early training in his parents’ Court, where he’d been expected to be the perfect prince at all times, poised and polished and deadly.
Sometimes I think Faerie is way too hard on our kids.
Finally, I said, “Elizabeth Ryan, I’m here because the Selkie clans are permitted to govern themselves, at least so far as their relationship with their mortal kin. But you need to tell me where my daughter is and whether she’s all right before I can continue.” If she said Gillian had been hurt—if she said Gillian had been killed—I was going to—
I didn’t know what I was going to do. Except possibly go looking for the Luidaeg and get myself killed trying to challenge the sea witch. The Luidaeg had always said she was going to kill me one day. If Gillian was dead, that day might well be today.
“Your brat is fine,” said Liz. She took another drink from her tumbler, deeper this time, almost gulping. “She’s with a bunch of the kids, showing them how to make paper cranes. She’s still new enough to be good with her hands. The webs’ll slow her down soon enough.”
Connor’s hands had always been a little clumsy, hampered by the webs that connected his fingers to the first knuckle. But he’d done well enough. Gillian would, too. I forced my shoulders to relax as much as possible, letting go of Tybalt’s arm.
“What do you do when someone hurts one of your human clan members?”
Liz blinked slowly, finally putting her glass down. “What do you mean?”
“You take care of them, you protect them, you tell them about Faerie—the Law doesn’t cover them, because they’re not purebloods, but that doesn’t matter to the Selkie clans. What do you do when someone hurts one of your human clan members? It’s not a difficult question. Or should I go looking for an alchemist who can mix you something to sober you up? Because we don’t have a lot of time here.” Isla, dead in the water, shorn of her sealskin and left to drown like any other human. That wasn’t what the Luidaeg had approved. She’d given the Selkies permission to steal from each other. She’d never given them permission to kill. Sure, once a Selkie lacked a skin, they were exempt from the reach of the Law, but if I was right about Selkie governance . . .
“The Law.” Liz laughed again, bitter and unsteady, like she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. “Did you know, I didn’t even know there was a Law until I received my skin? My parents always told me to stay away from the rest of the fae, said they wouldn’t understand how a human girl could consider herself part of Faerie, or worthy of speaking to them. My mother said if I ever wound up in a situation where I couldn’t hide what I knew, I should pretend to be the au pair of some noble house. They steal humans for that. Almost always girls. I can’t decide if that’s tradition or chauvinism.”
“A little bit of both,” I said.
“There was a time when stolen girls were less likely to be missed,” said Tybalt. He had the good grace to sound ashamed, even as he kept talking. “A time when sweeping them away into Faerie might have been considered a blessing for all concerned, as they could be fed and safe and not subject to the affections of the first man to make their fathers an offer he felt he couldn’t turn down. In those days, it was tradition. Now, when someone insists they must have a woman to tend their young, because their parents did, and their parents’ parents before them, it’s pigheadedness and a refusal to understand that times have changed, and keep on changing.”
“I love you,” I said, before returning my attention to Liz. “Oberon’s Law doesn’t protect changelings, and it doesn’t protect skinless Selkies, but you don’t go around murdering your human kids and dumping their bodies in the Summerlands where the mortal authorities would never find them. So what do you have?”
“We have our own covenants,” said Liz. There was a suspicious glint in her eye. She could tell I was getting at something, even if she hadn’t figured out precisely what it was. Boy, was she going to be surprised. “We don’t kill our human kin, if that’s what you’re asking. We sometimes imprison them in our clan homes, for their own good, when they cross certain lines. And when they