The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,12

when I was still ignorant of what had happened—and found their parents dripping with blood, wearing raw, freshly-flensed sealskins around their necks and shouting about immortality. They were going to live forever, they said. They were going to be powerful and unstoppable, just like the fae.” The Luidaeg’s lips curved in a cynical expression that could have been a smile, maybe, in another life, on another face. On her, it was the betrayed look of someone infinitely younger, infinitely softer, than the sea witch we knew and somewhat reluctantly loved.

“I guess it never occurred to them that if the fae were all that powerful and unstoppable, their knives wouldn’t have been enough to slit my children’s throats.” She shrugged, almost shuddered, like she was shaking the memory away. “The children of those killers rose up against their parents, because they knew that when I heard what had happened, my wrath would be swift and absolute. They were thinking of their children. They killed their parents to try to appease me, so that some of them might be spared.”

“Were they?” asked Quentin. His voice was very small, and very young. He sounded like the dandelion-haired boy he’d been when we first met, and not the almost-man that he’d grown into since then.

The Luidaeg lowered her head and looked at him, and there was kindness in her eyes that would have shocked most of Faerie. Not for the first time, I marveled at how such a legendary monster had become such an integral part of our strange and broken family.

“Yes, and no,” she said. “I’m not my sister. I don’t kill children. If we handed down the sins of the parents without consideration for circumstances, we’d never have parents or children again, because all the babies would be dead in their cradles, unable to learn. But I punished them. I had to. For the sake of the Roane who were still alive, for the sake of all the other descendants of Maeve . . . and yes, for the sake of my own children, whose bloodied bodies sank to the bottom of the sea to be rocked to their rest before I could get to them.”

“The Selkies,” said Raj.

The Luidaeg nodded. “The Selkies,” she confirmed. “Their skins—didn’t you ever wonder where they came from? Who had to be flensed to put such power into a pelt?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” murmured Dean.

“The first Selkies were the ones who brought the skins of my children back to me,” said the Luidaeg. “They had blood on their hands, but they weren’t the ones to shed it, and they said they were sorry. They said they’d do anything to assuage my wrath. So I made them my own. I draped them in sealskin and set them to the sea. I made them fae and less than fae in the same breath, because their children were still human, still mortal, and if they didn’t want to suffer the way I’d suffered, they knew they would have to pass those skins along. Conditional immortality. The first generation of Selkies thought they could stand the pain. They couldn’t. They’ve been passing the skins along ever since, sacrificing the sea for the sake of their children over and over again, always waiting for the day when I would come and tell them their time was up, their penance was paid, and now it was time for them to settle the final bill.”

“Meaning what?” asked Quentin.

“Meaning a daughter of Amandine’s line has finally stepped up to do her damn job,” said the Luidaeg. She turned to face me, and her eyes remained as dark as drowning. “Meaning I didn’t give them time because I wanted to. I did it because I didn’t have a choice. A hope chest wasn’t enough. My own father’s blood magic might not have been enough, even assuming he’d be willing to intervene on my behalf—and I couldn’t count on that. I was already half-broken. I was already halfway to becoming the monster my sister wanted me to be. But they saw the future. The Roane saw the future. They saw you.”

The blood rushed out of my head, leaving me faint, and incredibly grateful for Tybalt’s closeness. He must have felt me wobble, because he slipped an arm around my waist, holding me upright.

“Oh,” I said. “Is that all?”

The Luidaeg smiled, very slightly. “Liar’s daughter, come to turn back the tide. That’s what they called you. You’re a living hope chest. You have the