“Then I spin more,” I say, carrying the metaphor.
“Let me help you,” she says, brightening.
My brows rise. “You want to make thread?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Oh, come on. I can do things you don’t have time for. I see you in Court. You have perhaps two good jackets. I could bring some of your old gowns and jewels over—Madoc wouldn’t notice, and even if he did, he wouldn’t mind.”
Faerie runs on debt, on promises and obligations. Having grown up here, I understand what she’s offering—a gift, a boon, instead of an apology.
“I have three jackets,” I say.
She raises both brows. “Well, then I guess you’re all set.”
I can’t help wondering at her coming now, just after Locke has been made Master of Revels. And with her still in Madoc’s house, I wonder where her political loyalties lie.
I am ashamed of those thoughts. I don’t want to think of her the way I have to think about everyone else. She is my twin, and I missed her, and I hoped she would come, and now she has.
“Okay,” I say. “If you want to, bringing over my old stuff would be great.”
“Good!” Taryn stands. “And you ought to acknowledge what an enormous act of forbearance it was for me not to ask where you came from tonight or how you got hurt.”
At that, my smile is instant and real.
She reaches out a finger to pet the plush body of my stuffed snake. “I love you, you know. Just like Mr. Hiss. And neither of us wants to be left behind.”
“Good night,” I tell her, and when she kisses my bruised cheek, I hug her to me, brief and fierce.
Once she’s gone, I take my stuffed animals and seat them next to me on the rug. Once, they were a reminder that there was a time before Faerieland, when things were normal. Once, they were a comfort to me. I take a long last look, and then, one by one, I feed them to the fire.
I’m no longer a child, and I don’t need comfort.
Once that is done, I line up little shimmering glass vials in front of me.
Mithridatism, it is called, the process by which one takes a little bit of poison to inoculate oneself against a full dose of it. I started a year ago, another way for me to correct for my defects.
There are still side effects. My eyes shine too brightly. The half moons of my fingernails are bluish, as though my blood doesn’t get quite enough oxygen. My sleep is strange, full of too-vivid dreams.
A drop of the bloodred liquid of the blusher mushroom, which causes potentially lethal paralysis. A petal of deathsweet, which can cause a sleep that lasts a hundred years. A sliver of wraithberry, which makes the blood race and induces a kind of wildness before stopping the heart. And a seed of everapple—faerie fruit—which muddies the minds of mortals.