A Red-Rose Chain

“Yes.” There was no point in lying. We didn’t go around advertising the fact that I wasn’t Daoine Sidhe, as I had always assumed, but the more fae I became, the more obvious it was that my heritage had nothing to do with Titania. Everything about me was wrong for one of her children, and perfect for one of the children of Oberon. “When I placed my hands on her, she had three bloodlines in her. Siren, Sea Wight, and Banshee. She was using the abilities she inherited from her Siren bloodline to harm the people I love. I had no other solution that wouldn’t violate the Law, and so I took those abilities away from her.” Oberon’s Law said that we weren’t allowed to kill each other. It never said anything about getting creative with our magic, which was how elf-shot was invented, and why so many of us had passed a few centuries as trees, or boulders, or white stags that only appeared at sunrise.

“And this is something you could do again?” He leaned forward a little more, looking at me with more interest than I was really comfortable with. “You could just . . . change someone?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But I can only work with what’s already there. I couldn’t make myself part Cu Sidhe, or turn a Tylwyth Teg into a Tuatha. I’m . . . sort of an alchemist, I guess, in a weird way. I can’t actually transform anything into something that it’s not.”

“I haven’t heard this power attributed to the Daoine Sidhe before,” he said, raising one eyebrow inquisitively. “Are you a prodigy of some sort? Or are you a danger? Is this a thing any Daoine Sidhe could do, were they not limited by their own safeguards?”

There was a time when I could pass for something other than what I was, and thus protect my mother’s first big secret: that she was Firstborn, a daughter of Oberon himself, and hence the parent of a whole new race. That time was long past, and if Mom wanted me to keep my mouth shut, she should have given me a reason. “I didn’t say I was Daoine Sidhe,” I said. “I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re blood-workers, but our powers run along different lines.”

“I see. Fascinating.” King Rhys settled back in his throne again. “Forgive me if I’m a little slow to fully grasp the implications of these . . . powers . . . of yours. Are you saying you can’t return my lady’s true heritage to her?”

“That’s correct,” I said. “There’s no Siren left in her blood. I can’t create something that isn’t there.”

“If you looked for it, would you even be able to find traces of it? Would there be any sign that it had ever existed?”

“I don’t know,” I said, slowly. “I’ve never had reason to look for a bloodline that had been removed from someone. I think there would probably be signs. She’d have to consent to my looking, though; they’d be delicate and hard to find, and would require her cooperation.” There were watermarks in my blood, showing the places where my fae and human heritages had slid back and forth, fighting for dominance. There was no reason to believe that the false Queen would be any different.

“I see. What about the process of the removal itself? Could it have, ah, ‘washed away’ any of those marks that were made before you laid hands on her?”

Too late, I recognized the trap that I was walking into. “Yes,” I said.

“Then you don’t know that my lady is not King Windermere’s daughter and rightful heir. What makes you so sure that what you did to her had not been done before? Hope chests have always existed. In fact . . .” He turned to the false Queen. “Wasn’t there a rumor that a hope chest had been found in the Mists? In the care of the Countess Winterrose?”