Page 73 of The Brightest Fell

“Hey, buddy,” I said.

Spike crooned, and rattled some more.

Before coming to live with me, Spike had lived with the rest of the rose goblins in Shadowed Hills, where it had originally sprouted from a seed planted by Luna. Like so many things in Faerie, it had been comfortably wild until someone gave it a name—that someone being me. I hadn’t been thinking. Sometimes my time in the human world shows itself in odd ways, one of those being a tendency to want to call things by their name. So I had named it, and it had followed me home, and I hadn’t been sorry, not once I adjusted to the idea of having a rose goblin now.

Simon smiled wanly at the sight of it, before helping me to boost August into one of my kitchen chairs. Her head lolled limply forward. That was a good sign. I really didn’t want her waking up before she was safely restrained.

“Hold her here,” I commanded. “I’m going to get the duct tape.”

“Hurry,” said Simon. “I can hear her breathing. I think she’ll be awake soon.”

“Hurrying,” I said.

The kitchen junk drawer was a welter of strange herbs in jars, odd sticks, bones, dried flowers pressed between sheets of wax paper, dead batteries, and other semi-useful things that we had, for whatever reason, not been able to bring ourselves to throw away. I dug through it until my fingers closed on a roll of duct tape. Yanking it free, I rushed across the room to where Simon was holding a motionless August upright, keeping her from falling out of the chair.

Quickly, I ripped off strips of tape and secured her hands to the chair’s arms, swaddling them with tape until she began to resemble a uniquely sticky mummy. Simon lifted an eyebrow but said nothing about this apparent overkill. I silently thanked him and kept taping, running loops of tape up her arms before I started taping her torso to the chair.

I was securing her shoulders when she began to squirm. Not much; just enough to tell me she was waking up. Quickly, I ripped off the last strip of tape and took a step backward, out of the range where she could accidentally brush up against me.

August shifted. August squirmed. August lifted her head, opened her eyes, and tried to stand, only to be held in place by most of a roll of duct tape.

There was a pause during which it seemed like everyone in the kitchen, even Spike, was holding their breath. August turned to Simon as the closest person. There was still no recognition in her eyes. She might as well have been looking at a total stranger, and my heart broke for him, to be so close to everything he’d sold his soul to get, and yet unable to touch it.

“You, untie me,” she said. “Right now.”

“You have no idea how much it pains me to say these words, my dear, but no.” Simon straightened up and took a step backward, away from August—away from the temptation she represented. It was taking everything he had not to reach for her.

“Hello.” I stepped into her field of vision, jerking her attention away from Simon. She glared at me, eyes narrowed, and said nothing. “Nice to meet you, sis. Sorry about the tape. You clearly never learned not to hit.”

“Untie me, mortal,” she spat.

“Not mortal,” I replied. “Thin-blooded right now, but I’ll fix that soon enough. You might be stronger than me, and you might be better-trained than me, but that doesn’t make you capable of turning me human. Our mother learned that.”

August’s eyes widened. “Mama. Where is she? What have you done to her?” She began to struggle against the tape again, harder this time, like she thought she could somehow change the laws of physics. The smell of smoke and roses filled the air, strong enough that I could pick it up even with my currently dulled senses.

“Blood magic doesn’t work on duct tape, and since you’ve dialed my fae heritage down so far that you can hardly get a hook on it, I’m pretty sure persuasion spells don’t currently work, either,” I said. “If you’re thinking about making yourself look like someone I love so I’ll untie you, I’d skip it. Fairy ointment. I’ll see through any illusions you cast.”

August looked utterly betrayed. “But you’re a changeling,” she said. “You can’t beat me. It’s not allowed.”

I glanced at Simon. “So, bigotry, that’s fun. She get that from you, or from our mother?”

“A bit of both,” he said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “It was a different time when she was born. It was still possible to live a long and happy life without ever crossing paths with the mortal world.”

“Right.” Excuses didn’t change the fact that my sister was looking at me like a misbehaving dog: something to be disciplined and, if necessary, put down. I frowned at her. “Where’s Quentin?”

“Who?”

“My squire. Bronze hair, lives here, probably wasn’t too thrilled to find you in his house?” That was a mild way of putting it. Quentin is in some ways even more territorial than me. He doesn’t want people in his home uninvited. Ever.

August blinked before offering me a slow, syrupy smile. “The boy’s important to you, is he? Unbind me and I’ll tell you where he is.”

“Nope,” I said. “Not going to happen. But I appreciate you confirming that he’s in the house and alive. Simon? Watch her.” I turned on my heel and stalked out of the kitchen before I could think better of leaving Simon to watch his daughter.

He’d been looking for her for so very, very long. When I had seen my own daughter after our separation, all I had wanted to do was hold her, to gather her close and never let her go. The urge to do the same had to be eating him alive. But August didn’t even know who he was, couldn’t know until we found a way to get her path home back from the Luidaeg. If he untied her, we would lose her, and I wasn’t sure how many more times we could run her to ground before time ran out or one of us was seriously hurt. Or both. Both was always on the table.

The house was quiet. The air had that slow, dusty smell that spoke to hours left unoccupied, rooms left to settle deeper and deeper into stillness. Quentin was likely to have started by going to the kitchen—he was a teenage boy, with a teenager’s appetite and a fondness for bedtime snacks—and then made his way toward his bedroom. Since he wasn’t in the kitchen, I stuck my head into the living room long enough to be sure I hadn’t missed him, and then started up the stairs.

It was funny, in its own sad way. When I had first returned from the pond, I would have sworn I was never going to have a home to call my own again. I would live somewhere, because everyone has to live somewhere, but that place wouldn’t be my home. There’s more to home than just walls that don’t fall down and a roof that doesn’t leak. There’s commitment, and comfort, and the knowledge that even if you have to leave today, you can come home tomorrow, because home will wait. Home waits.