Why should it take death to understand such a thing? Yet I hadn’t understood until a few months ago that Karin’s people weren’t all monsters, either. “Karin, Mom says you think she and Caleb started the War. Do you?” Did they?
Karin laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Tara always did have a way of simplifying things. Fault and blame are complicated matters. Tara and Kaylen played a role, certainly. So did I, and my mother, and Tara’s father.”
The children of powerful people, nothing more. “Who was Mom’s father?” I’d never known any of my grandparents.
“Who people are is never simple in your world,” Karin said. “Among your people, position is not defined by birth or strength of magic. Tara’s father was neither a wielder of power nor a maker of goods—he was merely a merchant, a procurer and seller of the goods others made, weapons in particular. In my world, such a person would be of little consequence. I did not understand how different matters were in your world until your mother—” Karin stopped abruptly. “I cannot tell this fairly, Liza.”
“I’d rather hear it unfairly than not at all.” Mom had her chance to tell me fairly.
“I know less than you think.” The vine around Karin’s wrist unwound a little, creeping toward her fingers. “I did not note when your mother first found her way into Faerie. I do not know how she and Kaylen came to care for one another, even through the glamour my people use so easily upon yours that we do not even think of it as part of our magic. I don’t know what made Kaylen certain the caring was more than a part of the illusions he wove. My brother did not ask my advice in those days, and if he had, he would not have liked the advice I’d have given. I know only that Kaylen lifted the glamour from Tara at the last and, in doing so, swore an oath to never use glamour against your people again. I have since taken the same oath, though I was slower to do so.”
“You thought he was reckless to make promises to humans,” I said.
Karin looked sharply up, and I remembered I only knew that from my vision. “If I thought Kaylen reckless for releasing your mother,” she said in a level voice, “I had some cause, given what Tara did next. Once her thoughts were her own, once she understood what had happened to her, she grew wild with anger and fear, like the child she was. She fled from Kaylen, back to her human home.”
I’d seen that, too. Wind blew ice pellets against the trailer walls. I shuddered, remembering how the Lady had bent my very thoughts to her desires. “Of course Mom ran.” How could Karin have expected her to do otherwise?
“You do not understand. Tara told her father everything. She gave no thought to who he was. She thought only of her own pain. Yet she found no comfort in the telling, and so she fled her father as well. She returned to Kaylen, seeking—I don’t know what she sought. Love? Protection? A means of forgetting her pain? You’ll have to ask her, for I truly do not know. I know only that her father followed after her, and that much grief resulted from that in the end.”
“The War resulted from it.” My words were nearly lost to the noise of ice and wind. “But Mom couldn’t have known what would happen. She wouldn’t have gone back, if she had.”
“We all would do differently, could the seers read the consequences of our actions more clearly. That doesn’t make us any less responsible for those actions, no matter how much we wish it otherwise.”
Wind gusted through the hole in the ceiling. Mom had to tell someone what had happened. She hadn’t been wrong about that. Maybe her father hadn’t been like mine. Maybe she hadn’t known he was the wrong person to tell. “It wasn’t her fault. Not all of it.”
“Nor did I say it was.” Karin gazed at the ivy around her fingers. “I know well enough Tara did not move my hands and my voice when I commanded the trees to attack your people. I’m responsible for my actions, too. And so I save those I can, where I can, and will continue to do so as long as I draw breath. Can Tara say as much?”
“Mom’s saved people, too. In my town.” How many more would have fallen to magic, like Jayce’s granddaughter, if not for Mom?
“I know. Kaylen told me.” There was no forgiveness in Karin’s tone. She brushed her hand over the vine, and it retreated to wrap back around her wrist.
I wasn’t sure I forgave Mom, either. She hadn’t saved me, after all. Why was it so much easier to hate Mom for her failures, when Mom had never wanted the War to happen, than to hate Karin, who had attacked my people of her own will once it had? “Karin, why did you fight in the War?”
Karin was silent so long I thought she’d decided not to answer. Kyle stirred in his sleep, throwing off the blanket. I got up to wrap it back around him. He muttered something about mean ants and fell back asleep. I put my hand to his forehead. His skin was cool. Which mattered more—the people we saved or those we failed to save? I thought of Ethan, surely dead or near to it by now. I thought of Johnny, still with the Lady. I rubbed my wrist. The skin beneath Matthew’s hair tie was red where my sweater had tightened around it.
“I fought in the War because I believed it necessary to protect my people.” So quiet, Karin’s voice behind me. “And I fought because I wanted to please my mother.”
Kyle had flung his frog from the couch. I picked it up. How could anyone fight a war to please someone else? I squeezed the soft plastic in my hand. Once I might have killed for my father if he’d asked it, too. I tucked the frog in beside Kyle and returned to Karin’s side, drawing my arms around my knees. “Were things simpler Before?”
Karin laid a hand on my shoulder, and this time, I let her. “Few things were ever simple, in your world or in mine.”
Kyle sighed in his sleep. Karin shut her eyes, though her posture remained watchful. “My mother alone would not have acted differently had the seers told her what was to come. The Lady was known for many things, but forgiveness was not among them. The memories of my people run long. My mother will not rest until she finishes the work the War began.”
The Realm will be avenged before this is through, and your frail human towns will fall, one by one. “She won’t stop until we’re all dead.”
“I will do all I can to stop her.” Karin’s voice was grim. “Do not doubt it.”
I looked right at her. “So will I.” The words sounded foolish as I spoke them. What could I possibly do against glamour? Even if I held Caleb’s leaf close, that wouldn’t protect anyone but me.
“There remains a part of me that wishes you would return to my town and be safe.” Karin pressed an ivy leaf between her fingers. “And there is the part of me that knows too much is at stake to refuse your help. Even so, I’ll not have you face the Lady again without your consent. This began long before you were born. It is not your battle.”
She was wrong about that. “The Lady has threatened my town, and my mother, and my—and Matthew. She has threatened all that I hold dear.” I was proud of how my voice held steady. “It doesn’t matter how this began. It is my battle, and I will not run from it.”
Karin looked away from my gaze. “It is hard, sometimes, to believe you are Tara’s daughter.” She shook her head, as if regretting the words. “I welcome your help on this journey.”
“I’ll save who I can, as I can, too. I promise, Karin, no matter how—”
“Careful, Liza. Words have power, for faerie folk and humans with magic alike. Even words spoken lightly may shape your actions later.”
There was nothing light about the words I spoke. “I will do all I can to protect my people and my town.”