Page 3 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

While she was getting the Luidaeg her scone, I stayed where I was, feeling worse and worse about my clumsy attempt at humor.

We called the Luidaeg “the sea witch” in part because she was under a geas set by her stepmother, Titania, which forced her to do whatever she was asked, but allowed her to charge whatever price she saw fit for her help.

I had been in and out of her debt since we first met.

But because of that geas, she didn’t have a choice: if she was asked, she had to intercede, or at least set the price she’d accept for intercession.

She was trapped, just as much as any prisoner in Faerie.

My stomach growled, and I paused in my woolgathering to glare at it. This needing to eat all the time nonsense was getting old. “I can’t wait to be done being pregnant,” I muttered.

“Could be worse,” said the Luidaeg. “Pinniped pregnancies last for eleven months.”

“You’re kidding,” I said flatly.

She grinned, showing a flash of fang in the process. “Can’t lie, remember? Eleven months, and every one of the Roane I carried with my own body took that long to come into the world. They weren’t in any hurry at all.”

“That’s horrifying,” I said.

“Even worse, when they started having kids of their own, they only had to be pregnant for nine months. Little brats.” She smiled as she spoke, like she was remembering those pregnancies with fondness.

She’d been doing that more often since the Convocation of Changes returned the Roane to the sea—talking about them, and reminiscing about the good things that had happened before they died.

Before they were murdered.

I rubbed my stomach again, trying to imagine how I would react if someone hurt my children the way hers had been hurt.

I hadn’t reacted well when Gillian had been in danger, and I couldn’t imagine I’d handle it any better with this baby.

Even thinking about it was making me antsy.

I shoved the thoughts aside and focused on the Luidaeg.

I don’t know what she really looks like.

I’m not sure anybody does. I’m not sure she does.

She’s a true shapeshifter, completely protean, and her form shifts to suit her mood and needs.

At the moment, she looked like a human teenager with a dusting of acne scars on her cheeks, curly black hair pulled into thick ponytails and tied off with strips of electrical tape.

Her eyes were a nondescript dark blue, unremarkable.

If not for the fact that sometimes her smile contained too many teeth, it would have been easy to dismiss her.

Easy, and stupid.

The Luidaeg was nothing to dismiss: she was older than the modern arrangement of the continents.

She had seen empires rise and fall, been present for the birth of fairy tales and legends, and was as close as it comes in this world to unkillable.

She didn’t need to look fae. Our foundations were in her bones, and our borders were in her blood.

Leave the pointed ears and unearthly beauty to the ones who needed to wear their alliances on their sleeves; she walked the world as she saw fit.

Taking her second scone from May, she flashed my Fetch a toothy smile. “Can we have the room?” she asked.

“Oh,” said May. “Oh! Sure. Quentin, Raj, come on, boys. Raysel’s probably wondering where we are.”

The three of them bustled out of the kitchen without looking back, and the Luidaeg and I were alone. She watched them go, then turned her toothy smile on me.

“Looks like it’s just us girls for right now,” she said. “You are a difficult lady to catch without a crowd.”

The air in the room felt suddenly cooler. I swallowed hard. “I guess I’m just lucky that way,” I said. “And does it really count as catching me without a crowd if you have to send everyone else away?”

“Still. You’ve come a long way from the mewling little exile who insisted no one would ever care enough about her to notice if she lived or died.

From sitting alone in your apartment with your sad little secondhand coffee maker to two sisters, a squire who may as well be a son, a nephew by marriage who might as well be a squire, a husband, and so many others that it would insult us both to stand here listing them all.

You’ve done well for yourself, niece. But we both know it’s not going to last forever.

It never does for people in your line of work.

One day, it’s all going to catch up with you. ”

“Is this where you kill me?” I asked, mouth going dry. “I know you’ve always said you were going to.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I keep my word, and when you die, it’ll be at my hand if there’s any possible way of it, but that isn’t yet. That is still far enough in the future as not to matter now. I’m not here to speak of murder.”

“Then why are you here?”

“The tides told me now was the appropriate time to come, although I was hoping to catch the kitty-cat at the same time. Oh, well, I guess. I’m here about your child.”

“The baby?” My voice squeaked, breaking unsteadily, and I abandoned rubbing my belly as I wrapped both arms around my midsection.

There was nothing I could do that would hold the sea witch back if she wanted to attack me.

I had to hope it was hormones making her seem threatening, and that the years of tentative friendship and ever-changing debt between us were heavy enough to counterbalance her current strangeness.

“Yes, the baby. Child of Miles Cross and the Shadow Roads united, first of their kind in all of Faerie. They’ll be D ó chas Sidhe, and with their birth, the line is true.

Firstborn begin the line, but its continuance is down to those born to it.

I’m not saying your baby will have some terrible fate or grow up to be a hero like their mother; for all I know, they’re to be spared all the worst horrors of Faerie.

But those horrors are coming, and one day you may not be able to protect them. ”

I clutched my stomach tighter and just stared at her.

“We steal words and concepts from the human world like candy from cradles,” she said. “We never took their gods—we have our own, and some of theirs are shadows of our stories, but we took everything else from them.”

“And?” I asked warily.

“I would like to offer to stand as your child’s fairy godmother,” said the Luidaeg, bowing her head.

“No divinity about it, only a promise that should anything happen to you, I’ll care for them as if they were my own.

They’ll want for nothing, need for nothing, and walk the halls of our kind free of all fear. ”

I blinked at her. “You… want to be the godmother.”

“Yes.”

“To my child.”

“My great-niece or nephew, yes.”

“I thought we didn’t do…” I paused, trying to gather my thoughts.

Faerie did fosterage, yes, children sent to live with other households for their education or protection.

Faerie did adoption when something happened to a child’s parents before they were old enough to live on their own—both the simple sort of names and contracts, and the more complicated sort, with bloodlines and lineages, children sworn into lines that weren’t previously their own but would be considered true thereafter.

Maybe once upon a time, when the world had been more dangerous for us, when more of us had risked the end to our dancing, Faerie had done godparents as well, sworn guardians standing watch in case something happened. In case the worst came to pass.

“I thought we didn’t do that anymore,” I said, voice breaking again. “Luidaeg, have you Seen something?”

“You walk too close to my father—you walk too close to me,” she said.

“Your future has always been a hazy beast, too changeable for me to pin down, although the tides offer me little things, such as the best time to come and visit. But I know you’re a hero married to a king, and I know he’s in the process of setting his throne aside.

Kings who give up their crowns don’t tend to live for long.

Neither do heroes. Amandine’s line is meant to save Faerie.

Gillian is no longer a member of that line. ”

“Neither am I,” I protested. “I chose Simon in the divorce.”

“Legally, you’re not. But your blood remembers where it began, and for the purposes of prophecy, you qualify.

Prophecies have never cared about the law.

They’re much more interested in reality.

When it comes to matters of line, you and August are all we have.

This baby will shoulder the same burden until the deed is done, and I doubt you’re going to let the weight of it fall upon your child.

So the chances that something will happen to you are far higher than I’m comfortable with. ”

“I…” When the Luidaeg makes that sort of huge, impossible offer, there’s really only one answer that can be given. No matter how much I stalled and questioned, I already knew what I was going to say.

She looked at me expectantly. I glanced at my hands, unable to face the weight of her gaze.

The deep blue she’d worn when she arrived had bled out of her eyes, leaving them green as glass, save for a ring of black around the edges.

Somehow, that made it worse to try and face her.

I was good at facing down the sea witch, good at staring into the eyes of a monster and refusing to be cowed.

I wasn’t so good at looking into the eyes of a friend.

“I’ll have to ask Tybalt when he gets home.” I glanced up again. “I can’t make a decision this big without his input.”

“You know he’ll agree. Only a foolish man would refuse the kind regard of one among the Firstborn, and he’s less a fool than you are.”

“Maybe, but I promised to stop rushing into danger without giving him a chance to say something about it, and you can’t really pretend that letting you stand as godmother wouldn’t be dangerous.”

“You’re right.” She shrugged. “I can’t. Offer stands, though, and if you want to be the mother of a child that lives, you’d do well to take me up on it.”

“I promise to talk to Tybalt as soon as I can,” I said gravely.

She nodded. “Good. Good. That baby has enough stacked against them. They deserve the chance to thrive, and that can come from me, if you allow it. I’m sure I’m not the only offer you’re going to receive. I hope I’ll be the one you entertain.”

I opened my mouth to answer, and stopped as she rose, leaving her half-eaten scone behind.

“Arden’s going to send a messenger to see you soon,” she said, and as if on cue, someone rang the doorbell.

We both turned toward the sound, the Luidaeg pursing her lips in mild annoyance.

I could tell it was mild because while her eyes darkened by a few degrees, they stayed green, rather than bleeding entirely black.

The longer I’ve known her, the more I’ve learned to read her mood by her eyes.

The doorbell rang again. I pushed away from the counter and moved in that direction as fast as my current state allowed, the Luidaeg following close behind. When I reached the front door, I paused, grabbing a handful of air and beginning to mutter under my breath.

“Let me,” said the Luidaeg.

She snapped her fingers, and I felt the illusion settle over me like a thin layer of dust sticking to my skin. I glanced at her. She was looking at the door, seeming to ignore me. Right. Confident that I at least looked human now, even if I wasn’t, I opened the door.

There was a short, unfamiliar man on the porch, looking at the clipboard in his hands. I blinked, pulling the door open a little wider. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, looking up. “I’m here to see Miss Octavia Daye?”

“It’s October, actually,” I said. “And whatever you’re selling, we don’t need any. Have a great day.”

“I’m not selling anything,” he said, and blinked deliberately. When he opened his eyes again, his pupils had gone horizontal, like a goat’s. “Just making sure I had the right house. You’re Sir October Daye?”

“Yes,” I said, more warily. “Who are you?”

“I work for the queen,” he said, which wasn’t a name, but was almost good enough. “She sent me to let you know that court will be called tonight at sundown, and she wants both you and your husband in attendance.”

“Am I invited?” asked the Luidaeg sweetly.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said. “You’d have to ask Her Majesty. But it’s not a closed court, so the chances are she’ll let you in. Sundown, Muir Woods. I hope you both have a pleasant afternoon.”

Then he was gone, and we were alone, and silently watching him walk away, right up until the Luidaeg sighed, heavy as a crashing wave.

“Guess the tides gave me the right time,” she said. “Better go get ready.”

I closed the door.