Ten
“What happened?”
“Luna arrived with Rayseline, who was asleep and wouldn’t wake,” said Acacia.
“I was helping the both of them to my guest quarters when there was a commotion from outside. I went to see who it was—sometimes the children get restless and need to be consoled before they can calm themselves again. I’m the closest thing they have left to a parent or older relation, and I try to take care of them. ”
It was odd, having a ravaged, bloody figure speaking so calmly about children and duty; she looked like she should be screaming, and instead she was answering me in a measured tone, seeming utterly unbothered.
“But when I stepped through the gap in the wall, I was immediately beset by warriors, all armed with sword and axe, bronze tipped in iron. There was no silver, or my wounds would be nearer by far to mortal. They hurt me direly, but they could not kill me with what they brought to bear.”
“They jumped you?” In her own skerry?
Acacia nodded. “The attack was sudden and without mercy. I had no time to retaliate, although I called for the trees as I was falling, and they answered.”
I looked around, noticing for the first time how close the forest was to the foundations of the building; it had been in motion at some point recently, roots churning the ground as they came to the defense of their mother.
Acacia might not be the most powerful of the Firstborn, but she was still terrifying in her own ways when someone gave her a good reason to be.
“But they didn’t reach you in time.”
“Not the majority of them. Trees aren’t fast, you see; it’s why they needed the Dryads, who could be swift in their place.
But there are no Dryads here. They never favored my husband, and preferred the sunlit lands.
The quickest of the trees reached my attackers and waded into the fray, swinging their limbs and lashing their roots, and the fools who had come to take me fled, driven back by a wall of wood. ”
“I see,” I said.
Acacia’s face hardened. “But they fooled me even so. While I collapsed from loss of blood, they circled around my protectors and forced their way inside, assaulting my daughter and stealing away my grandchild. Where they took her, I may never know.”
“And she was already unconscious, so she wasn’t able to fight back,” I said.
Normally, that might be considered a good thing; if someone is going to be abducted—which is generally the case when you’re talking about one person versus what sounded like an entire organized team—the less they fight, the less likely they are to be severely injured.
This is a lesson I’ve learned multiple times, but have never been able to quite internalize, as I continue to fight until I’m put down hard enough to make me stop.
Raysel didn’t heal like I do. I was glad it was a lesson she didn’t have to learn. Except …
“And if she didn’t fight back, there will be no blood trail for us to follow,” said Tybalt grimly concluding my thought.
I nodded. “Right. Acacia? How long is it going to take you to put yourself back together?” I was willing to bleed for Luna, who had been a friend and ally much longer than she had been an enemy.
But I wasn’t willing to hand my blood to a Firstborn daughter of Titania, no matter how much I normally liked her.
“I’ll take root among the trees for some eight hours or so, and when I shake the bark away, I should be restored to what I once was,” she said.
Raising one hand, she touched the scar on her face.
“This took only because Michael gave it to me with an iron blade and prevented me from rooting myself until my skin had begun to attempt closing on its own accord and time. I’ll be fine when I wake up. ”
“And Luna?”
Acacia’s face twisted in the first thing I’d seen that truly reminded me of motherly concern.
“My child is … not so durable as I,” she said, after a long and weighted pause.
“She may have trouble recovering. But then, you have given her the gift of your blood, and she knows well the ways of borrowing. She may be perfectly well, and in less time than either you or I would count as possible. The only way of knowing is to wait.”
I looked to my candle. “I don’t know that we can wait for you to wake up.”
“You’ve no more blood to spare,” said Tybalt sharply.
“But do we have the time to spend waiting for Acacia to recover?”
“I wouldn’t have your blood if you offered it; I refuse to be further in your debt,” said Acacia. She followed my gaze to my hand. “That’s not a Babylon candle,” she said.
“No,” I agreed. “She invoked a place called Westmoreland when she was making them for us.”
“That was her sister’s place, once,” said Acacia.
“Pretty Jinny Greenteeth, youngest and sweetest of the fen-born. She bore the Grindylow in her day, and faded long ago. She was never as thirsty for vengeance as most of her kith and kind; she only wanted to be left to herself, to tend her waters and see her children grow. If Antigone was invoking Jinny for your travels, it makes sense that she’d lay less of a time commitment on you than she might otherwise have done. ”
“She sent us by the Thorn Road,” I said.
Acacia took a closer look at the candle, eyes wide and fascinated despite the extent of her injuries. “I’ve never seen that path, although I know it connects to my husband’s lands,” she said. “It’s not open to me.”
“Some things need to stay closed,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic, like I was concerned that there might be a door into her home that she didn’t have a way to monitor.
In truth, I didn’t really care. Her callousness toward Luna’s very real injuries and Raysel’s absence was difficult to wrap my head around; I’d always taken her for more compassionate than that.
But then, she had chosen her own life over the lives of countless children snatched by her husband from both the fae and human worlds: she had allowed them to suffer, distort, and die all to preserve herself, just so she could keep living a life that was barely worthy of the title.
When he died, she had chosen to stay behind and care for the remaining survivors, but had that been kindness, or just acceptance of the fact that she was no longer in any way suited to live outside this skerry?
The world was large and complicated. Here, things were small and simple.
She had been her daughter’s mother all along. I had just been refusing to allow myself to see it.
“We need to find Raysel.” I turned to Tybalt. “She’s still our responsibility, and whatever Luna was trying to do, it’s failed. She’s not going to keep our ward away from us.”
“No,” he agreed, gravely. “We made a promise, and we will keep it.”
“I know you’re not a bloodhound, but…”
“With no blood trail to follow, we’ll need to use whatever possible tools we have at our disposal,” he agreed grimly, and folded inward on himself in a rush of musk and pennyroyal, becoming a tabby cat once more.
He looked up at me and meowed, then lowered his head and began stalking back toward the building, sniffing the ground the whole way.
“If you’ve no further need of me, I’ve told you all I know,” said Acacia. “I’m no good to Luna while this injured. I’ll go to the wood now, and rest.”
“Wait,” I said, throwing up a hand. She stopped obediently, looking at me with lifted eyebrows.
Feeling awkward and suddenly small, I said, “I’d like some of your blood, please. You may have seen more than you realized.”
“It’s no simple thing, to ask one among the First to bleed for you. Especially one who has refused to let you bleed for her.”
“I’m not asking you to bleed for me. You’re already bleeding.
I’m just asking you to turn a little bit of that blood loss into bringing your granddaughter home.
If you need to make it about debts and repayment to feel comfortable with this, I did just donate a considerable amount of blood to your daughter, who might well have died without it. ”
Acacia’s eyebrows lowered, and then, to my deep surprise, she laughed.
“Oh, you have been bargaining with my sister for all these years! She’d teach a mountain how to split a hair in the pursuit of what it desires, and no mistaking that.
Yes, it’s true, you could easily argue that you’ve the right to call upon the debts I owe you, and anyone who has a heart would listen. Here.”
She thrust her arm at me, blood still leaking sluggishly from an assortment of gashes that would have killed almost anyone else they’d been inflicted upon, and cocked her head, clearly waiting for me to do something.
I stepped closer, taking her wrist in both hands, and turned her arm to give myself a better angle.
Then, feeling ghoulish and exposed, I lowered my mouth to the bend in her elbow and took a mouthful, drinking as deeply as I dared.
The blood of the Firstborn is strong. It can be overwhelming when you’re not prepared.
I thought I was prepared. I was wrong. Red mist slammed down over me as the memory took hold, and I was falling, I was falling, I was falling down into the crimson dark …
She/I stand at the gateway to my new country, her/my strong husband at her/my side and the wind blowing gently over her/my wings, ruffling the tiny scales that grow there, angled so as to help her/me take to the skies.
This will be their/our paradise eternal, and he will forget all about those other children, the ones her/my siblings slew, his little line of Seers who could not be allowed to live, not when Mother had decreed that the future must be allowed to pass unseen.
He will forget them in the light of the children they/we will have together, good children, strong children, children with the blood of Titania running bright through their veins, keeping them close to hearth and home.
The heart of this land will be the children, always, and as they/we welcome them, they/we will never die …