Page 75 of The Brightest Fell

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? He’s her dad.”

“He’s her father, and she doesn’t know who he is,” I said. “Remember when the Luidaeg said August had given up her way home?” Quentin nodded. Grimly, I said, “Turns out that means she can’t find anything that might bring her home until she either finds Oberon or gets this geas lifted. She looks at her father and she sees a stranger. Simon’s . . . he’s holding up as well as he can, but he’s pretty damn upset, and I can’t blame him.”

“Wow,” said Quentin, after a pause to consider. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, and he’s alone with her, so let’s get back there and save him from himself. You ready?”

“Yeah,” said Quentin, and stood, and moved to stand beside me.

Impulsively, I gave him a one-armed hug, careful to keep the side of my body where the iron knife rested well away from him. “I’m glad she didn’t kill you.”

“Same,” he said, returning the gesture.

We walked back down the stairs side by side, with Quentin lagging only slightly behind to keep from tripping me. The sound of voices from the kitchen was audible before we reached the door. I stopped, motioning for Quentin to do the same.

“—please, August, you have to know who I am. Just look a little harder.” Simon was pleading, voice rich with raw, naked hunger.

“I don’t have to do anything for you,” said August. “You’re not my father. You don’t look anything like him, and when I tell him you were telling me lies, he’s going to claim insult on you and duel you to the death.”

There was a pause before Simon asked, almost bewildered, “Since when is that a thing I would do?”

Quentin glanced at me, eyes wide. I nodded and gestured to the door. Catching my meaning, he nodded as well, and together, the two of us continued on, into the kitchen.

Simon had not untied August. He was sitting in another of my chairs, well out of range of any motion she was free to make, with his clasped hands tucked between his knees. He looked young and small and scared. That’s one of the problems with purebloods: since they stop aging when they reach adulthood, even the oldest among them can look terrifyingly young and unsure to my sometimes mortal eyes.

I wanted to hug him, and the mere existence of that impulse was one of the weirdest parts of a day that had already been singularly surreal. Instead, I stopped in the doorway and said wearily, “Illusionary ropes binding my squire so he couldn’t move or call for help. Nice. You’re a real sweetheart, aren’t you, August?”

Her head turned in my direction, until she was straining against her bonds to see me. “I could have done so much worse and you know it.” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you free him? You’re a changeling. You don’t have that kind of power.”

There were a lot of things I could have said, but none of them were going to provide a foundation upon which to build a solid sisterly relationship, and so I simply pushed the left side of my jacket out of the way, showing her the knife at my belt. She was too far away to feel the iron, but the tiny strip of visible metal was dark gray and dull, and there was really no mistaking what it was.

August made a small, guttural sound of dismay, eyes flicking from the knife to my face like she was searching for some sign that this was a joke. She didn’t find one, and so she said, in a hushed voice, “You’re a monster.”

“Says the woman who broke my nose, yanked out more than half of my fae blood, and again, tied my squire to his own bed with illusionary ropes.” That last one was the one that pissed me off the most, something I was absolutely sure came through in my voice. “How were you expecting him to get free? That kind of spell doesn’t dissolve with a single dawn.”

“It would have snapped eventually,” said August.

“Eventually doesn’t stop me from wetting the bed,” said Quentin. I glanced at him. He shrugged. “I have a sense of dignity.”

“She’s carrying iron,” said August.

Quentin blinked. “And? She does that when she’s this human. You made her this way, so it’s sort of your fault, I’d think.”

August looked at him, utterly baffled. This wasn’t the sort of thing she encountered all that often.

Entertaining as this was, it wasn’t solving anything. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. This is fun and all, but this isn’t working. Simon, Quentin, pick her up. We need to put her in the car.”

“Why are we putting her in the car?” asked Quentin.

Simon looked alarmed.

“Because,” I said, looking from Quentin to Simon and August. “We’re taking her to see the Luidaeg.”

TWENTY-THREE

“DID WE REALLY HAVE to put her in the trunk?”

Simon sounded less angry than plaintive, like he really, truly, wanted to understand why I had felt it necessary to stuff his daughter, my sister, in the trunk of my car. She hadn’t gone easily, either. Despite being taped to one of my good chairs—and there was no way we were going to release her while she was awake—she’d put up a fight, squirming as hard as she could, tilting her weight first one way and then the other in her attempts to throw Simon and Quentin off balance.