Gillen shrugged. “It’s a big hospital, Grey. Your brother’s not the only one prone to getting beat up.”
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“Send the Clure out. One maniac in the room at a time,” Gillen said.
Controlling my anger, I left them in the waiting room. I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t a healer, and now was not the time to argue. My brother was injured.
In Callin’s room, the blue-green glow of monitors and a small spotlight near the bed provided dim illumination. The humid air was heavy with lavender and dill and bitter green herbs. Callin lay in a stone crèche, an oblong slab of quartz charged with essence. Bandages wrapped his chest and left shoulder, and a thin layer of essence hovered over his body like a mist.
The Clure had pulled a chair close to the crèche and slumped over its edge. With his face somber beneath his mop of curls, he traced his fingers along Callin’s brow. I cleared my throat. The Clure stood and wrapped his arms around me, burying his face into the side of my neck. He smelled of whiskey and tears.
“I wasn’t there,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re here now,” I said.
He pulled away, his eyes watery. “It can’t happen like this. It can’t end like this.”
I rubbed his shoulder. “Callin’s tough. You know that. It’s not over.”
We spent a few moments staring at my brother, the Clure hugging himself against the hurt. I slid into the chair, staring at the bandages, trying to guess at the injuries.
“I’ll be outside,” said the Clure.
Tubes ran into Callin’s nose and mouth. His battered face showed signs that he had been in a fight that had turned up-close and physical. One eye was swollen shut, and the bridge of his nose was broken. Typical. Cal got himself in over his head and got knocked on his ass for it.
“What the hell did you do this time, Cal?” I asked.
I held his hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched him like that. We never were all that affectionate, but holding his hand reminded that we were brothers, that family mattered. I might not like a lot of the things Cal did with his life or to himself, but I cared.
He hadn’t come to the hospital when our roles had been reversed. I woke up alone, with no family except Joe and Briallen. My parents had visited after my accident, but after weeks of no change in my condition, they were called away to a diplomatic mission. Cal had been nowhere in sight.
It had been so long since Cal and I had exchanged sendings, I almost didn’t recognize his voice in my head. “Clure’s fine, Cal. He’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know if he could hear me. I was surprised he was aware enough under the sedation to talk.
Irritated, I checked to see if the Clure was coming back to boot me out already, but the hallway was empty. “It’s okay, Cal. They’re letting only one of us in at a time,” I said.
The force of the sending startled me, the equivalent of shouting in my head. Cal knew Keeva through me. She had been my Guild partner for ten years. We occasionally bumped into Cal, but not often. In those days, I didn’t care much about the Weird other than as a place to party, and I never did that with Keeva. Why she would be on his mind now puzzled me.
My memory flashed to the essence-fire residue I smelled on Keeva. She had more than once saved my butt in the nick of time. As much as we bickered, she had a sense for being in the right place at the right time, and I wasn’t going to complain if she had intervened with Cal somehow.
Cal wasn’t talking to me. He was sending in a delirium state. “Everything’s fine, Cal. You need to rest.”
“Yeah, it’s me, Cal. We’re all here. Don’t worry about anything,” I said.
I didn’t understand my brother in the best of times, never mind delirious from pain and medication. We had spent the better part of our adult life arguing, mostly about his drinking. We had drifted apart the last decade, and he fell in with a rough-and-tumble crowd I wanted no part of. Despite the Clure’s propensity for chaos, hooking up with him was probably the most stable thing Callin had done. Now he lay in a crèche, and I wasn’t able to do a damned thing about all that. I wanted the chance to fix things between us.
Gillen entered with his surgical team. His cranky manner had disappeared behind the focus on what was to come. Almost as an afterthought, he dismissed me. “We’re ready in the operating room. I’ll have someone keep you updated.”
Back in the waiting room, Joe had arrived. He sat on the arm of a sofa, talking with my mother. They stopped when I entered, guilt-stricken looks on their faces. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Has he gone into surgery?” Joe asked.
“Yes, and that’s not what I’m talking about,” I said.
“Connor, our focus should be on your brother right now,” my father said.
I took a seat opposite my father. He looked tired. “I’m not letting this drop, Da. I should be the best candidate for an essence blood match. What are you not telling me?”
He unrolled his sleeve. “It’s not important.”
“My brother’s on the verge of death, and I’m not being allowed to help. I deserve an explanation,” I said.
He kept his attention on readjusting his clothing. “Watch your tone.”
“I’ll take whatever tone I want,” I said.
He glared. I knew that look. I was about to be put in my place. My mother stood. “Enough, Thomas. We knew this day would come.”
A thick silence filled the room. “Okay, now I’m more worried,” I said.
Joe fluttered around my mother, his expression fluctuating between confusion and boredom. “I don’t understand why it’s a big deal, Mama Grey. Flits foster everyone.”
“Joe!” my mother said. His eyes gone wide, Joe slapped his hands over his lips.
I heard the word. I stared at my parents, searching their faces, looking for, well, me. Cal resembled my father enough to be his clone—red hair, stocky muscle, and blunt features. I always assumed I took after my mother’s side of the family. We had the same dark hair and similar features, but no particular characteristics marked us as mother and son. She looked Irish. I looked Irish. I assumed my blue eyes were a genetic throwback to an ancestor no one recalled. “I was fostered,” I said.
My mother dropped her gaze and took my hand. “We always meant to tell you.”
It wasn’t sinking in, at least not on an emotional level. I heard what she said, but I felt a distinct objectivity, as if we were discussing the weather. I was fostered. Thomas and Regula Gray were not my biological parents. As Joe said, it wasn’t unheard of in the fey world. What made it different was that I hadn’t known. Everyone always knew. It was an old tradition, without controversy. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My mother squeezed my hands. “Nigel asked us not to.”
“Nigel? What does….” I closed my eyes, dread slicing across my gut. “Danu’s blood, please don’t tell me Nigel Martin is my father.”
“He’s not,” my father said.
Utter relief swept over me. With everything that had gone sour between me and Nigel, the last thing I wanted to hear was that he was my father. I steeled myself for the next logical question. “Who are my parents?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Thomas said.
Not telling me I was fostered was at least plausible. Human parents kept the knowledge of adoption secret all the time, but fostering didn’t work like that. Someone had a child and placed it with another family to raise for a variety of reasons—all of them open knowledge. “How can you not know?” I asked.
My mother squeezed my hand. “Nigel said he didn’t know. You were a foundling.”
I couldn’t help the derision in my voice, but it was directed toward the absent Nigel. “Foundling? Not likely. Nigel didn’t find a baby and hand it over to the nearest couple. He knew more than he was telling.”
“Indeed. I pressed him on the issue repeatedly. I did my own discreet investigation but found no one with a
