A Red-Rose Chain

You needed an alchemist.

Alchemists could “freeze” the magic in blood, refining and strengthening it until they found themselves in possession of potions, charms, and powders capable of lending that initial magic to someone else. With a good enough alchemist on your side, you no longer needed a blood-worker: all the magic of Faerie could be at your fingertips for as long as you wanted it to be. And my blood held the power to rewrite a person’s heritage.

Not enough to make humans out of purebloods or vice-versa, but enough to weaken changelings, turn them human or fae on your whim; enough to strengthen or resolve the confusion that already existed in a mixed-blood’s veins. Both changeling madness and the instability that sometimes came for those with exceedingly mixed heritages were functions of the blood. With fae, you’re not dealing with issues of race; you’re dealing with issues of species, completely dissimilar creatures that could, thanks to magic, somehow interbreed. Children of Maeve reproducing with children of Titania wasn’t like apples mixing with oranges—it was more like apples mixing with cheese graters, or rainbows with hardware stores.

Magic was enough to make the way Faerie worked possible, but magic couldn’t necessarily make it functional. Changeling madness was proof of that. Mixed-bloods had just as many issues—more, in my experience—but we didn’t talk about them as much, because they were still pure fae, and that made it a politically sensitive subject. Give King Rhys and his nameless mistress access to my blood, and they could parlay it into control of Faerie. I meant that literally. Anyone with human heritage would be in danger of being turned mortal. Anyone who had made peace with the balance of their blood would be at risk of having that peace ripped away.

Much like I had ripped the false Queen’s peace away, such as it had been, when I had reached in and unraveled the delicate tapestry of her heritage. I still didn’t feel bad about that—she had brought it on herself, in the truest meaning of the phrase—but I was starting to feel bad about what it had revealed to her. She knew how to hurt us now. She knew how to hurt everyone.

“Oh, oak and ash,” I said, with a shake of my head. “We can’t let them have me.”

“Or May,” said Tybalt. “I dare say they would be able to do fascinating things with the blood of your lady Fetch, given that there’s nothing else like her in all of Faerie. Whether those things did them any good at all would doubtless matter little to May, after she had been exsanguinated for their pleasure.”

Across the path, Walther stood. I switched my attention to him. It was better than dwelling on Tybalt’s uncomfortable, if accurate, words. “What’s up?” I asked, loudly enough to be heard.

“The rose goblins here remember me, which is always nice,” said Walther. “I was starting to feel like a ghost.” He was still holding the big one against his chest. The others surged around his ankles, moving like a strange and landlocked tide. Some of them were stropping up against him, using the odd, hopping dolphin-like stance that Spike always used when it wanted to show affection without actually breaking my skin.

“That’s weird,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “I’m used to people being a little better with the visual perception.”

Walther looked faintly uncomfortable. “I didn’t grow up the way people expected me to is all. Anyway: the rose goblins remember me, they’re not huge fans of the new management, and they’ll keep whatever we say secret from King Rhys. In exchange, they’d really like your rose goblin to come out and play. They don’t get to meet many cuttings from Luna.”