Ten #3
But then, Titania had never been able to think that way, and Acacia was her daughter.
She was unique and beautiful enough to look at that sometimes I could forget where she’d come from, that her mother was Faerie’s first monster, the one responsible for the slaughter and creation of so many others.
Titania had always cared first about blood and second about crowns—but that hadn’t been enough to stop her from killing her own children whenever Oberon’s hold on her weakened and she came back to herself, if only for a moment. There was so much blood on her hands.
So how could Acacia just dismiss Raysel like that?
Luna was so determined to force family on her that she was willing to abduct her own child, while Acacia was just as swift to reject it.
Honestly, none of it made any sense to me.
It was enough to make me almost grateful that Amandine had been so determined to shun Faerie that she’d raised me outside all the normal structures, right up until I was old enough to start raising myself.
There was no question that I was still screwed up by my childhood, but at least my damage had a different shape to it.
Didn’t help me heal. Did make it a little easier to see how fucked-up everyone around me was.
Tybalt wasn’t running as fast as I knew he was capable of; he was moving slowly enough that I could keep him in sight, even if I couldn’t keep up with him.
Bipedalism has its limits. He ran and I followed, and the trees grew denser all around us as we moved deeper and deeper into the woods.
Things cackled and croaked in the brush and in the branches overhead, making sure that we never forgot that we weren’t alone.
This was wild territory, and we passed here at the pleasure of whatever lurked in the shadows.
It would never threaten Acacia, but Acacia wasn’t here, was she? I tried to keep my eyes locked on Tybalt as I ran, not risking the chance that I’d stumble or get distracted and lose track of him.
We ran, and the world changed around us.
When we broke out of the woods on the far side, it was almost shocking.
The land suddenly opened up in front of us, becoming a wide, near-empty plain that raised the question of just how large this skerry really was.
Not for the first time, either. Firstborn couldn’t create entire worlds, at least as far as I knew; that power was reserved for the Three.
But they could create quite a lot within their limitations.
Continents, if nothing more than that. How much space had Michael anticipated needing for his private world, his private army?
Had he been intending to keep stealing children and ferrying them here forever?
It certainly looked like it. The plain was the same barren heath as stood on the other side of the wood.
There were fewer trees here, less to break the line of sight between us and the horizon.
Fewer buildings, too: the only structure I could see was what looked like an old English fort, crumbling around the edges but still standing tall.
The sky overhead was midnight black by this point, spangled with stars, and only a few bonfires on the distant hills added any light to the situation.
I pulled my candle closer to myself, watching with satisfaction as the flame leapt upward again, gathering strength now that I wasn’t running hard enough to risk blowing it out, and waited.
Tybalt came trotting back to me, still feline, and reverted to his bipedal form while still a few feet away. The bastard wasn’t even winded.
“I don’t believe it will come as any real surprise if I say the trail leads to the keep,” he said, gesturing toward the distant shape of the fort.
“You don’t say,” I said dryly. “Should we tell them we got a flat tire and need to use their phone?”
He blinked, looking at me blankly. I shook my head.
“Never mind,” I said. “I know you were following Acacia’s blood trail. Was there any sign of Raysel?”
“Whoever was carrying her didn’t let her touch the ground, and without blood or footprints, I didn’t really have much to go on,” he said. “But I’m quite sure they’ve come this way. The smell of Acacia is strong.”
I could smell it too, if I paused and breathed in deeply.
The blood, as always, was like a beacon to my magic.
The only reason I’d let Tybalt take the lead was that he could track faster when there wasn’t someone actively bleeding.
He was a hunter. I was more designed to follow what was already in the process of dying, a scavenger if anything.
I reached for him with the hand that didn’t hold the candle, joining our fingers just as a hunting horn sounded somewhere across the moor. As always, it was loud, and surrounded by echoes that distorted its origin, making it impossible for me to say exactly where it had come from. I shuddered.
“Guess when you design your own world, you get to make choices about the acoustics,” I said sourly.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We need to find Raysel.”
“Indeed,” he said, and started walking toward the keep, our joined hands meaning I was pulled along with him.
Together, we cut a line across the wide plain, and I was all too aware that anyone looking out one of the windows in the high stone walls would know exactly where we were and how long they had to prepare for our arrival.
We didn’t know who was in there, only that they had assaulted a Firstborn and kidnapped her granddaughter.
From Acacia’s memory, I knew that there were at least eight of them, but that was less helpful than it might have been.
Even if I’d been held at gunpoint, I couldn’t have given any details about her attackers.
Their faces, sexes, even the descendant races twisted together to make them had all been concealed by their armor.
I had my knives, and Tybalt had his claws. That had always been enough in the past. Still, in the past, we hadn’t had as much that we needed to protect. “Can you reach the shadows from here?” I asked, abruptly.
The look he cast in my direction told me that our thoughts had been following similar paths. “No,” he admitted. “There’s a veil between us that doesn’t normally exist. I can press against it, but I cannot part it.”
“Acacia probably needs to give you her consent, and she’s going to be a tree for the next eight hours or so,” I said. “Damn. I wish I’d thought to ask before she went off to recover.”
“Why do you ask?” There was a light challenge in his voice.
I decided to ignore it. “I don’t know what we’ll be facing in there, but I saw eight figures in Acacia’s memory, and we know they didn’t all go after her directly,” I said. “So we could be walking into some serious trouble. If we’re outmatched—”
“Do not,” he said warningly.