Page 66 of Night and Silence

“But I am. Don’t you wonder who woke me?”

I froze. The false Queen smirked.

“You aren’t as adored as you think you are, and not everyone loves this brave new world you struggle to create. Changelings have no place in polite society. Elf-shot is a tool to be used, not a disease to be ‘cured.’ You overstep in every possible direction, and then you wonder why anyone would react poorly.” The Queen leaned forward. “Oberon made you and your ilk to be tools, living hope chests for the masses, because even he could see that Faerie needed to be cleansed. The mortal taint should never have been allowed to take root the way it did. You’re a thing playing at being a hero, and it’s time you learned your place.”

“And you’re a fool who never learned to throw a damn punch,” I said wearily. The false Queen’s eyes widened.

I rushed the dais.

She was a small, frail-looking woman. I knew that to be at least partially a lie—all Sea Wights look like they’re on the verge of collapse, and most of them can sling sunken ships around like pebbles. I also knew that she’d been a queen for a full century, and queens don’t fight their own battles. Queens sit back and let other people do their fighting for them.

My shoulder caught her in the middle of the chest, sending her careening back against her throne. She hit with the distinctive snapping sound of breaking bones, and I was furious enough to feel a small thrill of triumph at that noise. I might not be able to hurt her emotionally the way she’d hurt me, but I could—by Oberon—hurt her physically. That would have to be enough.

Jocelyn screamed, shouting, “Get away from my godmother!” before slamming something sharp and cold into my side. I staggered away from the false Queen, looking down in shock to see my own sword jutting out of my abdomen.

Jocelyn was glaring at me, cheeks flushed and arms shaking as she struggled to keep her grip on the sword. She had swung it like it was a baseball bat, and I couldn’t fault her technique: it was damned similar to my own.

“You get away from her,” she repeated with less heat. She was starting to sound uncertain; she was starting to sound scared. Whatever she had expected when she agreed to this little adventure, she wasn’t getting it.

I looked from her to the sword and back again. Finally, gritting my teeth against the pain, I asked, “Was it you who told her where Gillian was? Did you tell her where the car would be, when it would be safe to touch my daughter? Is this all your fault?”

“You rejected my mother because she was too human, like she chose that,” Jocelyn retorted. “You acted like she could have been anything she wanted to be, and decided to be less than fae, when you could have fixed things for her any time you wanted to. And then you never even gave me a chance. You never came to me. You went Home, and you closed its doors before I was old enough to go. You made sure I had nothing.”

I started to respond, and paused, hearing a capital letter where it didn’t belong. “Your mother was one of Devin’s kids?”

Jocelyn’s response was to grab the hilt of my sword and twist. I gasped, trying to take a step backward, away from the pain tearing at my guts. The way I heal has saved my life a dozen times, but it also means I’ve experienced injuries that should have been the worst things I’d ever feel, and they keep getting topped by the next one to come down the wire. Feeling my insides sliced to bits while my daughter was somewhere far away, dying in the dark? Was a new topper for the list.

“My mother is Tracy Wilson,” hissed Jocelyn, through clenched teeth. She twisted the sword again. The world flashed white with pain. I dropped to my knees on the dais.

The sudden change in my position was enough to wrench the sword from her hands. That was a nice change. It was in too deep to be pulled free, but at least she wasn’t twisting it anymore. I gasped and scrabbled for the blade, trying to grasp it and yank it out of me.

The false Queen’s foot caught me in the middle of the back, shoving me forward, driving the sword deeper. I would have been embarrassed to be caught this flat-footed by two noncombatants, but I was too busy trying not to vomit or black out from the pain.

“Someone else you failed to save,” she taunted blithely. There was a ragged edge of pain in her words. I had put that there. Whatever I’d broken in her chest was digging into her flesh, maybe puncturing a lung, and she didn’t heal the way I did. No one heals the way I do. All I had to do was stall, and eventually she’d have to stop tormenting me in order to seek medical help.

Of course, that would leave Jocelyn and the sword, and that assumed she’d need to go for help before my guts were on the ground, but sometimes it’s nice to be an optimist.

“I don’t believe they call you a hero,” said Jocelyn. “You’re just a coward who doesn’t want to do what she was made to do. Your Queen is asking you to help her, and you keep saying ‘no,’ like that’s even allowed. You make me sick. I’m glad I helped her snatch that worthless bitch you pretend is your daughter. She’s as mortal as they come. I don’t know what happened to your real baby, if you ever even had one, but I’m a hundred times better than her.”

“A thousand times,” said the false Queen, the smooth purr of her voice only slightly broken by a wheeze. “You, at least, hold Faerie in your veins. Remember that. You are, for that alone, her superior.”

I tried to focus on my breathing. Unlike the wounds dealt by the Baobhan Sith, the wounds my sword made were healing the way I usually did, fast and unrelenting. I could feel the skin knitting around the blade. That was bad—there was going to be no way to pull it out without slicing myself up again—but it was also good, since Jocelyn was going to have one hell of a surprise if she tried to go for the sword a second time.

“So make her do what you promised.” The whine was back in Jocelyn’s voice. I was extraneous to the scene the two of them were playing out, I realized: I was part of the scenery. That was normal, where the false Queen was concerned. For her, I had only ever been a means to an end, a tool to be used or a danger to be disposed of.

Keep her busy, kid, I thought, and closed my eyes, breathing through the pain.

Tracy Wilson. Sweet Titania, it had been years since I’d thought about her. She had been—presumably still was, since Jocelyn spoke about her in the present tense—a Gwragen changeling, a little less than half-blooded, the result of a marriage between a Gwragen half-blood and a Gwragen quarter-blood. Her parents had believed their commonalities would outweigh their differences. They had been wrong. She had been bitter even for one of Devin’s kids, unforgiving of the smallest slight, ready to pick a fight on even the slightest provocation.

The only reason he hadn’t thrown her out was that she’d left of her own accord, heading down the coast with a human musician who’d promised her a life of adventure, excitement, and free beer. We’d all been glad to see her go. Of all the people I felt I’d failed during my own somewhat misspent youth, Tracy Wilson didn’t make the list. She didn’t even come close. That was reassuring, honestly, even as I was trying to stop myself from bleeding out in a deposed monarch’s knowe.

Oh. Blood loss. Yes, that was probably part of the problem. Even I can’t bleed forever. But I was bleeding enough. I bit my lip. The plan that was forming in my mind was a terrible one. It wasn’t going to work, and if it did, it was going to get me hurt worse than I already was. It was still a plan, and it was the only thing I had.

I grabbed the sword, making an exaggerated moaning sound as I tried to pull it free, slicing my palms in the process. Another gush of blood poured out on the dais. It was getting to where I couldn’t smell anything else. For what I was trying to accomplish, that was a good thing. As long as I could actually survive it.

How long had it been? Long enough for Tybalt to carry an unresisting mortal through the Shadow Roads to the Luidaeg’s door? Long enough for him to come back? There was no way he’d leave me here to deal with this by myself, not when he had a doorway and a breath left in his body. That helped me keep going, keep yanking on the sword and trying to pull it free.

A hand gripped my hair and yanked my head up. Jocelyn met my eyes and smiled, too brightly.