An Artificial Night

“And so I shall.” She placed her other hand on my opposite cheek and leaned down to kiss me on the forehead. Dignity suddenly wasn’t an option. I screamed.

It felt like I was dying. Worse than that, it felt like I was being born. Every muscle in my body was pulled tight, flayed open, and made new again. It seemed to last forever, and part of me wondered through the screaming if this was the true effect of the poison; not to kill or to change, but to hurt. Forever.

Then the pain stopped, replaced by the tingle of pins and needles in my reawakening flesh. Acacia pulled her hands away, sounding slightly bemused as she said, “You can open your eyes now, daughter of Amandine. It’s over.”

“How do you know my mother?” I asked, and opened my eyes. Spike climbed up to my shoulder as I sat up, looking down at myself. My legs were flesh again: sore, aching flesh, but flesh all the same. I ran a hand down my side. There was no lingering roughness; even my headache was gone. “Everyone seems to know her, but no one tells me why.”

“She was very . . . visible, once. A long time ago, before her choices were made. You have her heat in you. I should have seen it sooner. I would have, but I was unaware she had a child. I thought her line had ended.” I looked up to find Acacia watching me, half smiling. “Believe me, I’ve left you no surprises; you are as you were when first you snuck into my woods. I couldn’t stop the scarring, but the wound is healed.”

“Why?” I asked, bemused.

“You wouldn’t betray my daughter.” She shook her head. “She must be a good friend.”

“She is.”

“Is she . . . well?”

Maybe it was the longing in her voice; maybe it was the fact that I know what it feels like to lose a child. If someone had offered me information on Gillian, the chance to know that she was thriving . . .

Whatever it was, I believed her. However strange the idea might seem, she was Luna’s mother. I couldn’t trust her with anything important, but what harm could a little news do? Acacia spared my life—hell, she saved my life. I owed her that much. “She’s good,” I said. “She’s married now; she has a daughter.”

“A daughter.” She rolled the words on her tongue like wine. “What’s her name?”

“Rayseline.”

“Rayseline—rose.” Acacia laughed. “She named her daughter ‘rose’?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still in the Duchy of Roses?”

“The . . .” I paused. Some people call Shadowed Hills the Duchy of Roses because of Luna’s gardens. I don’t know any other place with that name. “Yes. She’s still there.”

“I thought she would be.” She lowered her lantern, smile fading into something sadder. “I don’t know where else she could have gone. She could never leave her roses.”

“I don’t understand how she can be your daughter,” I said, risking honesty. “Luna isn’t . . . she’s not a Dryad.”

“She never was. She wore a Kitsune skin when she left me, but you could see the truth of her if you knew to look. Who she was, where she began, it was always there. It always will be.”

“I don’t understand.”The Kitsune aren’t skinshifters—you either are one or you aren’t. They’re not like the Selkies or the Swanmays, who can give their natures away.

“That’s all right, you weren’t meant to. Just believe me when I tell you she is my daughter, and that she lived here with me once, before she left to live where roses can grow.”

I slid out of the hammock, catching myself on the netting as my feet hit the ground. My legs were full of pins and needles, but it was a welcome sensation; it meant they were mine again. “I need to go. I have to save my kids.”

Acacia nodded. “I understand. Children are important. Where is your candle?”

“I . . . oh, root and branch.” I gave my candle to Quentin. There was no telling where he—or it—had ended up. “Quentin has it.”