Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(130)

“You okay?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and raised her head, offering him a shaky smile. “You know, I think I’d prefer to have been an oneiromancer. At least Karen gets to go to bed before she beats the crap out of herself.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

She looked at me and nodded. “I do. I don’t understand it, but I remember it.”

“Sadly, I understood it,” said Walther. “There’s only one woman I can think of who has to help when she’s asked, who resents basically everyone, and who always charges for her favors. She doesn’t do anything for free. I’m not sure she can.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The Luidaeg,” he said.

Silence fell.





SEVEN


The Luidaeg. The sea witch. The terror of the fens. The woman who had, not a week ago, stood in my place, enjoying the hospitality of my home, and told me that while familiarity might breed contempt, I should never make the mistake of thinking she was a tame monster. She would end me if she was given half the chance.

And yet. And yet.

And yet it was because of her that I’d survived to reach adulthood. Without the charms Marianne had purchased from her, the false Queen would have tracked me down long ago and put me into the ground with my parents. Without the Luidaeg supporting October, I would still have been in the bookstore—and when Nolan’s elf-shot had worn off on its own, the secondary sleeping charm would have killed him for sure. It was only the fact that I’d woken him early that had allowed us to discover it existed, much less start looking for a cure.

The fact that according to Cassandra, the Luidaeg had also brewed the sleeping potion hidden under the elf-shot, was almost beside the point. I knew she hadn’t had a choice. That was one of the things Marianne had been very clear about, back when I’d been a child and she’d been teaching me about the kingdom that would one day be mine.

“The Luidaeg is the oldest of Maeve’s daughters, firstborn among Firstborn,” she’d said, Nolan asleep with his head on her knee and me sitting on the floor in front of her, her hands moving through my hair, braiding and binding, tying elf-knots in every lock. I could barely remember my mother’s face, but I would always remember Marianne’s hands, and the sound of her voice by firelight, when she meant safety, when she meant home.

“She was born so long ago that time has no meaning; it’s a name and a number, and it barely matters, because she was happy then, my sweet girl, she was at peace. She and her sisters kept to the fens, to the places where land met sea, and they kept their own counsel, and they made their own peace. But time will have its due. She buried both her sisters, and she saw her powers bound by her father’s other wife, turned to the cause of service. She does what she’s asked, and she dies a little more inside with every gift she grants. That’s why she asks for voices and for peace and for the sound of a baby’s laughter. She charges dear not out of cruelty, but as a plea to be left alone.”

“But why?” I had asked. I’d been so young back then, and those times with Marianne had been my favorites: when she sat behind me and braided my hair, and I could close my eyes and pretend that if I turned around, we’d look alike. That I would change, or she would change—it didn’t matter—and she’d be my mother, and it wouldn’t be just me and Nolan anymore. “If she can do anything, shouldn’t she want to?”

“If she had a choice in the matter, she might want to, but that was the beauty of the binding lain upon her by Oberon’s Summer Queen,” had been Marianne’s reply. She’d tied off my braid, and finished her story with her hands resting on my shoulders. “Go to her and ask her the price of her tongue, her heart, her bed, and she’s bound to tell you. Ask her what it would cost to have your throne back, and she’ll draw you up a bill of sale. She is the answer to all our problems, if we’re willing to force them upon her. She charges dear, so dear, because she’s done so many things she’d never want to do. She’ll do so many more before that binding is undone, if ever it is. The Summer Queen wove her workings well.”

The night had been warm and her hands had been soft and I had gone to sleep not long after that, leaving her to carry me to bed, the way she’d carried my brother. Marianne had been a Coblynau, and strong enough to shift the world in its foundations if she needed it to move.

I missed her so much. I probably always would.

My head exploded in a kaleidoscope of pain as I stepped through the latest—and last—of the gates I’d opened since the sun went down. This was it: I’d hit my limits. I staggered, and Madden caught me, shooting a venomous glare at Cassandra and Walther. They had been the first ones through, in part because I was afraid the gate would close before we could all use it, and they were better suited to being stranded in mortal-side San Francisco in the middle of the night than I was. I didn’t even carry a wallet anymore, much less a working BART card.

“Ardy?” he asked. “You okay?” It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d insisted on joining us when I’d gone to tell him what we were doing. I was sort of sorry he had. I appreciated the company, but a gate for four was just that much harder than a gate for three.

“Dandy,” I said, and forced myself to stand upright, grimacing as the motion set up a raucous clanging in my head. “Ow.”