One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“—talking about?” I finished, to the silence.

The silence didn’t answer.





TWENTY-FOUR


MARCIA WAS WAITING in the throne room when I emerged. Her easy pose against the wall must have taken some serious thought—she could only have looked more casual if she’d been wearing a bikini and sipping a cocktail. I stopped where I was, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes?” I asked.

“How did it go?” Marcia abandoned her faux relaxation in favor of standing up straight, turning the full focus of her attention on me. “Did they tell you anything good?”

“The night-haunts were obscure and unnerving, but they told me some things I needed to know,” I said, walking past her. She fell into step behind me. “The Selkie Raysel killed was named Margie, and the Lorden kids aren’t dead.”

“That’s good—the boys, I mean, not the dead woman.” She walked a little faster as she pulled up alongside me, and frowned, studying my face. “That is good, right? Because you look like it’s really bad.”

There was no point in trying to conceal the truth forever. I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing, anyway. “My daughter’s missing.”

“Wait—what? You have a daughter?”

“Yeah. Gillian. She lives with her human father. Rayseline took her, and I need to find her, fast, before there’s time for her to suffer any permanent damage.”

Marcia took a short, sharp breath, like she was biting off an exclamation. Then she went quiet, walking with me across the courtyard and down the hall to the kitchen without saying a word.

It wasn’t until I was reaching for the pot of coffee that simmered gently on the stove that she said, very softly, “What makes you think she hasn’t already?”

I paused for a moment, my hand just shy of the handle. Then I finished the motion, trying to let the familiarity of it soothe me. It wasn’t working. Sometimes, even ritual has no comfort left to give. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean . . . Toby, if she lives with her human father, that means she’s a quarter-blood.”

“If that,” I muttered darkly. “What’s your point?”

“Does she even know Faerie exists? How do you know she hasn’t already been hurt, just by finding out how much she doesn’t know?” Marcia shook her head. “I’ve known a lot of changelings who couldn’t cope with learning that their parents—” She stopped mid-sentence, looking stricken.

I sighed, and finished, “With learning that their parents lied to them. Because that’s what we do when we play faerie bride. We lie. We lie to our lovers, and we lie to ourselves, and if we’re really lucky, when our children find out that we’re liars, they forgive us, and grow up to become liars in their own right.”

“Yeah.” Marcia bit her lip, looking at me. “You lied to her, Toby. For her whole life. And now she’s in a situation she never had a reason to prepare for, and she’s probably scared to death, and I mean, you’re right, we need to get her back, but I don’t think we can say she hasn’t already been hurt.”

Her words hurt more than I could have imagined. I closed my eyes for a moment, counting slowly to ten before I opened them again, and said, “That doesn’t matter. All that matters now is that I’m going to get her back. I’m going to find a way to save her.”

“And you’re going to stop the war at the same time, right?”

“I . . .” I paused. I was starting to feel overwhelmed. Too much was happening. I just wanted to crawl into a cup of coffee and wait until it all went away. “I’m going to do the best I can.”

Marcia nodded. “I guess that’s all I can ask for. What are you going to do now?”