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I had never known who I was. I had never known where I belonged in the world. And I still didn’t.

The silk slid from within me and her thumb began lovingly stroking my cheek. “You are my daughter. You are the daughter of the great Túathal, God of Magic, balance, and weaving. You are Fae.”

“I am not Fae.”

“Deny it all you wish, beloved girl, but there is no denying what stirs in your blood. Even as I plumb the depths of your essence, I see clearer than you ever could. I know you, daughter, even if you do not yet have the courage to look yourself in the mirror.”

I hadn’t either. Not since the tent at the Night Market. It had been months since I had seen myself. The idea of looking into the mirror and seeing a stranger staring back at me made everything within me crawl from my bones to my skin. I couldn’t do it. I avoided all reflective surfaces as a rule of thumb, and when I could not avoid them entirely, I looked away. Anywhere except at the eyes that I knew were waiting for me, waiting to confront me with the truth I refused to accept.

And yet now, I was curious. With this new feeling of filling into my skin, would I see the same horror? Would I see mangled golden pearl skin? Would I see the nightmare of missing scars and tattoos? Would I see everything that was stolen from me, or would I see everything that I was now?

I longed to look into eyes I had barely taken notice of.

Just like my mother was doing.

“I’m not Fae. I will never be Fae.”

“And why is that?”

“They are awful. They are the worst kind of creatures. They treat people like pieces on a chess board. They treat humans like animals. None of them tell the truth ever, and they are all looking for the quickest opportunity to stab you in the back. I hate them. I hate all of them.”

My reasoning felt flimsy, but I was grasping at damp tissues in a quenching rainstorm, trying to hold on to it.

“All of them?” she parroted back at me, amusement turning up her soft lips. “Oh, dear one, lie to yourself all you wish, but there are more than a handful of Fae that you most certainly do not hate.”

“You two don’t count. She’s a priestess, and you’re . . . Well, you’re my mother.”

“Just us?” The amusement pulled deeper at the corners of her lips. Was she talking about The Raven? Brittle Spear? I did hate him, both of them. Didn’t I? She didn’t give me time to respond, merely pressed on. “You can hate them all you wish, Sóna, but that will not change who you are. You may not have been raised Fae, but the blood of Fae has always run through you. It has always been Fae, and on the day, you return to magic, you will be Fae.”

“I was raised human.”

“You were,” she agreed, topping off my tea. “And you will always be human as well. You are both.”

“How can I be both?”

Her eyes flicked up and down me. “Are you not breathing? You sit before me, a Fae raised as human. A human who was born to Fae gods.”

Silken hands reached across the blanket we sat on and gripped mine. “You judge Fae by human standards as Fae judge humans by Fae standards. Fae will never be humans. Humans will never be Fae. You can never and will never be one or the other. You are both. You are neither. You are the sum of all your parts, your parts are not the sum of you. But dear one, know this: the Fae will never be soft. They will never be like humans. There is nothing in their culture that is human. There is nothing in their spirits that is human. They are something else. Stop looking at them as humans and start looking at them as Fae. You are one of them. You should feel that in your soul by now. Embrace both. Embrace the soft empathy and community that is inherent to human and embrace the passion and freedom that is Fae. You have it in you to melt them together and forge a new kind of world around you, my daughter.”

I watched her for a long while as I turned her words over in my mind. She was right.

My mind turned to The Raven. I expected him to act like a human man. I judged him against the men I knew in Human and found him wanting and reviled him for his actions because they would be repulsive in Human.

But here? In Magh Meall? Were they repulsive? Or were they how one survived? Did I love and cherish the Bandrui because she acted as a Fae? Or because she acted as a human? If I judged her as a Fae, would I revile her? Or did I need to judge either of them against any specific litmus? Could I not embrace them for the truth of who they are?

Could I not embrace myself for the truth of who I am?

I nodded to her, and the sunlight that dawned in her face warmed me to my core as she gathered me into her arms and brought me into her lap. Even as a grown woman, even as an unnaturally larger version of myself, Airgetlám was taller and longer than me, and it soothed some deep need within me to feel like a child embraced as the delicate creature it was.

“I have more favors I must ask of you, dear girl,” she whispered as she stroked my hair. “It is unfair of me to ask, but the time grows near, and I can feel it humming in the air how dire it will become soon.”

“Ask me what?”

“You are like your father in more ways than one, dear Sóna mine. He was the balance to magic. He held it in the palm of his hand and kept this realm from tearing itself apart. With him gone, the threads are starting to unweave themselves. The loom has been shattered and must be put to right. Will you do this for me, my daughter? Will you bring balance back to the magic of this place?” Her arms tightened around me.

“I don’t know the first fucking thing about magic! How the fuck would I even begin to know how to balance it?”

“You may not know now, but you will. When the time comes, you will know what to do and how to accomplish it. It is not for me to know how this must be done. Magic keeps many secrets, and though it whispers the answers to me on many things, this is not one of them. This was not and would never be knowledge that was meant for me. It is meant for you, your father’s heir.”