The Brightest Fell

  What she didn’t have was training. Faced with an opponent who had already punched me once and was now jerking me toward her, I did the only thing that made sense: I brought my knee up and slammed it into the meat of her belly, knocking the air out of her with a loud gasp. She fell backward. She didn’t let go, and so I fell with her, two Dóchas Sidhe tumbling end over end to land in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

  There was a loud crack as we fell, the sort of meaty sound that spoke of broken bones, rather than broken woodwork. There was no accompanying bolt of pain. For once, the broken bone wasn’t mine. August shrieked, the sound still thin and reedy from where I had knocked the wind out of her. What were a few broken bones between newly united siblings?

  When the siblings were the pair of us, a few broken bones were virtually nothing. August was a pureblood, maybe the only pureblood of our shared kind, and she healed even faster than I did. By the time I had disentangled myself from the knot of limbs that we had become, she was already bouncing to her feet and lunging for me again, the smell of smoke and roses crackling in the air around her. Did healing raise her magic? Was it that way for both of us, and I had just never noticed, because my own magic was internal to me?

  I had so many questions. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, things about our magic and the way it worked, things about our mother, things about her search for Oberon. And none of those questions were going to get answered until she stopped trying to flat-out murder me. August lunged, grabbing for my wrists, like she thought she could subdue me by holding my hands.

  Wait. Maybe she could. If I wasn’t fighting back, maybe she’d stop—and it wasn’t like I couldn’t take a little pain. I let her grab my wrists, smothering the instincts that told me to back up, to pull away, to get out of her range before she did something I couldn’t live with. Simon was still on the stairs, neither coming to her aid nor asking her to stop. The geas he was under had to be warring with his parental instincts, and I almost felt bad for him. Almost; not quite. I had other things to worry about at the moment.

  August locked her fingers around my wrists, jerking me toward her, and snarled, “Let’s see how good you are at binding what isn’t yours now.”

  I had time to open my mouth and take a quick breath, intending to ask her what the hell she was talking about. I had less than a second. Then the pain slammed down on me, hot and intense and biting as if I were bathing in acid, like every nerve in my body was suddenly, electrically on fire. I screamed. The smell of smoke and roses was everywhere, cloying, choking me, until I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t stand—

  When I was a child, Amandine tried to turn me human. She wanted me to die a human death, natural and mortal and inevitable. But it hurt. Oh, how it hurt. If she moved at anything swifter than a snail’s crawl, it was too painful for even the most devoted daughter to stand, and she had quickly learned that if she didn’t want me to flinch every time she came near me, she needed to go slow and easy.

  For years, I’d blocked out how she had hurt me, refusing to think about it, refusing to even remember that it had happened, because if she was Daoine Sidhe, as everyone told me, over and over, there was no way her hands could have been enough to cause that sort of pain. When my own daughter had been born, I’d been afraid to touch her, because what if that sort of feedback loop was just how things worked among the fae, and no one had ever wanted to say anything in front of a flawed, mixed, mortal changeling?

  My mind might have blocked out the pain, but my body remembered. It knew what August was doing, and it howled on a cellular level, fighting back as hard as it could. It didn’t matter. August was stronger, and she was better at using our shared magic, and as hard as I pulled away, she pulled me toward her twice as fiercely.

  Don’t-look-here spells don’t make it impossible for someone to notice you. They just make it harder. With the way I was screaming, someone was going to notice me.

  Then Simon was there, grabbing my shoulders, dragging me away from August. She let go with surprising readiness once it was her father pulling me out of her grasp. I stopped screaming and gasped, unable to speak as I struggled to get my equilibrium back.

  It wasn’t coming easy. I didn’t even need the lock of colorless brown hair that had fallen to cover my eyes to know what she had done: it was singing in my veins, in the suddenly shifted watermarks of my mortality. Like our mother, like me, August knew how to change the blood of the people she touched. It was clear that unlike me, she’d had plenty of opportunities to practice. I was a blunt instrument and she?

  She was a scalpel.

  My heart was beating too hard and my body felt like it had been replaced by a hundred pounds of clay as I staggered to my feet, struggling to keep my balance in the force of too many changes, too quickly. Simon had his arm around my shoulders, sheltering me from August, whose eyes were still bright with magic and rage.

  “That is enough,” he snapped, and his voice was the crack of a whip, the edict of a king: disagreeing with him would be impossible. August froze. Only for a moment. Long enough for him to let me go and move to her, grabbing her arms and restraining her.

  My knees went weak, trying to force me to kneel. He was so beautiful. How had I never seen how beautiful he was? I didn’t even have the right to look at him.

  The part of me that was still fae raged and wept at the same time, stunned into silent fury. There’s something in the human DNA that wants to bow before the fae, seeing them as too perfect, too beautiful to truly exist. It’s an old instinct, left over from the days when the purebloods hunted humans for sport, running them up and down the hills before putting arrows in their hearts and leaving them for their lovers to find. Bow, and maybe you won’t be transformed into a deer, or a tree, or a particularly interesting stone. Bow, and maybe your betters will let you pass in peace.

  Bow, and live to see the morning.

  The false Queen used to raise those responses in me. She was one of the only fae I knew who actually rejoiced in being punishingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that never did anyone any good, but could do them a world of hurt. I had hated the feelings she sparked in me then, when I thought they were an unavoidable part of being who and what I was. As my blood had shifted and those feelings had faded, I had been relieved. That was a part of my mortality I had never wanted back.

  Well, I had it now. Lucky, lucky me.

  August was struggling to break free of her father. I was sure she would have succeeded, if he hadn’t been pinning her arms behind her back so that she lacked the leverage to get away.

  “August,” he snapped. “August, stop.”

  She froze, twisting in an effort to see his face. “How do you know my name?” she demanded. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

  Simon couldn’t have looked more stunned if she had suddenly turned him mortal. The color drained from his cheeks, leaving his freckles standing out like brands against his skin. “What . . . what did you say?” he stammered. “How do you not know me?”

  “I’ve never met you before,” she snapped. “Let me go.”

  The doorknob turned.

  I whipped around, staring at the top of the stairs in suddenly unified dismay. We were going to be found. We were going to be found, and there was no way I could explain what we were doing down here. August wasn’t wearing a human disguise. I didn’t know whether I needed one or not, and it didn’t really matter either way, because I was too weak and too off-balance to disguise myself. I couldn’t do anything but stand where I was and wait for everything to go to hell.

  The smell of smoke and mulled cider was so thin as to be almost imperceptible, but I felt the weight of Simon’s spell settle on me like a shroud. The door opened. Alan appeared, frowning down the stairs. He was a tall, thin, human man, dressed all in black, his hair pulled into a ponytail that left his slightly over-large ears prominently displayed. Most of the time whe
n I’d seen him, he’d looked dour, even disapproving. Right now, he just looked confused.

  “Damn raccoons,” he said finally, and turned off the light, casting the basement into absolute blackness.

  I had thought the dark was deep before, when I’d been looking at it with the eyes of a more nocturnal creature. Now my eyes were as close to human as the rest of me, and the blackness was absolute. I fumbled in my pocket until I found my cellphone, holding it up to illuminate the area.

  Simon was wobbling, even paler than before, like a man on the verge of collapse. His grip on August had slackened. She was free, looking wildly around, like she had lost something. She flinched when I held the light in her direction, raising a hand to shield her eyes.

  “Papa?” she said, in a shaky voice. “I smell your magic—where are you?”

  Simon didn’t say anything. He just kept wobbling. My stomach sank.

  When Sylvester bound his brother, he ordered him to raise no hand and cast no spell against me. The illusion Simon had slammed down over the three of us was thick as molasses, and while it had been intended to save me from discovery, it could also be interpreted, in some lights, as an attack.

  “Oh, oak and ash,” I hissed, rushing to his side. August was still looking around, lost. I glared at her. “Help him.”

  “What? Who—who are you people? Where’s my papa?” The look August gave me was full of confusion and despair.

  My heart sank. Home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a concept, an idea: an ideal. When August had gone to the Luidaeg looking for a candle, the Luidaeg had asked for her way home in payment. Without finding Oberon, she couldn’t find her way. And for August, Simon was part of home.

  “We don’t have time right now,” I said. “He’s not well. Help me with him.”

  Her eyes narrowed, confusion fading. “Why should I help you? You were going to leave me in Annwn. You’re my enemy. How do you even exist? My mother would never lower herself to touch a human.”

  “Great, good, this is a fantastic way to start a family reunion, August, but I’m telling you, this man needs help.” I glared at her, daring her to challenge me. “You sold your way home to the Luidaeg for a candle.”

  “How do you—”

  “I pledged myself into her service for a year in order to get another candle, all so I could go and bring you home. I don’t know what we are to each other, but I’m not your enemy, and this man needs help.”

  August wavered. I could see it in her eyes. I decided to push my luck.

  “August, this is your father.”

  She looked at Simon again, still with no signs of recognition, and then back to me. “Liar,” she spat. Shoving Simon toward me, she turned and ran off into the darkness of the basement, quickly vanishing from my cellphone’s limited sphere of light.

  Simon was a statue masquerading as a man. I staggered under the weight of him, faced with an impossible decision: drop the man who had saved me and run after the sister who had already ripped most of the fae blood from my veins, or stay here with Simon, letting August and the chance of saving Tybalt slip away.

  My own body answered the question for me. My knees buckled and I fell, hitting the concrete floor with a jolt I felt all the way up into my hips. Simon fell with me, a dead weight holding me down.

  “Oh, root and branch and fuck and shit and Oberon’s ass,” I hissed, struggling not to drop him. He didn’t heal as fast as I did. I didn’t heal as fast as I did. The pain in my knees was bright, intense, and not fading, even though it had been several seconds since I fell. Was it possible to get addicted to the idea of indestructibility? Because if it was, there was no question of whether I was a junkie. I was supposed to be unbreakable. That was the way the world worked.

  “Simon, can you hear me?” He was staring at the ceiling, mouth shut. Sylvester’s geas had said if Simon raised a hand or cast a spell against me, his mouth would be sealed and his hands would be silenced. Well, this looked a lot like that.

  “I can’t do this alone.” My voice sounded small in the empty basement. August was gone. I had no doubt of that. I supposed I should be grateful that Amandine hadn’t raised her to be a killer, or there would have been a knife in my neck and I would have been proving all the people who said my tendency to rush headlong into danger was going to get me killed right.

  At least Quentin wouldn’t have been here to see. At least I could have spared him that image of me. But I couldn’t have spared Tybalt or Jazz anything by dying here. Amandine wouldn’t let them go just because I’d failed. Hell, she’d probably grab the night-haunt that became me and force them to finish the job, claiming that debts to her didn’t end with death. She might even be right. The Firstborn can be terrifying when they want to be.

  There had to be a way out of this. There had to be. I closed my eyes, shutting out my cellphone’s meager light as I tried to think.

  This wasn’t the most human I’d ever been. I could tell that from the texture of my blood. I wasn’t sure I could shift myself further toward fae without some sort of crutch—I needed a hope chest in the worst way—but I was still Dóchas Sidhe enough to see the watermarks in my veins, the places where the magic had moved me. Before I’d been mostly fae, I had been your standard changeling scrapper, working my way through an often confusing set of magical rules with swamp water charms and parlor tricks.

  Parlor tricks. I opened my eyes and raised my phone, grateful to see that I still had battery power left, and that there was a flicker of a signal in the Borderlands basement. Scrolling through my contact list, I chose the number most likely to get me help in a hurry.

  Please pick up, I thought. Please, please, please pick up.

  “Borderlands Café,” said a cheery, unfamiliar voice.

  Z’ev. It had to be. I took a breath and forced myself to sound as level as possible, like I didn’t have a care in the world. “Hi, it’s Madden’s friend again. Is he still on-shift?”

  “I can get him for you, if you’d like.”

  “Please.”

  “One moment.” There was a soft thunk as he set the receiver down. I looked at Simon, who was resting half in, half out of my lap, and hoped I wasn’t making the wrong call. Not like it made much of a difference if I was. This might be the wrong decision. It was the only one I had left to make.

  “Hello?” Madden sounded cautious but still warm. I wasn’t sure the man was capable of staying angry for long.

  It was time to test that. “I don’t have much time,” I said. “August was down here. She attacked us, she hurt me, and Simon had to cast a spell to keep Alan from spotting us. I need honey, mint, ginger, hot water, and salt. Can you get them to me?”

  “Toby?” Now confusion joined the mix. “I . . . yeah. Are you where you were?”

  “I am. Hurry.” I hung up before he could ask me any more questions. Questions were just going to slow us down.

  Magic lives in the blood. That’s all well and good for the purebloods. Their bodies can make and handle using as much magic as they need. Changelings, though . . . changelings are more limited. We always have been. So we need to understand magic. We need to find ways to convince it, things that can shore it up when it doesn’t want to hold.

  “It’ll be okay,” I told Simon, stroking the hair back from his forehead. He didn’t look like he believed me. I couldn’t blame him, not entirely. He’d found his daughter, only to find that she didn’t know who he was, and then he’d lost her again, all because he was trying to save her. And me. It was no accident that his illusion had extended to cover me.

  If he’d just cut it off before it could wrap around me, he could have concealed himself and August, leaving me to face Alan’s wrath, without violating the terms of his geas. It had been the perfect opportunity for him to escape, and he hadn’t taken it. For that alone, I had to do my best to save him. I didn’t have a choice.

&
nbsp; The basement door opened and closed again. I shut my eyes, guessing before it happened that Madden was going to turn the light on. There was a click, and the dark behind my eyelids got a little lighter. Cautiously, I cracked them open, and watched Madden descend. He was carrying a small tray. I recognized the teapot, and I had hope. Not much, but still, it was a nice change.

  He stopped on the last step, frowning. “Toby?” he said. “I thought you were . . . are you here?”

  Crap. Simon’s illusion. I looked around, finding nothing I could throw, and settled on chucking my phone at Madden’s shoulder as hard as I could. My aim was a little off; it hit his upper arm before falling harmlessly to the pavement.

  He blinked at it. Then he turned and blinked at me. “There you are,” he said. “What . . . ?”

  “Really good don’t-look-here,” I said. “Don’t take your eyes off me, or you’ll lose us again.”

  “You look . . .” Madden paused, clearly unsure how to proceed. Finally, he said, “Different.”

  “August pulled a lot of the fae blood out of me before she ran, and I’m not strong enough to put it back on my own,” I said. “Arden still has the hope chest in her treasury. I’m sure she’ll let me borrow it for a few minutes.” And if she wanted to charge me some prohibitive price for using it, I’d have no choice but to pay. Swell.

  There was a pause while Madden attempted to process this information. There aren’t many Dóchas Sidhe in the world—two is not enough to book a table at Mel’s Diner, much less constitute a healthy population—and hope chests haven’t been in common use for centuries. For most people, the balance of the blood they have when they’re born is the one they’re going to live with. He had already seen my blood shift once before. That didn’t mean it was something easy to understand.

  It also didn’t mean that we had time to sit around while he came to terms with the great march of weird that is my life. “Did you bring what I asked for?”