Late Eclipses

by Seanan McGuire

  “It wasn’t the Luidaeg,” said Sylvester. I squinted as I turned toward the sound of his voice. He was standing a few feet to my left, his fingers clenched white-knuckled around May’s upper arm. May didn’t seem to mind how tightly he was holding her; she was just staring at me, eyes gone as wide as Connor’s.

  “It wasn’t the Luidaeg,” Sylvester repeated. “I would have sent for her, if there’d been time. But there was no time.”

  I used Connor’s shoulder for balance as I levered myself into a sitting position. Every move awoke another cascade of aches. My head hurt, my legs hurt—pretty much everything that could hurt, hurt. Pain does nasty things to my patience. “Does somebody want to tell me what the hell’s going on? Starting with, I don’t know why I’m not dead?” Purebloods sleep. Humans and changelings die. It’s in the rules.

  Sometimes life seems to take an obscene pleasure in throwing me curve balls.

  “You have to understand, there just . . . there was no time.” Sylvester was almost pleading. “I didn’t know she’d come. Once she did, I couldn’t refuse her.”

  “You died, Toby,” said May. Her voice was matter-offact, entirely out of synch with her shell-shocked expression. “Your heart stopped, and you died.”

  I stared at her before twisting to face to Connor and demanding, “Tell me what they’re not saying.”

  “The rose goblins ran away when you fell, and they came back with Amandine.” His eyes searched my face, looking for a sign that I understood. “Sylvester and I were . . . you were having some sort of seizure, and we were holding you down. She pushed us out of the way when your heart stopped.”

  “I was fading,” said May. “But she told me to stop, and I did. She just said ‘stop,’ and I was here again. She yelled at you to choose. She yelled until you started breathing again, and now, you’re . . .” Her voice faltered. Barely above a whisper, she added, “I’m not your Fetch anymore. I can’t feel you.”

  I raised my hand. She stopped talking.

  If I thought about it—really focused—I could almost remember hands holding me down, and shouting, all of it filtered through dream images of a little girl’s room and a second Changeling’s Choice. I dropped the hand I’d used to signal May to silence and wiped my lips. My fingers came away smeared with blood. I looked at them without any real surprise. I didn’t bother tasting the blood; I already knew which of my memories it held. Nothing but a little girl’s bedroom, and a choice she was only supposed to be offered once.

  “It’s always blood and roses with you, isn’t it, Mother?” I murmured. I was starting to understand. It fit with too many things, going back too far, to be ignored. I just didn’t want to believe it. The balance of your blood is the one thing that shouldn’t change . . . but if that’s true, why did Oberon make the hope chests?

  The hope chests were made to turn changelings all the way fae. At that moment, they represented a final chance to reduce the magnitude of the lies my mother told me. I seized the possibility for all that it was worth. “Did she have a hope chest?” I asked.

  “You know she didn’t,” said Sylvester. The resignation in his voice was almost impossible to bear. “It was the only way to save you. She didn’t ask for consent, and I didn’t stop her. I’m sorry, Toby. I couldn’t let you go.”

  May’s hair grew to match mine overnight, like the sudden growth of a thorn briar around a castle meant to sleep for a hundred years. Would it grow again if she cut it now? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

  “Connor, help me up.”

  He nodded, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me gently—almost tenderly—to my feet. It took several minutes of teetering before I was stable. Connor held me the whole time, and didn’t let go even after I could have stood on my own. I was quietly relieved. I had the feeling I was going to need the support.

  “Toby—” Sylvester began.

  “Give me a minute.” Amandine offered me a second chance to make my first decision. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was my mother, and I was starting to realize that “shouldn’t” didn’t apply. “No more letting me lie to you,” she said.

  Someone had been lying to me, all right. More than one someone. I held on to Connor with one hand as I raised the other and pushed my hair back, feeling my ear. The planes and edges I knew were gone, replaced by a sharper angle, rising to a more tapered point. My breath caught. So. I was right. Now what was I going to do about it?

  “I want a mirror.” I wasn’t sure whether I was overreacting, underreacting, or doing both at once. Part of me wanted to blame the poison in my blood, but the answer was probably simpler. I came close to dying—hell, I actually died—and I was panicking. Isn’t stress fun?

  Sylvester sighed. “Please don’t strain yourself before I get back,” he said, and turned, walking through a nearby doorway.

  I gave the garden a slow once-over once he was gone. My eyes were still adjusting to the light, but the glare was becoming less painful. I was unsurprised to see the body of the assassin on the path not far away, arrows sticking out of his back. They were fletched in the colors of Shadowed Hills. “He hit anybody else?”

  “Sir Archibald,” Connor reported. “He’s asleep in his quarters.”

  “Shit. I hope they remember to dust him.” There were rose goblins on every surface, watching us with bright, unblinking eyes. “They’re worse than cats,” I muttered.

  “What?” said May.

  “Nothing.” Sylvester came back through the door, carrying a long, cloth-draped mirror. I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Where’s my mother?”

  “She left,” he said, as he moved to prop the mirror against the fountain.

  “Of course she did.” That was just like Amandine. She’d show up when I was dying, but she couldn’t stay to see me live. “How long did you know? Don’t say you didn’t. All that ‘Amandine this’ and ‘Amandine that’—you knew. And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Know what?” asked Connor. “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Well, Sylvester? You want to answer the man?”

  He looked away.

  “Right,” I snarled, pulling myself out of Connor’s hands and wobbling over to the fountain. I yanked the fabric off the mirror, throwing it unceremoniously to the side.

  And then I stopped, unable to make myself move. Even knowing what I was going to see did nothing to prepare me for actually seeing it. “Oh,” I said, finally. “Tybalt was right.”

  Almost a year ago, Tybalt followed me to the County of Tamed Lightning, where he helped me find a killer and saw me raise the dead. He got strange after that, and avoided me for months while he went looking for something. We returned to what passed for our normal relationship once he found what he’d been looking for. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. He said I had to find it for myself, because I wouldn’t believe it coming from him.

  He was right. Maybe I’m weird, but if he’d said, “By the way, you’re not Daoine Sidhe, because Daoine Sidhe don’t work the way you do,” I would have laughed him out of the room.

  Well, I wasn’t laughing now. And I wasn’t Daoine Sidhe.

  The woman in the mirror was pale with exhaustion, and her eyes were a gray almost pale enough to be white. Her stick-straight hair was ashy brown shot through with streaks of gold. Even her features were finer than I expected. I could still see my father in the cant of her chin, but he was blurred and half-hidden. She’d been—I’d been—tilted further from human. What Amandine did changed everything. I knew that, even as I closed my eyes and gathered my magic around me, reaching inward as I tried to do something I never felt the need to do before, and measured my own heritage.

  The smell of copper rose hot as I asked my blood, What am I? Its answer was incomprehensible, the taste/ sound/feeling of a race I didn’t recognize and had never encountered before. Whatever Amandine and I were, we didn’t even share a Firstborn with the Daoine Sidhe. I dug deeper, looking for a clearer picture, and my eyes snappe
d open, meeting the shocked stare of my reflection.

  There were subtle watermarks scattered all through me, marks I somehow knew showed the places where the balance of my blood had changed. I’d never been able to see them before. Now, they were all too visible. The freshest was less than an hour old; the one before it matched the night I touched the hope chest. There were other marks before those; all short, brusque changes that read almost like a tug-of-war.

  Amandine stopped voluntarily touching me after I made my Changeling’s Choice. I used to think it was because she blamed me for taking her away from my father. That was never the reason. She just couldn’t risk it around people who’d see what she was doing to me. I looked at the watermarks in my blood and suddenly being the weak daughter of the most powerful blood-worker in Faerie actually started making sense.

  May was behind me when I opened my eyes. She had no human blood—as a Fetch, she mimicked my changeling traits without sharing them—but her reflection looked more human than mine did. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Amandine saved you,” she said. “She came out of that fog she lives in and saved you. Please don’t hate her for doing it.”

  I ignored her, watching my lips in the mirror as I asked, “Sylvester? How long?” I wanted to kick and scream and throw things, but I knew that wouldn’t achieve anything. So I waited for his answer, and I watched my reflection speak.

  “Always.” Sylvester laughed bitterly. “I’m Daoine Sidhe, remember?”

  I turned to face him. “And I’m not.”

  Connor gaped at me. Sylvester just shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re what everyone’s always told you that you were.” His smile was strained. “You’re Amandine’s daughter.”

  “I’m still a changeling. I can feel my mortality. It’s thinner, but it’s there.” I kept my eyes on Sylvester’s, challenging him to look away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because your mother asked me not to, and I couldn’t deny her.” His smile died. “I never dreamed that it would take her this long.”

  “Yeah, well.” I glared at him. It didn’t help. I’d never felt so betrayed. Not by Devin, not by Amandine, not by anyone. Sylvester was the father I’d never been allowed to have. He was the one man who wasn’t supposed to lie to me. “That’s Amandine for you. Always taking the long way around.”

  “She came when you needed her,” said May. “Doesn’t that count for something? She loves you.” Her tone was wistful. She had my memories; she remembered being Amandine’s daughter, but she was still a Fetch. She’d never had a mother.

  My mother loved me. It was an interesting notion, and almost enough to take my mind off what she’d done. It was nowhere near enough to blunt the sting of what Sylvester had done. “Did she say anything else?” I asked.

  “She said beware the Lady of the Lake, because she’s never forgiven you your story, but to be more afraid by far of Morgane,” said Connor. I gave him a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I don’t know what that means. Amandine’s a little weird, even when she’s being sane. Are you really not Daoine Sidhe?”

  “Guess not.” I raked my hair back again, wincing as my hand hit my ear. This was going to take some getting used to.

  May’s sudden smile was vibrant enough to make me feel selfish for my panic. “I’m not your Fetch anymore, and I’m still here.”

  I matched her smile with a more subdued smile of my own. “I’m so glad.”

  Connor cleared his throat. “Now can you stop dying on us?”

  “I’ll do my best. No promises.” I glanced at Sylvester. “I’m not done being angry with you, but this isn’t the time. Did May tell you what we found?”

  “I got a little distracted, boss,” May said, sounding sheepish.

  Sylvester looked between us. “What’s going on?”

  “We were here because we had some ideas about what happened to Luna,” I said. “We were at the bottom of the hill when Oleander called to taunt me.”

  “May told us that much,” he said, nodding. “But Luna?”

  “She wasn’t poisoned; that’s why Jin can’t find anything wrong with her. It’s the roses that are sick. Someone’s been salting the earth around them.”

  Sylvester’s eyes narrowed. “And as the roses die . . . ”

  “So does she. Have you noticed the rose goblins acting strangely?”

  “I haven’t noticed much,” he admitted, glancing at the goblins clustered around his feet. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  “I have,” said Connor. “They got sick the same time Luna did. Some of the smaller ones have died. I thought it was because she was sick.”

  “So did I, but we were coming at things from the wrong direction. If we cure the roses, we cure her. Walther cured the goblins by turning the salt in their blood into gypsum. He may be able to help with the soil, once he’s had a little more time.”

  “I see,” said Sylvester. His smile was less vibrant than May’s, but just as alive, and twice as relieved. I felt a pang of guilt over taking time to panic before getting down to business; they needed me to be sane, and I hadn’t been doing it.

  Then again, I just came back from the dead, and learned that the one person I’d trusted more than anyone had been lying to me for my entire life. Maybe I needed to cut myself a little slack. “We can save her,” I said.

  “I hope so,” said Sylvester. “And—”

  I never learned what he was going to say next. The gate connecting the Ducal chambers to the rest of the knowe banged open, and Dugan strode into the garden at the head of a troop of guards in the Queen’s colors. Raysel and Manuel were right behind. Raysel looked gleeful; Manuel looked smug. Neither expression was very comforting.

  May whirled to face her, eyes wide and angry. Sylvester’s turn was slower, and more dangerous; there was a cold fury in the way he was holding himself, and I knew that his fuse wouldn’t burn for long.

  Dugan focused on May, ignoring me completely. “October Daye, you have been charged—”

  Oh, oak and ash. I looked like a stranger to anyone who wasn’t there when Amandine shifted the balance of my blood, while May looked like, well, me. I moved to put myself between her and the guards, ignoring Connor’s attempt to grab my wrist and stop me. “I think you’ve got the wrong girl,” I said, projecting as much false bravado as I could manage. “Unless you came here to harass my Fetch?”

  Dugan hesitated. “October Daye?”

  “The same.”

  He hesitated a moment more. Then, slowly, he smiled. “October Daye, you have been charged with the murder of the Undine known as Lily, and the attempted murder of Luna Torquill, Duchess of Shadowed Hills. You are under arrest by direct order of the Queen of the Mists. I suggest you come quietly.”

  “This is madness!” snapped Sylvester. “Sir Daye has been injured. I won’t allow—”

  “Don’t.” I put my hand on his arm. “It won’t do any good. You know what to do. Call Walther—May knows where he is—and he’ll help you.”

  “Are you quite done?” Raysel asked. “You’re being arrested, not taking a tour.”

  I looked at her coldly. “Raysel, you told me yourself that your father wasn’t my liege anymore. I don’t have to obey his wishes, spoken or unspoken, and so I can finally say this: go drown yourself, you self-righteous little bitch.”

  She stared at me, cheeks reddening, before turning on her heels and storming out of the room. Manuel gave me a venomous look and followed.

  I turned back to Dugan. “Well? Weren’t you going to arrest me now?”

  He motioned two of the guards forward. One grabbed my hands and yanked them behind me. The other snapped iron manacles around my wrists, making my skin crawl. “This isn’t necessary,” I said. “I’m not fighting you.”

  “For once in your life, be silent,” said Dugan, with no real rancor in his tone.

  I looked at him blandly, trying to pretend the iron wasn’t already starting to burn. The second guard removed my knives from around my
waist. “What’s your full name?”

  “Dugan Harrow of Deep Mists,” he said. The answer was automatic; like it or not, changeling or not, I outranked him. Eyes narrowing, he asked, “Why?”

  “Because, Dugan Harrow of Deep Mists, I’m going to remember you. I’m going to remember this. And you’re going to be sorry.” One of the guards shoved me between the shoulders, catching me squarely on one of the punctures left by the elf-shot. I staggered, biting my lip to keep from crying out, and let them push me toward the gate.

  I only glanced back once as they forced me out of the room. Connor was rigid with anger as he stared after us, hands balled into useless fists. May was sobbing, slumped against Sylvester, who watching us go with a bleak, calculating anger in his eyes. If Luna lived and I didn’t, the Queen might find herself facing insurrection from a quarter she never bargained for.

  The gate closed behind us, and the guards led me away.

  TWENTY-SIX

  HAVING MY HANDS MANACLED BEHIND ME added a new, nerve-racking dimension to the trip along the beach leading to the Queen’s knowe. The guards yanked me upright every time I started to fall, pulling so hard they wrenched my arms and rattled my teeth. For some reason, I wasn’t particularly grateful. The iron in the manacles disrupted and dissolved my magic, leaving me dizzy and making it impossible for me to spin an illusion. I threw up twice before we even reached the beach. Amandine saved my life, but she also made me more vulnerable to the touch of iron. Nice trade, Mom.

  The don’t-look-here Dugan had thrown over our group was itchy and foreign-feeling, but it hid us from the mortal world, and that was what mattered. There’d be no tourist providing a last-minute save for me. Not this time.

  We somehow made it over the rocks without anyone toppling into the Pacific. I tried to stop long enough to catch my breath, and one of the guards shoved me forward. The third stone in as many minutes turned under my foot, nearly sending me tumbling. “Be a little more careful, asshole,” I snapped. I was already soaked to the knees. I didn’t want to get any wetter.