Amadan shrugged. “He chose to follow.”
“He broke his leg!”
He held his hands wide in innocence. “As I recall, he tripped.”
“Because you were...” I trailed off. This was getting us nowhere. I wanted to slap the smirk off Amadan’s face. Push him headlong into the well, and if it would then give me no more visions, well, it would have been worth it.
I did neither. I ignored his scent of moss and loam and holiness gone most seductively profane. “Why did you summon him thus?”
“I will give you one answer, little changeling. Is that what you wish to waste it on?”
“Yes. No.” Oh, my derision for him burned! I chewed on my lips, scowling.
His brows lifted. “Youcouldcommand me to say more, did you know the right way to ask.”
My cheeks flushed and my pulse quickened.The right way to ask.He teased me. He challenged. He mocked. If I rose to the bait, I sensed it would cost me, dearer than I was willing to pay.
Instead I leaned in close; a dizzying warmth filled my belly. “You endangered Thomas Shepherd’s life. You will not do it again.” I backed away slowly, nostrils flaring and with rigid spine.
“I cannot endanger Thomas Shepherd’s life,” Amadan repeated dully. “You have claimed it yourself.”
“Good. I mean, what?” Was it really Amadan’s touch that caused madness, or was it only speaking to him that did the thing?I did no such thing, I wanted to protest, but I could not get the words out.
They would have been untrue.
“To save his life, to make this claim upon him, it is more serious business than you understand. Even when you choose to, you will find it hard to let him go.”
I lifted my chin, set my jaw, and did not speak.Never will I choose to let him go.
The Fool’s expression went hard, devoid both of its usual mischief and occasional flirtatiousness. “Little changeling, you are not the lass you were before.”
I was never the lass I was before. I kept turning and changing, like a gemstone holding different facets up to the light.
Still, I feared I might yet prove to be mere paste after all.
“But your ignorance remains. You value your words too lightly, entering arrangements you do not yet understand. I knew one other who made the same mistake, and it cost her dearly in the end.”
The blood rushed to my face, and it was all I could do to meet his bold gaze.
Yet I forced myself. “If I am ignorant, then enlighten me.” I wet lips gone suddenly dry. “You said ‘One who does not look deep for her answers does not deserve to find them.’ I have looked deep, and so answers I am owed.” Whether I could trust his or not was another matter.
Amadan crossed his arms, looking bored. “I promised you a single answer. What is your question?”
Who am I? Who was my mother, really? Why did you name me your liege?
I could not bring myself to ask any of these. I was not certain I could, in good conscience, remain with the shepherd if I knew.
I swallowed uncomfortably. “Did Mairi Grieve serve as midwife to the Faery Queen herself?”
Something unreadable crossed his face: pity, mayhap, or disappointment. “Yes,” he finally said. “Mairi Grieve did attempt to deliver Queen Una’s child. We took her into Faery, and put ointment upon her eyes, that she might see past our glamour. We hosted and fed her and treated her as one of our own.” He snorted. “For all the good it did us. You see, we thought we needed a mortal midwife. The queen’s consort had been a mortal man.” He bit the last off, as though it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“He was?” His words swam around in my psyche, questions giving birth to further questions, until they all tangled like unkempt yarn inside me.
Yet somehow, I had already known.
The Fool rolled his eyes, as if this were the least interesting tale he could impart. “The mother died and, they say, so did her child, mongrel she might have been. Some would have sworn to depose her in any case, for that mortal stain.” Amadan stared at me so long it burned.
At last he looked away. “Perhaps it is just as well she met her fate. Now if there are no further questions...” In a flurry of summer foliage, he spun widdershins around himself, like a whirlwind of green and gold. In an instant he had disappeared.
