Late Eclipses
Page 59

I was on fire, I was being eaten alive, and it would never end. I’d never felt that kind of pain before, but I knew what it was: there’s only one thing in Faerie that hurts like that. And I finally knew how I was going to die.
Oberon wouldn’t stand for killing in his Kingdoms. Find another way or answer to me, he said. Pain without death became the way to fight—as much pain as you could manage without causing lasting harm. They were clever and cruel, those Firstborn, especially when they were waging war on each other. They set out to make something that could hurt without killing, and they succeeded. They created elf-shot, a weapon that caused crippling pain followed by a sleep so deep it could last for a hundred years. Sleeping Beauty didn’t prick her finger on a spinning wheel; she was shot by an angry sister who refused to live another day in her shadow. Elf-shot hurt the purebloods before it put them to sleep for a long, long time. As for changelings . . .
Humans were still something to hunt for sport when elf-shot was created, and Oberon’s law didn’t say anything about their lives. By the time anyone realized elf-shot was deadly to changelings, it was too late; the weapons had been made.
Devin was the one who warned me about elf-shot. It isn’t used much anymore—there are fewer compunctions about killing these days, with Oberon and the Queens showing no signs of coming back—but he told me what it looked like, what it would feel like, and that if I ever saw it, I should run. I was too close to human. I’d never wake up.
Connor pushed himself out from beneath me, eyes wide. He’d seen the arrows hit me. Even if they hadn’t been elf-shot, I would have been in trouble. As it was . . .
“Toby, are you all right?” He pulled me into a sitting position, leaning me against his chest. “Don’t die, please, don’t die. Guards! I need some guards over here!”
The pain was fading. It hit too hard to last for long; it was burning itself out, and it was taking me with it. Devin never told me that. He never told me that when sleep comes, the pain stops.
I tried to force a smile, looking at Connor through increasingly unfocused eyes. I’d just been elf-shot, and he was yelling for the guards? He’d have been better off yelling for someone to open the windows and let the night-haunts in. “I loved you, you know,” I murmured.
“I know. I always . . . Toby, please.” He moaned, but I couldn’t see his face; he was gone, faded into black as my eyes stopped working. That was too bad. I would’ve liked to look at him while I was dying, to take that sight with me into the dark.
The footsteps of the guards echoed like thunder as they ran toward us, and past us, without slowing down. Past us . . . what was wrong with that? Part of my mind was screaming, trying to break through the peaceful mist that was wiping out the pain. That part of me demanded action, motion, resistance from a body that wasn’t paying attention anymore. Why were they running past us? Why didn’t they stay? Connor called the guards because I was hurt. They should have stayed with us, not run toward Luna’s . . .
Luna.
Oh.
I went limp, turning toward the choked sound of Connor’s breathing. I could feel my human disguise burn away like fog in the sun as my magic deserted me. It didn’t matter. Not if the guards ran past us to the Duchess’ chambers. Not if I’d failed.
The darkness was almost complete. Part of me was still able to look at it analytically and say, “I’m going to die.” The rest of me just wanted to beat its fists against the walls and scream. For myself, for May and Luna, and for Sylvester, because damn me forever, I’d failed him again.
“Connor . . . ” I whispered. “Connor, the Duch . . . ” And then my body, which had seen me through fire, iron, and Firstborn, finally betrayed me. I could still hear Connor crying, and the keening of the rose goblins, but even that faded, and there was nothing but the black. And then even that was gone, and I was gone with it, and I was glad.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE MOON WAS A CRESCENT in the midnight sky, the kind of moon my father used to call a “smile without a cat.” Cheshire cat moon. I stared up through the window, barely daring to breathe. I knew that moon. Not the phase, not the general shape; that exact moon. Time runs differently in the Summerlands, but the memory of that moon followed me for years, through days when the sun never rose and the stars never set. That was the moon that watched my father read me my last bedtime story, tuck me in for the last time, and give me my last kiss good night.
The fae came for me the next day, interrupting my tea party to offer me the only choice that was fully mine to make. Human or changeling-child? Was I theirs, with their pointed ears and illusions, or was I my father’s, with his easy smile and human concerns? I only got one opportunity to make my choice. In all the years that followed that night, I never knew whether I chose correctly, and I never forgot that moon.
I was tucked into bed. I pushed back the covers and sat up, unsurprised to realize that I was apparently a child of seven. My hair, which stayed baby-fine and impossibly easy to tangle until I was twelve, was braided to keep it from getting hopelessly snarled in the night. The lace cuffs of a flannel nightgown too new to be yet worn soft bit into my wrists. I knew where I was. This was what I left behind, once upon a time.
“Karen?” I called. “I appreciate the impulse to make the whole ‘dying’ thing easier, but this isn’t funny, kiddo.” There was no reply.
I climbed out of the bed, noticing as I did that my favorite doll—a felt Peter Pan made by my mortal grandmother—was on the pillow. Moving in a body I’d outgrown so long ago was strange, but my memory would have known the way even if the Luidaeg hadn’t forced me into a literal second childhood not long ago. Best of all, there was no pain. Blessedly, wonderfully, there was no pain.
The room was small and cheery, filled with familiar toys my mind insisted on viewing as old-fashioned; the trappings of my childhood. The walls were painted yellow, and braided rag rugs softened the floor. It took me a long time to realize what I gave up when I left that room behind me, but I cried for my toys from the day I lost them. They were the only mortal things I had the sense to miss.
“Hello, October,” said a voice from behind me.
I sighed. Not Karen; nothing as merciful as a niece trying to ease the pain. “Hello, Mother,” I said, and turned to face her.
She was standing next to the bed, just like she used to before everything went wrong, back in the days when she’d tell me stories, kiss my forehead, and tell me to sleep tight. This was the Amandine I knew before the Summerlands: perfectly coiffed white-gold hair, makeup done just so, jewelry chosen with a care that implied she might be graded later. She looked like my mother when she still was my mother, not just a lady I happened to be related to, one who tolerated my living in her house.