Ubiqua was taken aback, and her incredulous laugh showed it. “Is that what all of this has been about? Love, if I hadn’t married your father, you wouldn’t even be here!”
At Zabriel’s volatile silence, she abandoned sarcasm and continued, “I loved your father. And I was—and am—trying to bring two cultures together. That is why I married him.”
“Selfish reasons. Political reasons. Did you ever think about what kind of life I would have? Growing up with no father, belonging nowhere?”
“You belong here.”
“I belong nowhere. And certainly not here.”
My eyes widened as he headed for the door, but Ubiqua summoned a great wind using her connection to the air, and the door slammed shut before her son could storm out.
“I knew life would not be easy for you,” she seethed, her jaw tight in an effort to suppress her anger. “I knew controversy would follow you, and no part of me thinks it’s fair. But there’s a greater purpose at stake here, and you represent that cause. It’s what your father wanted. It’s what all the people want, even the ones who are afraid. You have to be brave enough to face that!”
Zabriel swung around, his eyes burning. “Brave? You don’t think I’m brave? I was brave enough to try cutting off my wings, Mother. I would have succeeded, too, if Anya hadn’t been so afraid to see me in pain.”
Ubiqua’s mouth opened in horror, and I cringed in my corner though she wasn’t looking my way. But Zabriel was unrelenting. He was fifteen, no longer as intimidated by a parent’s power, and his gaze bore into hers, his fists clenched at his sides.
“I’m tired of it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m tired.”
Ubiqua, still stunned by what she had learned, didn’t immediately respond. But it soon became clear from the straightening of her shoulders and the tilt of her head that she would react as a Queen, not as a mother.
“You don’t have the luxury of being tired, Zabriel. You have sacrificed so little compared to what I have done, and what your father did for you. He died trying to cross the Road to be with you. He wanted to raise you in a land where he would have been a foreigner, an enemy. He would have endured all that for this cause, and for the love of you. Have you no respect for his memory?”
“I don’t remember him, Mother. There’s nothing to respect. He died before I was born trying to reach an empty throne in a place he never belonged. This Realm was not his, and it isn’t mine, because I am not a Faerie. Nor do I want to be!”
“Zabriel! Zabriel!”
He was gone. And I didn’t think I would ever see him again, because I knew he had decided. He’d talked about leaving for long enough, and now it seemed the time had come. No ties of blood or of magic could keep him here, just as even the wedding mage’s aura had not been able to see Zabriel’s father safely across the Bloody Road.
And that aura had been stronger than the one Davic and I shared.
Without magic in one’s soul, one could not enter the Faerie Realm.
Now the hands of the lonely and the angry that had caressed me harmlessly so many times would take hold if I went near them.
Davic could not bring me home.
Ubiqua could not bring me home.
Unless I found Zabriel, Illumina would rule. And her hatred of humans would be fiercer than ever. With men like Falk as her lieutenants, she would bring us once more to the brink of war.
Everything we peacemakers had accomplished would be as waste, and the Faerie people would be corrupted.
* * *
I woke with a gasp, one side of my face pressed into something soft and wet. Disoriented from the vision, from memories and reality forced upon me in sharp relief, my breath came fast. Clarity, unfortunately, did not.
At first I lay motionless. My head ached, my body burned and I didn’t know where I was or how I had gotten there. Slowly I comprehended that I was in a room instead of outdoors: a room with a wardrobe, a bookshelf, a rocking chair, and a bed; a bed on which I was resting. And my pillow... It was wet with tears.
I never cried—when emotional, I broke decanters and argued with people and ran away from the things that scared me. I hadn’t cried since my mother’s death three years ago. Yet the proof was in front of me.
Unable to get my bearings this way, I pushed myself up, lifting my chest and stomach from the mattress. The movement set torture upon my back, and it all returned to me—the attack, the halberd striking me again and again. I was feeling the pain now that had felt so distant then.
I collapsed, a moan slipping through my parched lips. The sound drew someone’s attention, and the door into the room opened, light breaking in like a beacon, but with my hazy vision I couldn’t make out the person who entered. I fumbled to protect myself, hoping to somehow go unseen, only there was nowhere to hide, and no way I could run. The person’s weight depressed the mattress, and I heard a female voice.
“Mother, she’s roused!”
Dropping her volume, she whispered to me, “You’ll be all right. We’re taking care of you.”
Unable to fight the pain, I lost consciousness, once more wandering in fevered dreams.
* * *
I stood at my mother’s side, her body already prepared for the funeral pyre, and said one last goodbye. Her red hair was as beautiful as ever, and had far more life than the rest of her. Slowly I reached out to touch her hand, then squeezed it hard enough to bruise, not believing she couldn’t feel it. When she didn’t respond, I lost the grounds to protest her burning. She’d been a Fire Fae in life, and it was fitting to return her to the element that had chosen her. She was wrapped in a white cloth so the assembly wouldn’t have to watch her skin blister and slip away from her skull like petals spreading from the heart of a flower. I knew it was happening anyway. I’d once accidentally burned myself, and the sting had remained far longer than any cut. The licking of flames against flesh was agonizing.
My lips were dry with cold as my father put his arm around me, blocking the wind, and led me back to the Great Redwood from the assembly’s gathering place in the distant woods where we Fae said farewell to our dead. Our party was quiet, Ubiqua walking in front, her hand on Zabriel’s back, Illumina and her father behind us. My cousins and I were now equal—there were three parents between the three of us. We had each lost one.
When the bittersweet reception was under way in the Redwood, I left my father’s side to sit alone on the ridge, watching Faefolk below console one another with food, drink, and warmth. Before long, someone came to sit beside me—someone with whom I could talk.
He handed me a mug of hot Sale, as usual having none himself. He wasn’t allowed to drink it. I took his offering gratefully, the gesture enough to bring tears to my eyes on a day when tears desperately wanted to come. But I sniffed, bit my lip, and dried my face of the few that escaped.
“I know,” Zabriel said, leaning against the bark wall behind us with one arm resting on his knee. “You’re not supposed to be sad. You’re supposed to be strong for your father. Being sad will make things worse for him.”
I nodded, not stopping to digest what he’d said. Thinking was what gave birth to self-pity, and self-pity served no purpose.
“That’s stupid, Anya,” he said, and I turned to him in instant agitation, one powerful emotion easily transforming into another.
“And what would you know about it?”
He hung his head, thick hair falling forward. I shouldn’t have snapped at him. He was a year older than I was, and the heir to the Faerie throne. For these reasons and more, he deserved my deference and respect. But rather than put me in my place, Zabriel’s big dark eyes met mine of green and he scooted closer to embrace me.
“It’s okay to be sad, Anya. It’s okay to be angry, even at your mother. People leave us when they have no business leaving. And your father can handle himself. He’s got the Queen, the Council, and his friends to look out for him. He doesn’t need you to be strong.”
I tucked my head against my cousin’s shoulder. Maybe he was right. Maybe for just a minute I could let the weight of my own loss settle suffocatingly on my chest. Maybe I could take a moment and gasp and sob.
I gazed ahead, my eyes dead like my mother, tears leaking down my face and onto Zabriel’s jerkin.
“What’s it like to only have one parent?” I stammered, my emotions inhibiting my speech. “I want to know before I wake tomorrow.”
“The rest of the world doesn’t change. Only your world. And you wonder why this happened to you and not to somebody else. For a while, people will treat you like you’re a puzzle with a missing piece, until they realize the piece missing was just part of the background, not part of the actual picture.” He rested his chin atop my auburn hair, and I waited, hoping he would say more. “You don’t need that background piece to be what you’re supposed to be, Anya, even though it looked nice and everything. You’re still whole. Even though it doesn’t feel like it.”
Struck by a realization, I sat up and gazed into his face.
“Then you don’t feel whole, either?”
He was silent for a long time, his thoughts unreadable.
“No, I don’t. My father shouldn’t have died. If he loved me so much, he shouldn’t have risked his life by trying to cross the Bloody Road. He should have known I would need him, and taken better care of himself. He should have known that without him, I’d be alone here in the Faerie Realm, singled out as the only person with human blood. But you, Anya, you’re not alone. You’ll never be alone.”
