Chapter Ten
Days pass. I beg to see Benji. The child refuses to speak, skin raw from new tattoos, and so Glenn and the other roommates sequester him. And because Kassandra does not call, I remain leaden on my cot, drowned at the bottom of a swamp. Through the muck and dark, I float. I sink.
Someone leaves water by my bedside. I reach for it only when the itch of thirst becomes unbearable. Someone speaks muffled words to my waterlogged senses. I nibble on stale bread left behind. I throw it up.
My knees are still pressed to that floor. I am still watching.
Doing nothing as my life disintegrates into nothing.
Every inhale is for Benji, each exhale for Jeremee.
Only for them.
I must keep breathing for when my little brother is ready to see me.
—
A splash of water. My body jolts awake, my knuckles grazing stones. My soaked clothes stick to my skin. Briar places the empty bucket on the ground.
“I guess you’ll have to change now.”
I shiver. “Why’d you—”
“You smell.”
“Well, I—” Coughing, I try again. “What I need is—”
“Let’s start with a glass of water and a bath. New clothes. Then we can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“You want to rot, I know. But your mistress is awake and I thought you might want to show your face before starting your night service at Reign.”
I look up. “Awake?”
“She’s been sleeping, restoring her genius, but now she’s up. We don’t want her to know you’ve been resting.”
“Resting?” I seethe. “My friend is dead.”
Briar puts her hands on her hips. Circles under her eyes, frown lines round her mouth. She’s been covering for me in all aspects.
“You can take your grief with you,” Briar says, softer now.
I am so tired of grieving. I grieved my mother when lumps formed beneath her armpits and she couldn’t lift her head.
It was slow and deep, the careful erosion of the faerie I knew into a sallow, frail creature who soiled the bed.
Each piece that the sickness took from her also took from me, as I changed and washed her, fed and held her for that last, rattling breath.
She was my creator, and I her keeper. I will despise and cherish those last few months together.
Jeremee is the reason I survived losing her. Only she could’ve gotten me through the loss of him. Now they are both gone.
“I want my mom,” I sob. “I need my mom.”
“Oh, honey.” Briar melts onto the cot beside me, but she doesn’t reach out, and for this I am also grateful.
Balling up my hands, I press fists into my thighs.
“She said to look at the floor. Always look at the floor, don’t walk too quickly or too slowly, and never show my full genius in front of them, and I hated her for saying it and so I didn’t—I didn’t listen.
” I hiccup. “I wouldn’t listen. And now, because of me, Jeremee—he’s—”
Briar lets me cry. I hadn’t known I had any tears left, and it hurts so much, this ceaseless anguish, the despair at the infinite cruelty of the High Fae.
When my cheeks ache and the tears dry, Briar takes a breath.
“I do not know what faith you follow,” she says carefully. “But I will mourn with you in any manner.”
I blink, glancing at her. “You did not convert to the High Fae faith of the Three Planes?”
Briar looks to the closed door, then back at me. “Just because it is illegal to be Unesse does not mean it is wrong.”
The ancient faerie faith, one only murmured in storage spaces and bunkrooms by the older generations. My mother never ascribed to one or another, and for once, I wish the High Fae are right about the Three Planes. Perhaps my mother is helping Jeremee find his path in the celestial realm.
I sniff, adjusting on the cot. “Tell me more.”
“Everything pulses with energy, no matter how small, and therefore everything has a genius, a soul. Magic is a call and response between two energies, and we are all one connected system of nerves across existence that began with the Tree. Of life, of magic—they are the same.”
“And…the High Fae?” I wonder.
“What about them?”
“Did they not bring magic down from the celestial plane? Are Lucan’s Tree and the Tree of Life one and the same?”
“I believe so,” she answers. “The difference is that the High Fae think they own it, but under Unesse, they do not.”
“Then who does?”
She chuckles. “No one. You can’t own something that was never yours. In fact, there’s no ownership in Unesse, only stewardship.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a saying in Unesse,” she whispers. “Before the beginning, after the end. Magic never gives, only lends. They borrow life and magic just like the rest of us.”
She will not say our masters, but I do not need her to. Still, it sounds like a nursery rhyme to comfort faerie children for the little control we have over our lives. Looking down at my sullied dress I wore for the coronation, I think that maybe I am no different.
“Come on,” Briar says, standing. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
But I don’t want to scrub away the sweat and tears I shed that day. It’s all I have left of him. I want to seethe and choke on my rage until it boils me from the inside out. I want to wrestle and fight and scream and rip down the sky. I want to burn.
My clothes feel warm. My hand touches my tunic. Dry.
The smell of soil, of spring rain lingers in the air. Root magic, faerie magic. My magic.
At some point, I had evaporated the water.
“I’ve never done that before,” I say.
“Still doesn’t count as a bath,” Briar replies. She holds out her hand.
Begrudgingly, I take it.
—
Choking down faerie food was challenging when, as a child in the kitchens, I saw where it came from. The sawdust in the flour, maggots in the meat, cockroaches in the coffee grounds. Now it’s near impossible. The turnip mash sticks to the back of my throat.
You must eat, I tell myself. You cannot be there for Benji if you do not.
Settled on a bench in the Nest, hair damp, I glower at the bowl in front of me. I swallow, each bite a battle.
I see the child before he sees me.
Ringed in black from head to toe, Benji’s pallid skin is hardly visible save for his face.
His expression is drawn, eyes purple with fatigue, mouth pinched in a frown, shoulders slumped.
A cohort of male faeries surrounds him—Jeremee’s roommates, who encase and protect the boy.
One of them bends down, a shimmer of blond.
Glenn. They glance my way. Benji shrugs Glenn off, marching in my direction.
I stand, aching to run to him, to sweep the child into my arms and drop kisses on his face. But the glint of fury in his gaze keeps me rooted to the spot.
“Benji,” I breathe when he’s in earshot.
The boy stops, the table between us. His bottom lip quivers. Tears slide down my cheeks that I can’t bring myself to wipe away.
My voice cracks. “Benji.”
His eyes glisten as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
“I hate you,” he spits. I flinch. Behind Benji, so does Glenn. “You and your ideas got my brother killed.”
“I am so, so sorry—”
“I hate you, Avery. I hate you and I will never, ever forgive you.”
He wipes his face again, then glares at me with a might that shakes his small frame, so fragile now, so weighed down in dues.
This is better, I think. I’d rather he hate me than the king. It is safer this way.
“I hope the king hurts you,” he says. “I wish for it, and I hope the plane delivers.”
I suck in a breath.
“Benji,” Glenn says behind him.
“I never want to talk to you ever again.”
“Wait—”
My shin knocks into the wooden bench, bruising, as I maneuver around the table. It’s too late. Benji slips through the crowd, and I feel a gentle hand on my arm.
“Let him go for now,” Glenn says.
“I…” My throat feels tight. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Me either.”
He drops his hand, his eyes red, face puffy from crying, hair mussed. An image comes to mind, the gentle graze of his thumb against Jeremee’s ribs. The way they look at each other. Looked.
“You loved Jae,” I say.
“Of course I did.”
“You really loved him.”
Glenn glances around the crowded space. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I would never report,” I say, low.
His eyes fill, and he glances away. This time, my hand finds his shoulder.
We stand apart, wordless, as the room bustles around us.
Faeries rush by with clothing, halflings with their creditor’s papers, the general mirth and convivial nature of the Nest restored for most. The death of a palace faerie is not uncommon.
Even if Jeremee were still alive, he and Glenn could never officially pledge to each other, never receive the one-time, one-ring debt forgiveness bestowed to married faeries of opposite sex.
They could never have been together in public, never have told anyone except those they trusted to keep a secret.
But it’s no matter. A loss is a loss is a loss.
“I am sorry,” I rasp. “It is all so unfair.”
“I was happy to love him in secret until I no longer had the breath to tell him,” he says. My chest cracks just a little more, but then Glenn clears his throat. “Benji cannot carry all that guilt and anger and sorrow, so he’s taking it out on others.”
I rummage in my apron and offer up two copper coins. “Say this is from you. Spending money, so he can put his entire salary toward the debts.”
“He loved you as well.” Glenn cradles the money as if it’s something precious. “I wish you safety, Avery.”
He runs a trembling hand through blond hair, trying to grant luck and outweigh Benji’s wish. An old faerie tradition, but from what faith I do not know. The plane now has two requests it could fulfill: to harm or harbor me.
To Glenn, I can’t voice the lurking thoughts. That I agree with Benji. I want to take the punishment, all of it. Enough pain, and maybe it will tip the scales, bring Jeremee back. I wish for it.
“See you,” he attempts, giving me a final hug before disappearing into the crowd again.
“See you,” I say to no one.
But I don’t see how to put back together my family.
Maybe Briar was right. You can’t own something that was never yours.