Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(30)

“I’m not doing well,” said Luna. “My daughter yet sleeps, for all that you changed her blood. When your mother changed your own, you woke. The same for your own child. You’ve kept my Rayseline from me. So no, October, I have nothing to say to you.”

“Luna,” said Sylvester, in a chiding tone.

Luna said nothing.

“I think I know why that is, actually,” said Walther. I turned to look at him. So did Sylvester. Walther flushed red, and continued, “When I’m mixing a potion, a lot of it is about intent, telling the spell what I want it to do.”

“All magic is like that,” I said finally, pulling my hands out of Sylvester’s and sitting down. He held on to me for a few seconds longer than I wanted him to, resisting my efforts to remove myself. In the end, however, he had to let me go. Anything else would have been rude.

“Sure, but that’s the point,” said Walther. He sat. So did Quentin. As if by magic, servers appeared to set goblets and bread in front of the three of us. “When your mother changed you, she wanted you to wake up. When you changed your daughter, you made her mortal, and you knew she needed to wake up or she was going to die. So you both brought intent to what you were doing. You removed the elf-shot as part of removing the parts of the blood that weren’t needed anymore.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. That was all. I didn’t dare say anything else: I was too afraid that he was right.

Rayseline Torquill was Sylvester and Luna’s only child. She had been born the daughter of a Daoine Sidhe and a Blodynbryd, something that would have been impossible if Luna hadn’t been wearing a skin stolen from a dying Kitsune, making herself part-mammal for as long as she had it. Faerie genetics don’t follow rules so much as they obey vague suggestions, at least when they feel like it. Rayseline had been born with biology that was forever in the process of tearing itself apart, and eventually, she’d snapped under the strain, trying to murder her parents and claim their lands as her own. She’d killed my lover—her ex-husband—Connor O’Dell when he’d jumped in front of the arrow intended for my daughter. Sadly, his sacrifice hadn’t been enough to keep Gillian from being hurt. It had just been enough to make me lose them both, him to death, her to the human world.

Raysel had also been elf-shot on that day, and her mother had asked me to soothe her pain. I’d done the best I could, slipping into Rayseline’s sleeping mind the way I had once slipped into Gillian’s—the way my mother had slipped into mine—and asking what she wanted to be. When I’d finished, she was purely Daoine Sidhe, more prepared to control her magic and her mind . . . and she’d still been asleep, because I hadn’t wanted her awake.

Luna must have known that from the start. It explained a lot. And it didn’t make things any better between us. I wasn’t sure anything could.

Li Qin smiled at me across the table. She was a short, lovely woman of Chinese descent, with eyes almost as black as her hair, and an air of serenity that came from knowing she was in control of her own luck. Literally: her breed of fae, the Shyi Shuai, manipulated probability in a way that could lead to remarkable good fortune and equally remarkable backlash. I sometimes suspected, although I’d never asked her, that one of those backlashes had influenced Li’s widowing. Her wife, January O’Leary, had been Sylvester’s niece, and she’d died when I wasn’t fast enough to save her.

Sometimes I wondered why Sylvester wanted to make peace with me. I wasn’t good for his family.

“How have you been, October?” asked Li. “You haven’t been to visit in a while.”

“Busy,” I said. “Preventing a war. Deposing a king. Keeping Walther alive while he figured out how to unmake elf-shot. You know, nothing big, but it all took up a lot of time.”

“We miss you,” said Elliot. “April sends her regards.”

Quentin perked up. He liked April. She was always happy to fix his phone when he broke it, which was surprisingly often. “How is she?”

“Doing well,” said Elliot. “She’s really grown into her role. Although she still acts as the company intercom most of the time.”

“Naturally,” I said. April was Li and January’s adopted daughter. As the world’s only cyber-Dryad, she was half electricity, and lived in the County wireless when she didn’t have a reason to be physical. Again, fae genetics are weird. “I’m sort of relieved that she’s not here.”

“Believe me, so am I,” said Elliot. “She’s a wonderful regent, but she doesn’t do diplomacy well.”

I had to laugh at that. Diplomacy was not and would never be one of my strong suits, and somehow it kept turning into my job. Elliot answered my laughter with a lopsided smile, eyes twinkling above the bushy tangle of his beard.

Elizabeth finally looked up from her glass, eyes hazy with her omnipresent inebriation. I’d never seen her without a drink in her hand. Sometimes I wondered whether she rolled out of bed and straight into her cups. “Could you please keep the noise down?” she asked. “I intend to get righteously drunk before they bring the first course around, and you’re slowing me down.”

“Hi to you, too, Liz,” I said.

“Hello, October.” She sighed, and took a swig before setting her glass aside. “We’ve been waiting for you.”