The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,151

only Gillian had a fully intact skin wrapped around her shoulders, because losing contact with it even for the duration of the spell would have killed her. There were still humans in the crowd, family members without a skin to call their own . . . but most of them had refused the offer, had chosen humanity and everything that came with it. They got to choose, and they got to live, and somehow, that seemed like a miracle.

The Luidaeg put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, here we go,” she said. “The largest expansion of Faerie since Dad’s day. You feel up to this?”

“No,” I said flatly. “I do not.”

“Too bad,” she said.

“I think it’s beautiful,” said Marcia dreamily. “Faerie should always be like this, fluid and changing and willing to work for a better world, for everyone.”

The Luidaeg glanced at her. “It’s not too late. We could find you a skin.”

“No.” Marcia shook her head. “No, it’s another ballad for me. I won’t sing the song of the sea, not right now, not today.”

“Suit yourself.” The Luidaeg turned to fully face me, taking a deep breath. “I know you don’t have a choice about this. I’m still grateful. I’m glad to know you, October.”

I blinked. “I . . . okay.”

I glanced over my shoulder toward Tybalt and Quentin. Quentin flashed me a quick, anachronistic thumbs-up, and it was all I could do not to laugh. Then the Luidaeg was leading me to where Gillian was waiting, her sealskin tied over her shoulders, a haunted look in her eyes.

“Gilly,” I said. “I—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I still don’t want to talk to you. But I want to live. So do this. Make it last. Make it forever.” Her laugh was small and tight and uneven. “I can’t spend the next seven years wondering if I’m going to die for the crime of tying a bad knot—not if I don’t have to. Especially not when the end result is going to be the same. I’m Roane either way.”

I bit my lip and nodded, reaching out to take her hands.

Gillian was my daughter, blood of my blood, even if her own blood had been sea-changed by the sealskin around her shoulders. I wondered, briefly, how the Luidaeg had been planning to accomplish this change before I had a child among the Selkies, and put the thought firmly aside. I couldn’t be distracted. Not right now.

The Luidaeg set her hand on my left shoulder, and the air around us crackled with the smell of cut grass and copper, my magic amplified and thrown into the wind, surrounding the assembled Selkies, seeking out their similarities to Gillian.

Somewhere, Torin was locked away, waiting to be cast out of everything he’d ever known. Isla’s blood would still be on his hands, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone else in these waters. It was a small condition. It had to be enough.

On the beach behind me, the Lordens stood, all four of them, together for this short stretch of time as they watched me change our world forever. They had arrived as a group, and while I couldn’t turn to look at them, I knew Patrick and Dianda would be holding onto each other, as inseparable as salt from the sea.

To the side, a bit apart from Tybalt and Quentin, Nolan and Cassandra watched, waiting to see what this would mean. We were all together, here in this place beyond the end of the world, where the waves clawed at the pillars holding us away from the sea, where one of the last Firstborn held her sway.

I reached for the magic in Gillian’s veins, and when I found it, I reached for the magic in the skin around her shoulders. They were tangled but distinct, two parts of a greater whole. I bit my tongue, filling my mouth with blood, filling my mind with the feel of it. Then I swallowed, and said, as softly as I could, “Blow, oh, blow ye winds blow, the world’s greatest graveyard’s one more soul to keep: I said blow, oh, blow ye winds blow, the star of the west is at rest in the deep.”

The magic caught, seeking sympathy, fueled by blood, cast wide by the Luidaeg’s net. Gillian made a small sound of dismay. I closed my eyes and kept chanting, kept casting, kept pulling the strands of magic in flesh and in sealskin and tangling them together, until there was nothing but the braided unity, until there