Page 9 of The Brightest Fell

“You were the one who tried to choose mortality for me, Mom,” I said, before I could think better of it.

Silence fell, broken only by the soft bubbling of Jazz’s cocoa. Then Amandine smiled.

“Yes, exactly,” she said. “When I had the chance, I tried to choose mortality for you. If Sylvester had arrived to find a human child, he wouldn’t have offered you the Changeling’s Choice, because there would have been nothing to choose. He would have walked away. I could have been with you every day of your life, the best and most loving of mothers, until I laid you to bed in a blanket of earth, with a pillow of stones for your head. I tried. You tied my hands. To have you going back on your choice now, it’s . . . well, it’s shameful, October. You should at least have the courage of your convictions.”

I stared at her for a moment, stunned into silence. Tybalt moved to stand behind me, not looming, not threatening my mother, but lending what support he could through his sheer presence.

Finally, I took a deep breath and asked, “Why are you here, Mother? I’m assuming it isn’t to criticize my interior decorating.”

“I’ve been informed that you’re continuing to play at being a detective.” Amandine sniffed. “It seems an odd thing to spend your time doing, as we both know you have no native talents in the area, but if you will persist, then it seems you are equipped to do me a boon.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I wish to hire you.”

This time, the moment of silence lasted a lot longer. Then, almost despite myself, I started to laugh. Once I started, I discovered that I couldn’t stop. I bent forward, one hand pressed against my stomach, trying to make the laughter end. It refused.

Tybalt put a hand on my back, steadying me. May looked alarmed. And Amandine . . .

Amandine looked resigned, like she had expected nothing better from me, her changeling daughter. That killed my mirth right quick. I stopped laughing and straightened, taking some small comfort in the weight of Tybalt’s hand against my spine. I wasn’t a child anymore. Amandine might be my mother, and one of the Firstborn, but so what? I’d stood up to Firstborn before. I’d killed one of them. I didn’t want to kill my mother, but it helped to know that she wasn’t invincible.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It sounded like you insulted my profession and then said you wanted to hire me.”

“Yes, because that’s exactly what I did.”

“Mom . . .” I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, what do you want to hire me to do? Did you lose something?”

“Yes,” she said. “Your sister.”

I lowered my hand, staring at her once again. It felt like the air had just been sucked out of the room, replaced by something hot and stale and difficult to breathe.

“What?” I finally squeaked.

“Your sister. I know you know about her. Your foolish father is bound to have told you, when he was struggling to make his amends.” She sniffed again. “I married him for many reasons. His brains were not among them. Be more careful, should you ever decide to marry. Choose a man who can think for himself, and not be led astray by every dainty dame who comes walking down the lane.”

“My . . . father?” The blows just kept coming.

Amandine waved a hand dismissively. “Your legal father, not the man who sired you. Humans have no claim over any part of Faerie. Simon may not have been in my bed when I got you, but he has the responsibility for you in our world. Given your seeming determination to shed as much of your mortal blood as possible, it won’t be long before he becomes the only father you have.”

The thought made my stomach turn. Simon Torquill is my liege’s twin brother, and the man responsible for my fourteen-year disappearance. Without him, my life would have been very different. Not better, maybe . . . but in some ways, absolutely, because without him, I would never have lost my little girl.

I can like everything else about my new life better than I like the memory of my old one. Not that. Losing Gillian will haunt me until I die—and there’s so little mortality left in me that I’m going to live for a long, long time. Long after my daughter is dust, I’ll still be here, and still mourning for the fact that I never got the chance to be a parent to her. I gave her life. Other people gave her everything else.

Simon is also my mother’s husband. Since Faerie doesn’t acknowledge the validity of marriages between humans and the fae, she wasn’t even cheating on him when she went off to spend a decade in the mortal world. To have a daughter. In the eyes of our law, such as it is, he’s my father and always has been.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to have a normal family. Not that anyone I know actually has one.

“Mom . . .” I paused; took a breath. “Yes, Simon told me about August. He told me she disappeared decades before I was born, and that he wound up working for Evening because he was trying to find her. He’s a pureblood. Evening’s Firstborn. If the two of them working together couldn’t find her, what makes you think I can?”

“You have a gift for doing the impossible,” she said airily. “The things they tell me you’ve done! You killed Blind Michael. You brought his stolen children home. You stopped Oleander de Merelands, after everything she’s done. You found the lost Princess in the Mists, and chased a pretender from the throne. They tell me you’re a hero now, my October, and who am I to question the word of what seems to be all of Faerie? Heroes undertake impossible quests. Heroes complete them. I want my child back. You stole yourself from me when you chose wrongly. The least you can do is return the daughter I lost before I had you.”

I stared at her again. Our conversation had been more defined by silences than by sentences, in part because every other word out of her mouth made me want to turn around and leave the room. She was my mother. She would have been good at insulting and belittling me even if she wasn’t my mother—that seems to be a trait shared by all the Firstborn—but because she was, she knew exactly what to say to cause me pain.

“Mom . . .”

“Do this for me, and you will be forgiven.”

“Forgiven? Forgiven for what?”