here,” he said. “She triggered and completed her third instar in the process of removing the trap Amelia had placed inside your mind. The morph into third instar is brief. It’s painless, compared to the variant form of second. It’s a preparational step, if that makes sense.”
“None of this makes sense,” I muttered.
“Biology rarely does,” said Uncle Kevin, eyes gleaming. I realized he was excited. Thanks to the anti-telepathy charm, I couldn’t sense his emotions the way I normally could, which was how I’d been able to miss it for this long.
I glanced at Mom. She had the same half-hungry look on her face, barely concealed behind the veil of her concern for Sarah. I managed, barely, not to wince.
We’re all Prices, even me and Elsie; there’s never really been any question that if and when we marry, it’ll be the “Harrington” part of our names we shed, because we’re Prices. We were born to this fight and to the endless scholarship started by our ancestors when they left the Covenant and realized how little work had been done to preserve the secrets and stories of the various sapient beings who shared this world with humanity. People talk a lot about what it means to be a Price. We’re terrifying to the ones who oppose us, we’re weird to the ones who stand with us, we’re heroes to the ones who depend on us. But there’s one thing that tends to get left out of the conversation, treated as less important than the need to keep fighting and keep winning until the war is over:
We’re scientists. Mom and Uncle Kevin even more than Elsie and me. They’re the direct descendants of Thomas and Alice Price. They were raised to believe that the world can make sense, if they just try hard enough and refuse to stop poking at its soft bits. The cuckoos have been one of the greatest mysteries our family has ever encountered. We’d tried for years to learn more about their biology, without taking apart one of the two cuckoos we considered part of the family. To have one walk into our home and just start talking was, well . . .
It was no wonder this was going so slowly. The people who would normally have hurried things along—the people we instinctively still listened to, thanks to their age and our familial relationship—were too enthralled by the potential to learn something to focus on what actually mattered.
I was focused on what actually mattered. I was focused on Sarah. I took a step toward Mark.
“Third instar is a preparational step, fine,” I said. “Preparing for what?”
“When there are multiple potential Queens ready for their fourth instar, we test them,” said Mark. “I don’t mean ‘we’ as in ‘me,’ I mean ‘we’ as in ‘whoever has them.’ They’re tested, and they’re tried, and when one of them proves stronger than all the others, she’s given the numbers she needs to unlock her fourth metamorphosis. First morph is a necessity, second morph is a gift, third morph is a challenge, and fourth is an ascension.”
“So Sarah’s a god now?” asked Elsie. I doubted Mark could hear, or understand, the warning in her tone. “That’s going to make Thanksgiving dinner awkward.”
“If she survives the process, she’s not going to be a god, she’s going to be a Queen,” said Mark. “She’ll have the strength to do the math and put enough power behind it to blow this dimension to pieces. She’s going to smash this world like an eggshell. She’s going to open the way for the cuckoos to go somewhere else. If you don’t stop her, she’s going to destroy everything she’s ever cared about, and she’s going to destroy you in the process.”
“That sounds like something you’d want,” said Mom.
“It does, doesn’t it? I know it’s something she wants.” Mark jerked his chin toward the silent, furious Heloise. “But no. I’m here to help you stop this. I’m here because this needs to not happen. There’s one thing you need to do first, though, and it’s going to be hard.”
“What’s that?” asked Uncle Kevin.
Mark took a deep breath. “You’re going to need to trust me.”
Seventeen
“There are losses we don’t move past, no matter how hard we try. Some wounds, once inflicted, bleed forever underneath the skin. All we can do is learn to live with them.”
—Jonathan Healy
Back in the house, with two monsters in the barn, no big deal (very big deal)
THIS IS A BAD idea!” Mom