solid to hang onto, but I knew better. I was too frayed already. I might snap.
The Luidaeg’s gaze was mild, but when she spoke, her tone was icy. “Fix her? I suppose. She has the potential to talk, laugh, cry, lie, and betray again, just like every other human. She can live; she’s not too broken for that. At least, not yet.”
“How?” asked Quentin, with raw longing in his voice. I winced.
The Luidaeg curled a hand over Katie’s shoulder, smiling bitterly. “Will you pay for her restoration? There are costs and choices to be made—one choice, actually, but it’s yours alone, and making it pays my fee. Can you bargain with the sea witch a second time, little boy?” Katie’s breathing calmed as she leaned against the Luidaeg; Quentin might be breaking, but she was broken, and it was our fault, every one of us. Not all the sparks that fly when the mortal lands and Faerie meet are bright ones.
Quentin stared at the Luidaeg, and I fought the urge to yank him away and take him out of the dark place where the sea witch held her Court and made her quiet bargains. She was my friend, but she was also something old and dark, and she could be the death of him. I wanted to take him away from there. I couldn’t. As the Luidaeg said, some choices are for one person and one person only; the blood I could still feel on my hands was a testimony to that. I couldn’t interfere. I could only watch and bleed with him, if it came to that.
“It’s a simple choice.” The Luidaeg smoothed Katie’s hair with a clawed hand, expression gentle. There was a time when I wouldn’t have realized that. “She’s not a changeling; she wasn’t made to sit on this line. She has to choose one side or the other. Take her to the Summerlands: tend her, keep her, and let her be the last casualty of my baby brother’s madness. Keep her, or let her go and never go near her again, because she’d love you if she saw you, and that love would make her remember our world. Keep her or let her go. But choose.”
“That’s not a choice!” Quentin balled his hands into fists. What was he going to hit? Reality? The laws of nature? Hitting the Luidaeg could be fatal. “That’s not even fair!”
“It is what it is,” the Luidaeg said with a shrug. “Who told you choices were fair, kid? I gave you the choice that must be given; I’m giving you the chance to decide. What do you want, Quentin? Her life and heart are in your hands, and she’s only a Daughter of Eve. The choice isn’t hers. The consequences are hers to bear.
“Whatever you want her to be, she’ll be. She’ll live or die as you command.”There was no pity in her tone;none at all. “Just choose, kid. This isn’t a game. Choose.”
Quentin turned to me, eyes wide and filled with silent hurt. He was still so very young. Faeries—true faeries, not their changeling throwaways—live forever, and when you have an eternity of adulthood ahead of you, you linger over childhood. You tend it and keep it close to your heart, because once it ends, it’s over. Quentin was barely fifteen. He’d never seen the Great Hunt that came down every twenty-one years, or been present for the crowning of a King or Queen of Cats, or announced his maturity before the throne of High King Aethlin. He was a child, and he should have had decades left to play; a century of games and joy and edging cautiously toward adulthood.
But he didn’t. I could see his childhood dying in his eyes as he looked at me, silently begging me to answer for him. I finally understood why the Luidaeg said making the choice would pay her fee. Whether he gave Katie up or not, he was paying with his innocence. There are choices you have to make for yourself, unless you want to spend the rest of your life lying awake wondering when the shadows got so dark. If he kept her with him, he’d be forcing her to belong to him until she died. There’s no going back on that kind of choice: she’d be his forever, no matter what she might have wanted. But love ends, and people change, and ordering someone to love you for as long as they live isn’t a good idea.
Katie was