BUT BY DEGREES #6
The Luidaeg shrugged. “We used to call it hysteria. An excess of emotion. Of course, that label was all wrapped up in sexism and people being kind of stupid about each other, so we don’t tend to use that word much anymore.
These days, you’re more likely to hear it called anxiety or having a panic attack. ”
I frowned. “I don’t get panic attacks.”
“Anybody can have a panic attack, kiddo, and you don’t normally spend four months living a parallel version of your own life. It’s understandable that you’d be a little scrambled, emotionally speaking, after what you just went through.”
My frown deepened as I considered what she was saying, and tried to see my own recent episodes in that context.
They had all the symptoms of a panic attack, even down to the dizziness and inability to breathe.
But I was going to be High King someday.
Was I allowed to have panic attacks? Could I be that vulnerable to my own emotions and still rule a continent?
And did I even want the crown anymore?
“I … They might be panic attacks,” I allowed slowly. “I don’t really know.”
“You might, if you would talk to somebody.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“Yeah, and I’m not your knight. I’m the sea witch.
It doesn’t matter whether I trust you or not.
Toby, though … it matters whether she trusts you.
I think you’re being paranoid and bruised after everything that happened, and while I’m not going to blame you for that, you need to work it out before one of you gets hurt.
You depend on her to watch your back. She expects the same from you.
These things are important. You need to trust her, and right now, it doesn’t sound like you do. ”
I blinked at her, several times. “Me thinking Toby doesn’t trust me doesn’t mean I don’t trust her.”
“Yes, it does. You need to trust in her faith in you, and she needs to do the same.” The Luidaeg looked at me grimly.
“I’ve seen better knights than yours fall because their squires didn’t trust them to provide the protection and guidance they had promised.
You need to talk to her. Maybe more importantly, you need to listen to her.
Anything less than that and this isn’t going to work. My stepmother’s going to win.”
I bristled. She smiled.
“I thought that might get under your skin. You don’t want her to win any more than I do, and I want her to lose so badly it’s like honey on my tongue. If you don’t at least try to mend things with the people who love you, she takes the gold ring all the way home.”
“She doesn’t get to win,” I said stiffly.
“No, she doesn’t.” She leaned over, clapping a hand down on my shoulder.
“You’re stronger than she thinks you are.
She believes all the Daoine Sidhe are her puppets to play with, children of her first child, hers to command.
She’s never seen you as your own people, only little slivers of my sister, and by extension, pieces of her.
You can win just by refusing to let her force you to lose. ”
“I can try,” I said. “How do you … Why do you know what to say?”
“Like I said before, I’ve seen her play this game a hundred times. I learned how to walk people through hating themselves and out the other side, to hating her. Don’t you people have someone you talk to when you get all tied in knots? A doctor who knows how to handle these things?”
“A therapist?” I asked.
She nodded.
“We do,” I allowed. “Her name is Dr. Voss, and she’s very good at her job.
She’s seeing a whole bunch of people who need a little help holding themselves together these days.
But I couldn’t get anything out of seeing her unless I told her who I really was, and my parents aren’t going to approve sharing that information just because I’m feeling bad about myself.
” Explaining to them why I wanted to tell Dr. Voss I was the crown prince would mean telling them everything that had happened in Titania’s dreamland, and I wasn’t ready for that.
I thought about the cruel, smirking man I still sometimes saw in my mirror, and thought I might never be ready for that. As long as he was there, I wouldn’t be able to describe him with any accuracy. Even trying would hurt.
“Plus she’s seeing Raysel,” I added, seeing the Luidaeg’s dubious expression. “It would feel like a conflict of interest, and Raysel needs the help more than I do.”
“I want to say that you’re making excuses, but I don’t feel like that’s true,” said the Luidaeg. “That girl is fucked up, and was even before her own mother decided to haul her off to my little brother’s domain.”
My eyes went wide. “What?” I squeaked. “I mean, I knew Luna was the one who’d grabbed her, but I didn’t know— Blind Michael’s lands? Really? She didn’t stop to think that that might be, I don’t know, bad for Raysel?”
“I’m not sure Luna was thinking about much of anything beyond herself by the time she grabbed the girl,” said the Luidaeg.
“This is why it was easier for the Firstborn. Children came so fast and easy to us that we could let them go. We didn’t love them any less, but they weren’t each expected to carry all our hopes and dreams into the future.
They could be their own people without disappointing anyone.
But then, children came even easier to our parents.
Mom got pregnant more than a few times without doing any of the things that are supposed to make that possible.
Her sister, too. And my stepmother did exactly what Luna’s doing now, held on too tight and refused to see that her children were people, not puzzles to be solved.
So maybe it’s nothing to do with how many children you have, and everything to do with what kind of parent you decide you’re going to be. ”
I glanced away. “Toby’s going to be an amazing parent,” I said. “She already is.”
“That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” she asked.
“You’re worried that there’s not going to be room for you in her life anymore, especially not now that she knows you’re not actually perfect, no matter how hard you try to pretend that you are.
You’re afraid her love was always conditional, and now it’s going to be revoked. ”
I couldn’t argue with that, and so I didn’t even bother to try. I just looked down at my hands, resting loosely in my lap, waiting for her to be done picking me apart.
“I can’t tell you it wasn’t, or that it isn’t.
I don’t know her heart. I know what I think of her heart, but that won’t reassure you the way I want it to.
Quentin, I promise you, that dippy changeling loves you, warts and all.
You’re her son in every way that’s ever mattered, and if you had to choose your family line, I have no doubt you’d choose Daye and throw the succession of the Westlands into absolute chaos.
She’s chosen you over and over again, and Miranda’s never going to replace you in her heart. You have separate rooms there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She hooked her thumbs toward her chest, pointing them both at her own heart.
“Mother, several dozen times over,” she said.
“Every time I had a babe, I thought, ‘This is it, there’s no more love left, this one gets the whole supply,’ and then I’d have another one and there would be more love to go around.
Love is only limited when we want it to be.
Toby’s not going to give up on you as easily as you seem to think she will.
Now stop insulting yourself and her, and get the hell out of my apartment. ”
“I can’t talk to Toby until she finds Raysel,” I said, as I stood. “You know how she is. She’d never be able to listen to me.”
“So don’t talk to Toby. Talk to that boyfriend of yours, or talk to the one who’s not your boyfriend because you both have more political training than you do hormones, and that’s not a sentence I should ever have been forced to say, but here we are.
Talk to anyone you like, but talk to someone closer to your own age.
You need to be talking to people, Quentin.
This gets easier to carry when you talk to people. ”
“Who do you talk to?”
It was her turn to blink, looking momentarily startled.
The moment passed, as such moments always did with her, and she turned her face partially away.
“Not many people these days,” she said. “I used to talk to my sisters, and then to my husband, and eventually even to my children—some of the Roane were centuries old when they died, and there’s a point past which parents and adult children can speak openly, without concerns about who has power over who.
But they’re all gone now. I talk mostly to myself, and I realize that isn’t good enough, and it’s not like I have a lot of other choices.
You do. Enjoy them while you have them. Forever is a long time, kiddo, and that’s how long you’ll live if you don’t do something stupid. So go on. Seize your choices.”
I didn’t think about what I was going to do next.
Thinking would have given me the time to reconsider, and I didn’t want to open the space for second guessing.
I stepped forward, wrapping my arms around her, and spared a moment to be grateful for the fact that her favored shape meant she was shorter than I was now, forever a teenager in contrast to my near-adult height.
Her cheek pressed against my shoulder as I held her tightly.
There was a stuttering pause before her arms wrapped around me in return, holding me as I held her, and we both just breathed, sinking into the moment like stones thrown into the sea.
In the end, I was the one who had to let go. Like a feral cat accepting affection for the first time, as soon as she had resigned herself to my embrace, she had stopped trying to escape. I stepped back, and she did the same, looking at me gravely.
“I would say you had no idea how much I needed that, but I feel like you knew, or else you wouldn’t have done it,” she said.