“You’re not as stupid as you look,” Tremaine muttered. “You better hold to what you say. I will be calling in your so-called favor.”
“I’m not the one who has a problem with lies,” I said. I pulled him close, so close that we could have felt each other’s heart beating. “And if you ever get up to your old tricks,” I whispered in Tremaine’s pointed shell of an ear, “if you ever try to deceive me or use me or use someone I love to harm me, I will show you things so much more ancient and hungry than you are that your mind cannot contain them. And they will devour you. And the last thing you hear will be my victorious laughter. Are we clear?”
Tremaine pulled back and regarded me, not with a sneer but with a degree of circumspection I’d never witnessed before. “Now, that,” he said, a smile forming, “that was the tongue of a Fae speaking.”
He dropped my hand and threw me a lazy salute. “Well played, Aoife. Enjoy wallowing in the mud with your humans.”
“Oh,” I told him, “you know I always do.”
As Tremaine stalked back into the palace, my mother came to me and threw her arms around me. “Don’t stay away too long,” she mumbled into my hair. “I’ve only just gotten to know you.”
I squeezed her just as hard, feeling how small and frail she was under my grasp. But it was misleading—she wasn’t frail. She was the strongest survivor I knew. She had weathered the years of iron madness and the machinations of Tremaine. She’d be alive long after Archie and Dean and probably even Lovecraft itself were gone.
Often, when I was young, I’d try to see something of myself in my mother—nose, eyes, hair, voice. I’d never seen anything, until this moment. The strong will that drove us was the same. I might get my stubborn nature and inquisitive mind, my green eyes and my insane hair from Archie, but the will to live, to survive at all costs, came from Nerissa. Her Fae blood was her gift to me, and I carried it in my veins no matter what was on the surface.
“I love you, Aoife,” Nerissa said softly, and then stepped back. Her eyes glimmered, but the tears didn’t fall to crystallize on the snow. “Run along, now. I imagine your brother’s waiting.”
“I’ll be back,” I told Nerissa. “I won’t leave you.”
Nerissa didn’t say anything. She simply swiped at her eyes and then turned away, the pain clearly too much.
As I walked out of the courtyard, I raised my eyes to Octavia on her balcony. The cardinal took flight, a bloodred blot on the white sky, and as the Winter Queen watched it, she gave me a terrible and predatory parting smile.
I stepped out of the hexenring in the orchard disoriented and with my head pounding, as usual, and looked for a stump or a rock to sit on for a moment to collect myself.
“Having fun with your little Fae friends?”
I screamed and nearly jumped out of my skin. “Dammit, Conrad! What’s wrong with you?”
“You’ve been skulking around all week looking like you were ready to take off,” he grumped. “I followed you to see if you were running away.”
I sat down on one of the massive stones that had at one point composed the foundation of the cider house and massaged my forehead. I couldn’t have another dustup with my brother. Not now, not while I was still shaking from the memory of the Winter Queen’s smile.
“And would you have stopped me if I was?”
Conrad shrugged. “I don’t want you gone, Aoife. I just don’t understand why you do the things you do.”
“I can’t ever explain it,” I said. If I told Conrad the truth, I’d lose his trust forever. Still, the urge was almost overwhelming. “I just …” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “I have a lot to make up for.”
“You don’t owe me a thing, Aoife,” he said. “If anything, I owe you. I tried to kill you. I hurt you, and you’re the only one who’s ever stuck by me.”
“Don’t take that weight,” I said, almost too quickly. “Don’t blame yourself for that, Conrad.”
“I don’t,” he said, giving me a wan smile. “I just don’t want you to think you’re the bad guy, Aoife. No matter what you do, I’ll still be your brother.” He sat next to me and pulled out a letter on good paper that smelled of woodsmoke and rich ink. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, any chance my little sister will celebrate with me?” He handed the envelope over and watched as my eyes danced across the letterhead. Miskatonic University Office of Admissions.
Dear Mr. Grayson
,
We are pleased to offer you admission to our undergraduate class starting in the fall term of 1956
.…
“How did this happen?” I said, feeling a curious mixture of sadness and surprise bubble in my chest. I was happy for him, but he hadn’t even hinted that he was thinking of leaving. “You didn’t apply anywhere,” I said. “You didn’t graduate from the Academy.…”
“Archie pulled some strings and made sure my transcript was filled out by private tutors,” he said. “I imagine next year he’ll do the same thing for you.”
“But a university?” I said. “Back among all those people yammering about Rationalists and heretics? People who think we should be burned alive for what’s in our blood?”
“Miskatonic isn’t like that,” Conrad said. “Archie went there. It’s a place where they value real science and real reason, not that frightened screeching that comes from the Bureau of Proctors. Besides,” he added, “the Bureau might be on the way out, if the past few weeks are any indication. There’s all kinds of hearings, high-ranking types are being arrested.… The world’s changing. I want to be part of that.”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,” I said softly. What would I do without Conrad? We might fight all the time, but I needed him. He was the stable one, the rock. Without him, I would be anchorless.
“Look, Aoife,” Conrad said. “I’m not you. I don’t have the ability that you and Archie do, and I never will. I don’t understand what makes either of you tick. This is my chance to fit in, to finally make something of myself that’s not just being the third wheel dragging the rest of my family down.”
He put his hand over mine. “You don’t need me. Your destiny is this big thing, big as the stars, and mine is here, weighted down by iron. That’s all. That’s all I was ever trying to say.”
He shoved the letter into his pants pocket and got up, starting back across the orchard. I watched him go, feeling as if someone had ripped out some essential organ and cast it away. Then I jumped up. “Conrad!”
I ran and caught up with him when he stopped. “I need you, stupid,” I said, giving him a shove on the shoulder. “You’re my brother, for crying out loud. My family.” The tears started, and I let them come. “The only family I had, for a really long time. You’re the one who protected me, even when you went mad. You’re the one who wrote me that letter, Conrad. You saved me from myself. I can’t …”
I was going to say more, how I couldn’t ever thank him enough for that, even if he was stubborn and curt and sometimes mistrustful, but he grabbed me and pulled me into a bear hug. “Stop crying,” he muttered. “You can be such a girl sometimes.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “Big college man.”
He gave a small laugh. “Going to try, anyway. I figure if I stay on campus and come back here, I can stave off the iron madness.” He started walking again, and I fell into step beside him.