She hesitates, her hand on my arm.
“Ash.” Her voice drops to barely breath. “If my father knew I brought you here, he wouldn’t kill me.”
I wait.
“He’d make me watch him kill her first. Then the others. One by one until I begged him to stop.” She swallows. “Then he’d start over.”
I stare at this woman who wears Kieran’s face and an Unseelie smile and realize I’ve underestimated her this entire time.
“Why are you showing me?”
“Because you’re the only person in this court who looks at me like I’m more than his daughter.” She says the words as she turns away, heading into the passage. She pauses just inside, waiting on me.
I push past the cobwebs into the tight space and go in about ten feet. It’s like a space between the walls. A secret passage.
Behind me, Kestra closes the door and steps close, then passes me, leading me through the passage that’s full of webs and spiders.
I couldn’t care less. She’s bringing me to my mom. That’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter that we walk what feels like the entire length of the castle before she leads me to a small lookout.
She removes a slide but holds my arm before I step up.
Licking her lips, she swallows. “Human women are often brought in to raise Fae children.”
Brought in.
“Like furniture.” The words come out flat.
Kestra flinches. “That’s not what I —”
“Like pets? Accessories? What’s the word you use, Kestra?” I can feel thorns pressing against my palms. “What do you call stolen mothers in the Unseelie Court?”
“Nursemaids.” She whispers it like a confession. Like she’s handing me a weapon to use against her.
“Nursemaids,” I repeat.
She nods. Won’t meet my eyes. “Keep going.”
But it’s her expression that makes my sinuses burn and my eye twitch. “What?”
She gives me a soft smile. “I know how much this is going to hurt you right now.” Her voice is gentle. Like she’s mothering me. And maybe in a way she is, because she’s lived a couple human lifetimes already. “When Fae children are born —”
“Or burped up by the earth,” I mutter.
“Yes,” her lips twitch as she continues to whisper words that destroy my entire perception. “Fae women aren’t…they aren’t soft by the time they choose to have offspring.”
“Wait. Are none of you born?”
“Wild Court exceptions notwithstanding.” She laughs loosely. “Unseelie and Seelie Court carry pregnancies to term, but many of us aren’t fertile until our four-hundreds. And by then…”
“You’re no longer maternal?” I rub my temples as I finish her explanation.
I keep wanting to put this understanding into human terms, but it doesn’t exist.
I have yet to meet one Fae woman who is…soft. One besides Kestra, and it’s because she is still young.
“Fuck.” I score my face with my nails and blink rapidly.
“Human women raise our offspring, Ash.” She won’t look at me. “Mine was named Kathleen. She had freckles and a gap between her front teeth and she sang to me every night until I was forty-three.”
