I had a dream of my death, she had written.And it put a fear in me. I feared I would never tell you a truth you deserve to know. So I think it’s time to tell you a secret I have waited to share for twenty years.
It began on a night when I woke to a noise from your bassinet, and I found the shutters open and the moonlight pouring over you. You were awake, and your eyes were open. They were blue like I had never noticed before—so blue I could not stop staring into them. So blue they were almost frightening. You didn’t blink, and you didn’t fidget. You just stared back at me with the moonlight in your eyes. You grabbed my finger with yours.
And as I looked down at you, I understood that you were a child who would survive. You would survive this kingdom, no matter what. That was not a sense I’d had before. It was as though something had irrevocably changed in you.
Beyond your bassinet, I heard a noise in the alley. A shadow moved, and I only caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared. But a chill ran down my arms, and I picked you up and held you close to me.
I smelled your hair, your sweet infant scent, and I could not understand what had changed. It would take me years to understand what had happened that night.
Finally, years later, I glimpsed your father on his return from guarding the wall. He met my eyes, and his were brown.
Eury, you were born with brown eyes. At six months, they changed to blue. And the infant I picked up from that crib was not the same child I’d placed into it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I droppedthe journal into the dirt. A few unread lines remained, but my hands shook too much to keep the page steady.
Not the same child.The words rang in my head, a percussive clang, over and over.Not the same child. Not the same child.
I stared into the almost-darkness, unseeing, and once again I heard Theo’s riddle on the last night he’d been alive.
I am just like you, but I am not you.
Fuck off, Theo.
I rubbed my hands over my pants as though I could wick the memory away. There it was—Theo’s last riddle, and the key to my existence. I finally knew the answer.
“Changeling,” I said.
No sound returned except the whispers and scratching of the bugs in the earth. My breath sawed in and out of my nose, and somewhere far-off my mother’s words mixed with Theo’s.
Not the same child.
I am just like you, but I am not you.
I sat like that as time dilated, staring into nothing and seeing nothing and feeling my heart squeeze like it would close in on itself.The grief and shame and anger were a toxic mixture, swirling and mixing to a sludge.
I cried without sobbing. I let the tears run without wiping them away.
If I wasn’t my mother’s daughter, then who did I belong to?
If I wasn’t Eurydice Waters of the Kingdom of Storms, then who was she? And who was I?
Eventually my gaze slipped down to the journal lying open in the dirt. I picked it up, wiping it clean. I held the crystal close to the page to read the last few lines.
A mother does not choose the child she raises.But as I held you that night, I felt a love I had never known I was capable of. Not once have I ever felt a drop less than everything for you, Eurydice. Not once.
That was the end. Empty pages followed, but my mother’s entries ended—would always end—right there.
I closed the journal and wrapped both my hands around it and hugged it to my chest. I curled forward until my forehead touched my knees, then I opened my mouth and sobbed.
Not just for the secret my mother had kept from me my whole life.
Not just for this imprisonment.
Not just for the trials I had been forced to endure.
Not just for the girl who’d thought she was a human and never once had been.
