peace for once,” Bethina said. “Always thought virals were the worst thing imaginable, but after everything I’ve seen with the two of you, I feel downright sorry for some. Locked up and tortured. You wouldn’t even do that to a dog.”
She got up and bustled out of the kitchen, throwing Cal a wide, gleaming smile over her shoulder as she left.
He returned it and then looked at me. I raised one eyebrow. Cal had been putting this off for far too long; it was time someone got firm with him.
“You and I are best friends, right?” I said. Cal nodded, brow already wrinkling anxiously. To look at him, you’d never know he wasn’t human. I had that thought at least a hundred times since I’d found out what he really was.
“We are,” he agreed. “And I know what you’re going to say, but I can’t—”
“Cal,” I said, “she’s a smart girl. If she loves you, she’ll understand.”
I started to get up and leave, but his next words stopped me. “I’m scared, Aoife.”
I looked back at him. “You think I’m not, Cal? Every day? I’m scared all the time. The trick is not to show it.”
I sat back down and looked him in the eye. Cal was the one person who’d never questioned me, never left my side, and the last thing I wanted was to hurt him. “You’re my best friend,” I said. “You’re the only person I was able to trust for a long time, and I know that you’ll always be there for me.” I sucked in a breath and chewed on my lip for a moment before continuing. “But you have to be yourself, Cal. I know you want to be human, but Bethina deserves the truth. And if she leaves, she wasn’t right for you anyway.”
Cal looked at the scarred tabletop. Decades of Graysons eating and cooking had made it satin-smooth, full of deep grooves and notches. “I don’t want to be alone, Aoife. Even in my nest, I was always the odd one. I can look like this, and the rest of them can only be ghouls. They don’t trust me.” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You’ll never be alone!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t believe Cal would think I’d just drop him suddenly, when I hadn’t even after he’d showed me what he truly was. Then again, he hadn’t shied away from me either, when he’d found out that not only human blood was in my veins. “You’ll always have me,” I said. “We’re supposed to be friends, Cal. Because of who we are, and what we are, and because I know I can trust you.” I pointed to the door Bethina had gone through. “And trust me when I say that you need to go tell her the truth. Will you do that for me?”
Cal sighed, but then he nodded and pushed back from the table. Moving with the greatest of reluctance, he stepped through the door. “Bethina, wait up. I need to talk to you.”
He looked back at me before he walked on, and I gave him a reassuring smile. Cal was lucky. He had someone who loved him, and I hoped it would be unconditional. Not too long before, I would have been jealous of what he had, but now … I got up myself and went upstairs to find Dean.
The small door to the roof-deck was open, cool air drifting through. I climbed the ladder and found Dean leaning on the railing, smoking and looking out over the valley and the village of Arkham. A few people moved on the narrow streets, the first residents to return after the Proctors had abandoned the quarantine.
“You want some company?” I asked. Dean turned and gave me one of the slow, lazy smiles that started a warm feeling in my stomach and spread it everywhere, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
“From you, princess?” he said. “Always.”
I went to him and wrapped my arms around him inside his coat, placing my head on his chest and listening to his heart beat. “I’m so glad you’re here, Dean. Just stay here, all right?”
His breath hitched and I looked up. Dean’s expression was pained. I let go of him, already fearing the worst. “What is it?”
“Aoife,” he said, and I knew it was bad. Usually I was “princess” or “darlin’.”
“Please,” I said. “If I did something, just tell me and I’ll try to make it better. Please don’t just dump me.”
“No.” Dean held up his hands. “It’s not you, Aoife. I could never be ticked about anything you did. You saved me from that place where I was dead. And even
before that, you got me out of the Rustworks. I was going nowhere fast, and you gave me something I needed and didn’t even realize it.”
“But?” I said, feeling the word on the tip of his tongue.
“You made a sacrifice for your ma, and I understand that,” he said. “My mother and I don’t see eye to eye, but she’s still my mother. But you made an even bigger sacrifice for me, Aoife, and I can’t have that. I won’t have you putting yourself in danger for me like that ever again. I’m not worth it.”
He put his hand against my cheek. “You’re destined for greatness, princess, and I’m just going to get in the way. So I’m going to get out of it and head home. I’ll head back to the Mists, maybe finally do what my mom always wanted and serve the Erlkin on Windhaven for a while.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss against my forehead, even as I felt myself beginning to shake. “I’ll never forget you, princess. But for your own good, I can’t stay with you.”
I pushed his hand away, my heart throbbing so hard it was like the great pistons that powered the Engine. “Dean Harrison,” I bit out, “you’re an idiot.”
He blinked and looked down at me. “I don’t—”
“I love you,” I said, feeling myself start to cry. I kept talking, not caring that hot tears were pouring forth to cool against my cheeks in the cold spring wind. “I crossed life and death to be with you, Dean.” I swiped furiously at my eyes, trying to clear away the blur of tears. “Guess what? It’s not up to you to decide whether or not I want to be with you. It’s my choice, and I choose you. Only you, Dean. Forever.”
Dean pulled back, and pushed a hand through his hair. “I had no idea you felt that way, darlin’,” he said.
“Do you love me?” I demanded. The initial shock had worn off now, and I was focused only on keeping him by my side. I needed Dean. I’d learned that much. Without him there was a void that nothing could fill, a void as deep and black as the universe.
“Of course,” he said softly. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, princess. I love you so much sometimes I can’t think of anything else. I love you so much it makes it easy to get up in the morning. When I was dead, I remembered that I loved you and it agonized me that we’d never be together again.” He dropped his gaze from mine. “Some spirits tried to forget, tried to get deliberately torn apart so they wouldn’t think of their lives anymore, and it hurt so much down there that sometimes I wanted that. But every time I got close, I’d think of you and how you’d want me to keep fighting, and it was you that kept me going in that place.” He squeezed my hand. “So yeah, I love you.”
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