Page 22 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
She looked at me warily, with a heartbreaking resignation in her eyes.
“Is it time for me to go so you can have my room for the baby?” she asked.
“I can’t go back to Shadowed Hills yet. Do you think Queen Windermere would claim offense against me?
I don’t think Duchess Lorden would want me in her halls, not after what I did to her sons… ”
“What? No. I told you, Raysel, we’re not throwing you out.
We’re not that tight on space, and the baby’s going to be rooming with me and Tybalt for at least the first six months.
We can talk about rooming arrangements after that.
Worst-case scenario, we can convert the dining room downstairs into a bedroom until we figure out an expansion spell that lets us add a whole additional room. This is your home .”
“I only have four months left on my offense. Is it really worth the effort?”
“You’re worth every effort, Raysel. I promise.
We’re not going to get tired of you, and we’re not going to send you back to Shadowed Hills until and unless you say you’re ready to go.
When your term of offense ends we’ll figure something else out.
I won’t allow your parents to force you to go someplace you don’t want to be. ”
“But my majority—”
“Is not that far away. I will fight to let you stay here until they have no more say over where you go. By the root and the branch, I promise you that.”
Raysel blinked, golden eyes welling with tears.
No matter how many times we told her she was wanted, she never seemed able to quite believe it.
I guess it made sense, given how much trouble she’d caused before she recovered from the conflict between her mammalian and vegetable heritages; it was natural for her to assume we were holding grudges.
And to be fair, Dean wasn’t her biggest fan.
But the rest of us had forgiven her, to one degree or another.
“If you’re not here to throw me out, why did you come all the way upstairs?”
“ My room is upstairs, too, you goof,” I said. “But I came upstairs because we have a guest, and I wanted to make sure you were okay with him being here. He says he’ll leave if you don’t want him in the house.”
Raysel sat up straighter, tears replaced by alarm. “Is my father here?” she squeaked.
“No, no,” I said, holding up my hands like that could ward her panic away. “Your father isn’t here. I haven’t actually seen him tonight. He wasn’t at the court.”
“Oh,” she said, concern fading. In a much calmer tone, she asked, “Is your father here?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “He drove me home, in my car, because I was tired and he was concerned about me.”
“That was nice of him.” She looked down at the hem of her sweater, picking at it with her fingers. “I appreciate you letting me know that he’s here, but it doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, Raysel, because again, this is your home. If you don’t want him here, I can ask him to leave, and he’ll go. He already said he’d go if it would help you feel safer.”
“I don’t want him here, but I don’t mind if he is here,” said Raysel, emphasizing her words with careful precision. “Does that make sense? I’m not worried about him trying to take me away the way I am when we’re talking about my father. He can stay as long as you want him to.”
My heart ached for her. Sylvester loved her, I knew he did, but he didn’t know how to show it, or how to talk to her now that she was a grown woman with psychological issues and not the child she’d been before she was abducted.
Sylvester loved me , or at least I thought he did, but he was equally baffled when it came to repairing the damage he had done to our relationship over the years.
He knew things were broken. He just didn’t know how to fix them.
He was failing us both in different ways, and I didn’t know how to tell him that.
How horrible was it when we were both more comfortable with the man who’d destroyed our lives than with the man we’d once trusted above all others?
“All right,” I said. I levered myself back out of the chair I’d only just sunken into. “I’ll be downstairs if you want to join us. We’ll all understand if you don’t. I don’t think your uncle is expecting you.”
Raysel nodded, offering a fragile smile as I walked to the door and cracked it open. Spike was waiting just outside. It rattled its thorns at me as it slipped into the room, trotting over to jump onto the bed.
The last thing I saw before closing the door was Raysel moving to curl up next to Spike, her fox fur–red hair falling to cover her face. Then I was alone in the hall, unsupervised for the first time since leaving the house for Arden’s court.
When did things get so complicated ? It didn’t feel like all that long ago I’d been alone in the world, depressed and despairing, unable to believe things were ever going to get truly better.
It was difficult to look back on that woman and see myself in her, but I knew she was me.
I’d lived through every step on the road between us, and there was no reality in which I would have chosen to go back to being her.
She was a ghost, a phantom of my past, and while I never wanted her to be exorcised, this wasn’t her life anymore. It was mine.
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard low voices coming from the kitchen, Tybalt and Simon taking a moment to talk before I came back. I paused where I was, holding tight to the bannister, and tried to give them the time to finish. They had plenty to talk about.
Simon had actually been with Amandine when August was born; he’d been through all the trials and triumphs of a successful pregnancy and childbirth.
Moreover, he remembered being there when I was born, and even if all that had been an illusion, it was a useful one; it was a lie that told him certain essential truths.
I had been pregnant before, and Gillian was proof that I’d been able to do it successfully enough for us both to come through it breathing.
Tybalt, though… Tybalt’s first wife, Anne, had been fully human.
Pregnancy had been hard on her. Childbirth had killed both her and the baby.
Maybe Simon reminding him that my bloodline made me all but impossible to kill in the same fashion would help to reassure him, at least a little.
The kitchen door swung open, and Simon stuck his head out, scanning the hall until he found me standing on the stairs. “You can come in now, if you’d like,” he said, not unkindly. “Tybalt and I just needed to have a few words in private, father to father.”
“Should I be nervous?” I asked, finishing my descent.
“Never, but especially not in this instance. I only hope I’ve said enough to perhaps make the conversation the two of you are about to have somewhat less painful,” said Simon.
I smiled at him. “Thanks, F—Simon.”
He nodded, not seeming to catch my false start. “I owe you no less,” he said. “How is Rayseline?”
“Relieved that you’re not Sylvester,” I replied. “She’s fine with you sticking around for a bit. I don’t think she’s going to come down while you’re here, but she’s not upset about having you in the house.”
Something in my tone must have tipped him off to the fact that there was more to the story. He gave me a hard look, then sighed. “But she would object to my brother’s presence, would she not?”
I nodded. “She’s not ready to see her father just yet. Sylvester’s… she sees him siding with her mother the way he does as a betrayal.”
“She’s not the only one, is she?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, and so I just shrugged, forced a smile, and said, “Baby wants lemonade. Let’s go get baby some lemonade.”
Simon was kind enough not to comment, merely nod and step aside so I could return to the warm, uncomplicated brightness of the kitchen. Tybalt was sitting in the breakfast nook with a mug of tea—his—and a tall glass of lemonade—mine. I walked over and took it, smiling my appreciation.
“I still don’t understand how this stuff tastes so damned good,” I said, taking a quick drink.
“Almost anything would have to taste better than the tarry swill you used to drink.”
“Bite your lip.” The more fae I become, the less chemical substances impact me—including caffeine. I gave up coffee when it stopped working. Maybe that was petty of me, but I was so angry not to get the results I wanted that I couldn’t stomach the stuff any longer.
Tybalt gave me a half-smug look, but didn’t comment any further.
Right. No time like the present to start an uncomfortable conversation. I decided to begin with the less uncomfortable part, and Simon might as well hear too. It wasn’t like it was going to be a secret for long. “Have you ever heard of the fae having godparents?”
“Yes,” Tybalt said, sounding faintly surprised.
“It was a common practice when I was younger and there were more frequent wars. It fell out of favor as we scattered ourselves across the mortal world, and conflicts became less common. It has nothing to do with human religion, despite the stolen name.”
“Fae steal everything,” I said.
He nodded. “It is our way,” he agreed. “We stole the name and social meaning, but not the root of it. A godparent has nothing of god in them, only the promise to parent should the birth parents be unavailable for some reason. As the purebloods of the Divided Courts denied death more and more completely, godparentage became less common, and fosterage rose in its stead.”
“So godparents are good things for people who live lives like we do,” I said, not quite a question, not quite a full statement.
“I should think so, if you could find them,” said Tybalt. “Why? Did someone offer?”
“Yeah,” I said, hesitantly.
“Who among us is old enough to remember the traditions, and have made you such a costly proposition?” Tybalt’s eyes widened, pupils contracting to slits. “By Malvic, you don’t mean to say…”