One Salt Sea

of here, and I’m going to take you home.”

“Promise?” she asked, voice barely audible above the sound of fighting. My hands faltered at the work of sawing through the rope, suddenly realizing what she was asking me—and what Raysel had really done.

Gillian had seen Faerie. Her introduction wasn’t the kind most changelings got, but she’d seen Faerie all the same. When Quentin’s human girlfriend was stolen by Blind Michael, the Luidaeg was able to pull her memories of the fae out of her mind, leaving her whole and undamaged by the experience. Katie was human. Katie had that option.

Gillian wasn’t human. Gillian didn’t.

Changeling children can live human until their powers manifest, or until they know too much. Katie’s mind wanted to reject Faerie, because it wasn’t hers. Gillian, on the other hand, belonged to Faerie, at least a little bit; she would never let the memories of something that big, that integral, go. She’d drive herself crazy trying to figure out what was missing from her mind.

If I got Gillian out of here—when I got her out of here—I was going to have to do the thing I’d thought I had managed to avoid completely. I was going to have to give her the Changeling’s Choice. The one where, if she chose Faerie, she would never see her father again . . . and if she chose human . . . if she chose human . . .

I bent my head, redoubling my effort to cut the ropes that held her. She wouldn’t choose human, that was all. She couldn’t choose human. Because if she chose human, I’d have to kill her, and then I’d have to break Oberon’s Law myself. If Raysel’s actions forced me to kill my own daughter, I’d strangle her with my bare hands, and go to the Iron Tree without regrets. And that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen. My daughter would choose Faerie.

I was less than halfway through cutting the ropes around Gillian’s wrists when Quentin’s shout of pain made me raise my head again. Every instinct I had told me to go to him, to do a knight’s duty to her squire. I risked a look at the fight. Tybalt was holding off two Goblins, the three of them moving so fast that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. Not all of the blood I tasted in the air was theirs. I hoped their weapons weren’t poisoned. A third Goblin was lying on the floor, his black blood turning everyone’s footing unsure even as it filled the room with the stink of tar and molten rock. He’d been casting a spell when he was killed, reaching into the limited arsenal of Goblin magic for something he never had the chance to finish.

Raysel and Connor were off to one side, circling one another. They both had their bows raised, waiting for the opportunity to strike. I would have needed to be blind to miss the hatred in her expression, or the sorrow in his. He didn’t love her. But he didn’t mean to fail her, either.

Quentin was backed into a corner, the fourth Goblin prodding at him with a long spear. My squire was already bleeding from several puncture wounds in his side and shoulders. He’d lost his baseball bat at some point; it was lying on the floor, well out of his reach. The pixies were trying to help by darting in and slashing at the Goblin’s eyes, but he just batted them away, his attention remaining focused on Quentin. Quentin, meanwhile, was having more and more trouble keeping the spear at bay.

I only stared for a second before I made my decision. I straightened, pausing to kiss Gillian’s cheek and say, “No matter what you hear, do not open your eyes, understand me? Do not open your eyes.” I didn’t wait for her to answer. I was already running across the room, dodging fallen pixies and broken arrows as I charged toward the Goblin who was harrying my squire.

Quentin pressed himself farther back against the wall when he saw me coming, forcing the Goblin to close in just that tiny bit more. The Goblin chuckled as he advanced, clearly believing his quarry was finally pinned. He never saw me coming up behind him, swinging my knife in an arc designed to plant it firmly between his ribs.

Raysel saw me running. In less time than it took for me to bury my knife in the Goblin’s back, she abandoned her standoff with Connor, whirling to release her arrow in Gillian’s direction.

Connor shouted something that was drowned out by the scream of the Goblin I’d just stabbed. I turned to see him drop his bow, throwing himself in front of my daughter. The arrow caught him high on the right side of his chest, going all the way through before the fletching on the end stopped it. Connor looked down at it with an almost comic expression of surprise . . . and then he fell, hitting the floor in a boneless heap.

“Connor!” I shouted, and ran toward him.

I was still running when Raysel pulled another arrow from her belt, fitting it into place, and drew back her bowstring. Tybalt was suddenly behind her, another of her arrows in his hand. He jammed it into the back of her arm, and she fell.

But she released her arrow first.

The sound of Raysel’s bow hitting the floor was surprisingly loud, given everything else that was happening in the room, and the smell of her blood—Daoine Sidhe and Kitsune and Blodynbryd; a mixture that should never have been possible, made possible by Luna’s desperation and a Kitsune girl’s sacrifice—filled my mouth for an instant before it was chased away by another, more urgent flavor. Human blood, spiced, ever so slightly, with Dóchas Sidhe.

Her arrow should have gone wild. Every ounce of logic, of fairness, in the world said that her arrow should have gone wild. Raysel was still falling as I stumbled to a halt, feeling myself go cold. I recognized Gillian’s blood the second it hit my tongue, even though I’d never tasted it before. Quentin shouted something, and another Goblin hit the floor a split second before Raysel did. I barely noticed.

I was too busy staring at Gillian, and at the arrow protruding from her left shoulder. Her eyes were still closed, and her head was lolling forward until her chin brushed against her chest. All the tension had gone out of her, leaving her collapsed like a boneless doll.

And it didn’t look like she was breathing.

THIRTY-ONE

“GILLIAN!” I SCREAMED HER NAME so hard it hurt my throat, and kept screaming it as I ran back across the room to drop to my knees beside her. Only the fact that I hadn’t finished cutting the rope was keeping her in the chair; her body was completely limp, and my fumbling attempts to find a pulse did nothing. If she was alive, I couldn’t tell.

“October.” The Luidaeg’s voice was pitched low and gentle. That just made it harder for me to breathe. She only sounded like that when things were really bad.

I shook my head, cupping Gillian’s face in my hands and lifting it until her closed eyes were pointed toward me. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. Open your eyes, okay? I’ll take you home, if you’ll open your eyes . . .”

“October, you have to get the arrow out.”

“What?” I twisted around to glare fiercely at the Luidaeg. “That’s the worst thing I could do. We need a healer before we take the arrow out. We need—”

“She’s been elf-shot. The longer you leave it in her, the less chance she has.” The Luidaeg moved around to my left. “She’s too human for this. If you want her to have any hope at all of surviving, you need to take the arrow out.”

“She can’t die,” I whispered. “She’s my daughter.”

“Death doesn’t care.” The Luidaeg’s words hit me like a blow. She was right. Oberon damn her, she was right.

I let go of Gillian’s head, bracing a shaking hand against her shoulder. “I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered, and grabbed the shaft of the arrow with my other hand, pulling hard.

Gilly moaned as the arrow came free. It was a soft, sighing sound, more like a whimper than a genuine cry of pain, but it was there. I stiffened, arrow slipping from my nerveless fingers to clatter on the floor.

“Gilly . . . ?” I whispered.

“Changelings can’t survive elf-shot,” said the Luidaeg. The sympathy in her tone was almost buried under a calm, commanding practicality. “It didn’t have to be that way, but my eldest sister took it upon herself to improve the original design, and she had her own opinions about such things.”

“Shut up,” I snapped, raising my head and glaring at her. “She’s going to be fine. She has to be.”