“Kill who?” Isabeau asks.
“You.” The faerie queen doesn’t look away from me although she speaks to Isabeau. “Without an anchor in this world, you will be unable to look human or think as they do. When Isaac died, you had no anchor. You were his daughter, his beloved child, and that love enabled you to stay human in your appearance.”
“Inappearance? What are you saying?” Isabeau swallows audibly.
“You are half faery, Isabeau,” I tell her softly. “This is not a curse. It cannot be broken. At night, you are not ... like you look right this minute. You change. Your mother has been drugging you so you didn’t notice.”
Isabeau shakes her head. “No. That’s not poss—”
I hold her gaze as I say, “Morag confirmed it, but intimated that you were not the killer I sought. That your mother ...” I glance at Gloriana, who stands there silently watching. A tree twines out of the earth, and a second follows. They twist together, and I know without asking that she is creating a memorial for Isabeau’s parents.
“But I killed the beast,” Isabeau says.
“Isa—”
“Your mother,” Gloriana says baldly. “Maébh should have come home when her mate died. Madness comes to the untethered. Did Maébh not tell you that you must marry?”
“I killed my mother?” An expression of horror comes over Isabeau’s face as she glances toward the sea. “I remember ... Why do I now remember this? I met you in the forest and ... I was eating a warm, dead deer.” Isabeau looks devastated, but her voice is steady as she says, “The curse is that I roam the woods like a wild thing.”
“There is no curse,” I repeat softly, hoping that my words reach her this time, but this is a large truth to hear. “And I am sorry that you killed your mother.”
“I am not. She was threatening you. She murdered people ... your father. She murdered your father and Girard and ...” Isabeau’s face blanches, and she looks at me like she is lost. “I should go over the cliff’s edge, too, before I become like her.”
The faery queen makes a gesture, and Isabeau is as a statue.
The queen speaks to me again in the Hunter’s language. “I will offer you a gift, Hunter, as an apology for Maébh’s actions toward your house.”
“If I know your language, my magic ...”
“Is ofmine,” Gloriana says. “Ask your queen. Tell her you’re ready to know more.”
Then my sword lifts again as the faery queen steps close to me, but she laughs and pushes the sword tip toward the ground. “You may keepthe halfling as your own. In exchange, she will answer my questions when I call upon her, or I will take Maébh’s daughter home now.”
“Isabeau should make her own choices,” I whisper, but in the language of Alveus so Isabeau can hear and understand me. “I cannot choose for her or ask her to be your spy.”
“I am offeringyouthe choice, Hunter. You can love her, send her away, or you can kill her.” The queen nods as if these are reasonable choices. “If you love her, she will stay in this form unless shewantsto change.”
Unfrozen now, Isabeau drops to her knees and bows her head. Eyes fixed on the earth, she says, “Go ahead and kill me, Gabrielle. I won’t stop you, and I cannot go with her. I cannot live without you.”
My heart tightens, and for all the times I have been told that duty comes before heart, I know that my own father put his heart—my mother’s health—before his duty to have a son to be the next Hunter.
“Isabeau . . .”
She looks up at me. “I forgive you, love. I understand. You are the Hunter.”
“So dramatic! That’s why I chose Maébh, of course, to come to this world, and it is why you will serve this purpose well, Isabeau. You are more like humans than most of my subjects.”
“What purpose?” Isabeau asks.
“Updates,” the faery queen says.
“Spying,” I say at the same time. “Like your mother did. The queen knew.”
Isabeau’s eyes are wide in surprise, but she says nothing. She gives a singular nod, holding my gaze. My love has put her fate and future in my hands. She’s still on her knees awaiting execution.
Gloriana gestures, and my sword lifts again without my intention or accord. “Well, Hunter? What will it be?”
I drop my sword to the ground. Then I reach down to Isabeau and tilt her head back to stare into her face. “I love you, Isabeau. Mygeasbade me to kill a specific monster. You are not her.”
