Quentin frowned. “Then why—”
“I didn’t want to be safe and loved and beautiful forever! I wanted to be a hero like Uncle Sylvester. I wanted to make Mama stop looking afraid every time someone talked about prophecy. She said she was glad all the seers were gone, because nobody should have to live in fear of the future. I wasn’t scared of the future. I wanted to hold it in my hands. I wanted people to treat my father with respect, and I wanted my mother to stop trying to hide, and if I could get there and back by the light of a candle, why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you couldn’t,” I said. August gave me a baleful look. I shrugged. “I’m sorry, but when the Luidaeg says ‘don’t do that,’ maybe you should listen. She can’t lie, remember? She wasn’t trying to be a jerk or make you stay safe at home, she was trying to protect you from an impossible task. You didn’t listen. You got lost.”
“She should have told me.”
“She did,” said Quentin.
August sniffed and turned her head, refusing to look at either one of us.
The trees had melted away, leaving us to walk through an endless field of flowers. Then, between one footstep and the next, the white spire of Amandine’s tower appeared on the horizon, looming over everything. It was a neat trick. When I was a kid, it had even impressed me, the way Mom could bend the world to her whims. Now, all I felt was tired.
Tired, but with a faint ember of hope. Maybe this was all about to be over. Maybe Mom would see that I’d done what she had asked of me and give me back my people. For the first time in forever, I allowed myself to believe that I was going to have Tybalt safely in my arms again, that I was going to bring Jazz home. That in restoring her family, I had not managed to utterly destroy my own.
“Mama,” breathed August, and broke into a run.
She moved with a pureblood’s fluidity and grace. Quentin, chasing hard on her heels, did the same. I, on the other hand, was an avalanche trying to run, stumbling on every rock and tripping over every uneven patch of ground. By the time I reached the garden wall, August was already through the gate and racing up the path, with Quentin still close behind.
The door swung open as her foot hit the step, and there was our mother, as beautiful and brilliant as the morning, standing with her arm swept wide, hand flat against the wood. August froze. So did Amandine. The two of them stared at each other, separated by a few feet and the length of a century.
“Mama?” whispered August.
“August?” Amandine’s voice wobbled, nearly cracking. She kept her hand flat against the door, but it was no longer to hold it open; instead, it was to support her weight. Her knees seemed to be on the verge of buckling, leaving her reeling and unsteady. “I . . .” She stopped again, mouth working soundlessly against all the things she needed to say.
“I was so lost,” said August. “I was so lost, for so long.” She burst into loud, sloppy tears.
“Oh, my poor child,” said Amandine, and stepped forward, and gathered August in her arms, and held her.
The white flowers of my mother’s garden framed them perfectly, two pale watercolor women, their hair hanging long and loose, their arms locked around each other. Only August’s mortal-style clothes spoiled the impression that I was looking at a pre-Raphaelite painting, and she would change those soon enough, I had absolute faith in that. She would go upstairs to the room that Mom had hidden from me all my life, and open her closet, and whatever gown she chose would still fit like it had on the day when it was made. She would slide back into her life, seamlessly filling the hole I had never been enough to patch.
My mother had her beloved daughter back. She had her home again. Well, a vital piece of my home was locked in two cages somewhere in her tower, and it was time for her to keep her word.
“I found her,” I said. I knew it was a bad idea to interrupt their reunion. I also knew how long two purebloods could take to circle their way through something like this, and my patience had run out somewhere between the pixies and August rebalancing my blood on a whim.
Amandine pulled away from August as she turned to look at me, expression blank, like she had never seen me before; like now that she had the daughter she actually cared about, I was nothing more than an unwanted complication.
I took a step forward. “I found her,” I repeated. “I went to Annwn, and I found your daughter, and I brought her home. Now give me back what you took from me.”
Amandine blinked. Then, to my surprise and dismay, she laughed. “Oh, October, what makes you think you have the right to demand anything of me? I see by the angle of your bones that you’ve made yourself more human to please me, but that only gives you a small scrap of indulgence. Enough that I’m willing to let you walk away.”
“No,” I said. “That wasn’t the deal. You give them back to me now.”
“Mama?” August took a half-step backward, creating a gap between herself and Amandine. “What is she talking about? What did you take?”
“Nothing, sweetheart, nothing of consequence,” said Amandine. “It was worth it, to have you home, and she’ll have her toys back soon enough. She needs to learn respect. A little time without her playthings will help to teach her.”
“They’re not toys,” I snapped. “They’re my friends.”
“They’re pets at best, and beasts at worst,” said Amandine serenely. “You should consider yourself lucky that I don’t hand you their pelts and call my debt repaid.”
“What?” I asked, voice low and dangerous.
“What?” said Quentin. He sounded horrified, but his hand was on his knife again, and I knew if we challenged her, if we both died here, he would go willingly. Let his sister be High Queen. He was the boy who should be king, and I had spoiled him, because he was more than halfway to becoming a hero.
“What?” said August, blinking at Amandine like she couldn’t understand what was happening. Maybe she didn’t. I couldn’t remember ever telling her what Amandine had stolen from me. “Mama, what is she talking about?”
“She came into my home and she took my betrothed right in front of me,” I said, eyes on Amandine, watching every twitch in the muscles of her cheek. “She shoved him into a cage and said that I could have him back if I brought you home. She promised.”
“But I never promised when, October,” said Amandine. “I also told you it was time to learn to respect your mother. Or have you forgotten that?”
August looked at her, expression puzzled and betrayed. “You . . . I thought you sent her because she was a changeling. She was expendable. I thought she went willingly, to win your approval. You stole from her?”
“She stole my fiancé,” I said.