“So what do I do?”

“Just be you—strong and honest. The rest falls into place if you do that. It always has. It always will. Remember that. No matter what happens over the…centuries ahead of you, remember to be honest with yourself. And if you fail, forgive yourself. You’ll make mistakes. The whole world is new, and they have all had so many more years in it than you.”

“I wish you were going to always be with me. I’m scared.” Aislinn sniffled. “I don’t know that I want forever.”

“Neither did Moira.” Grams did pause then. “She made a stupid choice, though. You…you’re stronger than she was.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be strong.”

Grams made a small noise that was almost a laugh. “You might not want to, but you’ll do it anyhow. That’s what strength is. We walk the path we’re given. Moira gave up on living. She did some things that were…dangerous to herself. Slept with strangers. Did God-knows-what when she…Don’t get me wrong. I got you out of her mistakes. And she obviously didn’t do anything that made you born as an addict. She didn’t end your life or give you to them either. She let me have you. Even at the end, she made some tough choices.”

“But?”

“But she wasn’t the woman you are.”

“I’m just a girl…. I—”

“You’re leading a faery court. You’re dealing with their politics. I think you’ve earned the right to be called a woman.” Grams’ voice was stern. It was the one that she used when she talked about feminism and freedom and racial equality and all of those things that she’d held to like some folks hold to a religion.

“I don’t feel ready.”

“Honey, none of us ever does. I’m not ready to be an old lady. I wasn’t ready to be a mother either time—to you or to Moira. And I surely wasn’t ready to lose her.”

“Or me.”

“I’m not losing you. That’s the only gift the faeries ever gave me. You’ll be here, strong and alive long after I’m dust. You’re never going to want for money or safety or health.” Grams sounded fierce now. “Almost everything I could want for you they gave you, but only because you were strong enough to take it. I’m never going to like them, but the fact that my baby is going to be fine after I’m gone…It goes a long way to making me forgive them for all the rest.”

“She didn’t actually die in childbirth, did she?” Aislinn had never asked, but she knew the stories didn’t add up. She’d heard Keenan and Grams talk last fall.

“No. She didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you ever just tell me?”

Grams was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “You read a book when you were little, and you told me you knew why your mother left you. You were so sure that it wasn’t her fault, that she was just not strong enough to be a mother. You said you were like the girls in the stories whose mothers died so they could live.” Grams’ smile was tentative. “What was I to do? It was a little bit true: she wasn’t strong enough, just not the way you meant it. I couldn’t tell you she chose to leave us because she was mostly faery when you were born. In your version, she was noble and heroic.”

“Is that why I’m this? Because she wasn’t human when I was born? Was I ever all the way mortal?”

This time, Grams was still so long that Aislinn wondered if they were going to have a repeat of the silences that always came when there was talk of Moira. Grams sat and stroked Aislinn’s hair for several minutes. Finally, though, she said, “I’ve wondered, but I don’t know how we’d know that. She was barely mortal when you were born. Add that to whatever makes us have the Sight…I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Maybe she was the queen he was looking for. Maybe you were too. Maybe it’s why we have the Sight. Maybe it could’ve been anyone in our family. Maybe when Beira’d cursed him and hid the faery whatever-it-was that was to make someone the Summer Queen…it could have been any of us. If Moira had taken the test…I wonder if she’d have been the queen. I wonder if I would’ve still ended up a faery. If she wasn’t really mortal when I was born—”

Grams interrupted Aislinn’s increasingly fast flow of words. “Wondering about what-if doesn’t help, Aislinn.”

“I know. If she was a faery…I wouldn’t be alone.”

“If she had chosen to accept being a faery, I wouldn’t have had you to raise either. She wouldn’t have left you behind.”

“She did leave me. She chose to die rather than be a faery. Rather than be what I am now.”

“I’m sorry.” Grams’ tears fell into Aislinn’s hair. “I wish you didn’t know any of that.”

And Aislinn didn’t have a response. She just lay there, her head in Grams’ lap, like she had so many times as a little girl. Her mother had chosen death over being a faery. It didn’t leave much room to doubt what Moira would’ve thought of the choices Aislinn had made.

Seth wanted to be surprised when he saw Niall waiting inside the Crow’s Nest the next day, but he wasn’t. Their friendship was one of the things Niall held fast to, and Seth, for his part, wasn’t objecting. It was like discovering that he had a brother—albeit a twisted and moody older brother—no one had bothered to tell him about.

Seth spun a chair around and straddled it. “Don’t you have a job or something?”

The Dark King lifted a glass in greeting. A second glass sat on the table. He gestured toward it and said, “Poured not by my hand or of my cup.”

“Relax. I trust you. Plus I’m already in your world”—Seth lifted the glass and took a drink—“and not planning on walking out of it anytime either.”

Niall frowned. “Maybe you should trust less freely.”

“Maybe.” Seth leaned over and grabbed a clean ashtray from the next table and slid it to Niall. “Or maybe you should chill out.”

In one corner, the band was doing their sound check. Damali, one of Seth’s semi-regular partners before-Aislinn, waved. Her copper-tinted dreads were midway down her back when he’d seen her last. They weren’t much longer, but they were dyed magenta now. Seth nodded and turned his attention back to Niall. “So, you feeling the need for a lecture or being overprotective?”

“Yes.”

“Talkative and maudlin today. Lucky me.”

Niall glared at him. “Most people are intimidated by me these days. I’m the master of the monsters that Faerie fears.”

Seth arched a brow. “Hmmm.”

“What?”

“This whole ‘fear me’ thing doesn’t work for you. Better stick to the brooding.” Seth took another drink and looked around the Crow’s Nest. “You and I both know you could order all of their deaths, but I know you wouldn’t do it.”

“I would if I needed to.”

Seth didn’t have an answer to that—it wasn’t a point of argument—so he switched topics: “Are you going to be gloomy all afternoon?”

“No.” Niall glanced at the far corner. This early, there was an open dartboard. “Come.”

“Woof,” Seth said, but he stood even as he said it, relieved to move on to doing something.

“Now, why don’t my real Hounds obey so quickly?” Niall had apparently decided to try to lighten up. He smiled, weakly, but still it was a smile.

Seth went over and pulled the darts out of the board. He wasn’t serious enough about the game to carry his own. Niall, however, did carry his own. He had been a faery-but-not-king for too long. As a king, he wasn’t prone to reacting to steel, but that was a very recent change. A lifetime habit didn’t let go so easily. He opened his case; inside were bone-tipped darts.

While Seth selected the straightest of the steel-tipped darts for himself, Niall watched with a bemused expression. “It’s not toxic anymore, but I still would rather it not touch my skin.”

“Cigarettes aren’t toxic to you either, but you certainly don’t hesitate there.”

“Point. The darts shouldn’t bother me,” Niall agreed, but he still made no move to touch the darts in Seth’s hand.