There is an odd prejudice, in some pureblood circles, saying only members of the same bloodline should marry: Daoine Sidhe with Daoine Sidhe, Candela with Candela, as if the flesh of Faerie were not only incorruptible but fragile, unable to tolerate contact with itself. Those who claim that blending the code that makes each descendant race what they are will also destroy them do not like to discuss the fact that we are all descended from some combination of Oberon and his wives, or that by their own command, siblings and cousins should reproduce from now until the end of time. They look at people like my mother, and at marriages like hers to Li Qin, and see only inferiority and perversion.
Elliot is a Bannick, a descendant of Maeve, best suited to cold climates and marshy places. His kind began in Russia, during one of Maeve’s long sojourns away from her husband’s side. Yui was, when she lived—and was still, in the most technical of senses—Kitsune, four-tailed, smart and swift and sure of herself. Her kind are also descended from Maeve, although they originated in Japan, not Russia. Despite that shared progenitor, I know many among the Courts who would not have been pleased by the idea of their marriage.
Elliot had been January’s seneschal long before she saved me from oblivion. He had been with her before she had met, courted, and married Li Qin. He could have sought a place in a grander, more traditional Court. But he had stayed, in part out of loyalty and in part because she refused to dictate his choices for him. When he and Yui had begun their courtship, my mother’s only response had been to give him a raise, saying that she wanted him to take his lady-friend “someplace nice.”
He had taken her quite a few nice places. The last place he had taken her was to a cot in the basement, where she slumbered still, unchanging, no longer alive.
“I think you are the one who told me dead was dead and gone was gone, and that I needed to focus on being the best Countess I could possibly be, rather than mourning for a mother who would never return for me, but who would have been very proud of me for accomplishing as much as I have,” I said carefully. “I also think you would sacrifice anything in your possession to restore Yui’s life.”
“Yes,” said Elliot. To which, he did not specify. He did not really need to.
“What do you think I should do?” My voice was a child’s whine, younger than the rest of me: the voice of a little girl who still direly needed her mother.
“I think you should hear what she has to say.”
I paused, looking at him carefully before I asked, “Do you believe she can do this? Do you believe she can restore the fallen?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “And no, I don’t.”
He didn’t have to explain the reason for his contradictory answers. Yui had been uploaded to Gordan’s experimental server. If Li Qin could accomplish what she claimed to be able to do, Yui could come back. My mother hadn’t been uploaded. No matter what Li Qin did, my mother was never going to open her eyes again. She didn’t even have eyes to open. After she had been killed, Duke Torquill had commanded her body burned. She was gone.
I was gone once. When the humans cut my tree down. When I went offline—when I died—for the first time, and then again and again, as she worked to save me.
Why had I never worked to save her? She was the one who had taught me that death was a negotiation. I had been a bad daughter. I hadn’t even tried.
“I have to talk to Li Qin,” I said, and vanished—but not before I saw Elliot smile.
FOUR
Li Qin was waiting in the cafeteria, sitting down with a mug of hot cider in her hand and a patient expression on her face. That expression didn’t change when I appeared in the chair across from her. She nodded toward my empty hands.
“You might feel better with a beverage,” she said.
Meaning she might feel better if I seemed to have something to hold onto. I chose not to argue. Physical people have physical needs, and however much time they spend in my company, they never quite get past the idea that I must have them, too. I flickered, and a cup of light and pixels appeared in my hands, filled with something that resembled hot chocolate. I thought the bunny-shaped marshmallows were a nice touch.
Li Qin apparently agreed, because she offered me a small, relieved smile, and said, “I assume Elliot found you.”
“Yes.”
“You knew . . . April, you knew I was hoping to be able to do this. One day. That I thought I might be able to put them back together again.”
“Yes,” I repeated. Of course I’d known. Nothing entered on our company servers was a secret to me, although I allowed my employees the pretense of privacy—when someone slipped and admitted they had called in sick to attend a concert, or spent a little extra time on their social media accounts, I did not intervene. A certain amount of relaxing naughtiness seemed required for them to continue operating at peak efficiency.
Li Qin’s email went through our company servers. January had set them up that way, to make it possible for Li Qin to receive email while traveling in the Summerlands. I saw every piece of it. When I thought of things in those terms, I felt foolish for ever assuming she was courting someone. She had never shown any signs of keeping secrets. She would occasionally include the line “April, please don’t read the rest of this message” when she was discussing things she thought might distress me, but she still sent those emails through the usual channels. She could never have concealed a new lover from me.
“So why do you look so upset?”
I went still, allowing the outlines of my material form to crackle and turn hazy as I gathered my thoughts. Pulling them—and myself—back together, I said, “I do not know.”
Li Qin sighed. “That’s not true. You know that’s not true. You understand yourself better than you like to admit. Why are you so upset?”
I wanted to disappear. I wanted to return to the comfortable isolation of the code, where no one could bother me with questions that I didn’t want to answer. But Li Qin was my mother. She wasn’t the one who had saved me, but she was the one who had worked the hardest to make me a part of the new world in which I had been marooned. If January had been my Prospero, Li Qin was my island, and she had always been determined to see me bloom.
“I suppose . . .” I began, and stopped, reaching for the words. They didn’t want to come. They remained just out of my grasp, flickering like lightning, like the smell of ozone hanging captive in the inside air.
Like my mother’s magic, which I was never going to smell again.
“I miss my mother.” The words were soft, and plain, and they hit her like knives. She winced, smile fading, although the understanding in her eyes never wavered. “I don’t like that she isn’t here. I don’t like that she went offline and didn’t come back. She’s supposed to take care of me. October said that I have to take care of myself now, and I’m trying, but it’s hard, and it’s wrong. Mama is supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be here.”
My voice cracked on the last word. I felt my outline fuzz, and to my deep shame, I blinked between my adult form and the more childish mien I had worn when January was still with us, still taking care of me.
Li Qin sighed, casting her eyes down, toward the surface of her cider. “I know,” she said quietly. “I do my best, but I know how much you loved her, and I know how much you miss her. I miss her, too.”
“I know bringing the others back is the right thing to do, if it can be done. But . . .”