Ashes of Honor

Across the room, Etienne was struggling with the lid of the jar. Passage through searing cold and magical portals seemed to have done an excellent job of tightening it; he was a trained knight, and the lid wasn’t even budging.

“Daddy!” wailed Chelsea. The air around her was starting to glitter again.

Etienne swore loudly enough for me to hear him, and he stepped closer to Chelsea before flinging the jar at the floor. It exploded, showering glass and power-dampening potion in all directions—including on Chelsea and her father. The glitter in the air died as the solution hit Chelsea’s skin. She stared at Etienne.

“What did you do? How did you stop me?”

He didn’t say anything. He just reached out, gathered her into his arms, and hugged his daughter for the first time.

I waited long enough for them to finish their embrace before starting toward them, stopping well outside the splash radius from the broken jar. “All better?”

Etienne looked up, raw gratitude painting his face. “Yes. Thank you, October. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said, holding up my hand. The gratitude in his expression died, replaced by broken-hearted understanding. “There’s still something I have to do.”

“I understand.” He let go of Chelsea. “Do what must be done.”

Chelsea looked up at him, confusion and betrayal in her eyes. “Daddy?”

It was amazing, and a little bit heartbreaking, how fast Etienne had become “Daddy” to her. She must have wondered all her life about the man who’d provided the genes that made her not quite human. I just hoped I wasn’t about to take her away from him forever.

“It’s all right, Chelsea. You need to go to October. She’ll make everything better.”

“I’ll try, anyway,” I said, and forced what I hoped would look like a sincere smile. “Hi, Chelsea. Can you come over here?” I paused before adding, “Wipe your hands really, really dry first, okay? I need to hold them, and it’s sort of important we not get any of that goo on me.”

“Is the goo why I stopped jumping?” I nodded. She smiled shyly. “Okay.” Chelsea started toward me, rubbing her hands against the seat of her pants as she approached. When she reached me, she held them out, showing me that they were dry.

“Good.” I took one hand, drawing my knife with the other. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away. “I need to ask you a question, and I need you to give me an honest answer. It’s important. You have to answer for you, and not for your parents—either one of them. Can you do that here, or do you want to go somewhere private?”

Chelsea glanced back at Etienne, who was watching us with a silent, burning intensity. She turned back to me. “I can answer.”

“Okay. Chelsea, when you think about yourself, your place in the world…do you think of yourself as human? Or do you think of yourself as fae?”

It seemed like the whole room held its breath, waiting for Chelsea to answer. I know I wasn’t breathing. No matter how she answered, what I was going to do to her would hurt. I’d done it to my own daughter, but Gillian was unconscious at the time; she didn’t understand the source of the pain. Chelsea would understand. She’d know I was the one doing this horrible thing to her. I didn’t know her well enough to know whether she’d be able to forgive me.

Chelsea frowned, looking down toward her feet. A drop of the power dampener was on the toe of her shoe, glistening slickly. “When I was little, all I wanted was to be normal, so Mom wouldn’t have to spend all her time worrying about me,” she said slowly. “All the other kids got to have sleepovers and do sports, and I had to pretend I wanted to grow up to be Mr. Spock or one of Tolkien’s elves.”

“I bet you made a great Arwen at Halloween,” I said.

“Yeah.” She glanced up at me, smiling—a quick, shy thing that died just as fast. “But I’m not human, am I? I’ve never been human. All the wishing in the world can’t make me human.”

All the wishing in the world can’t, but I can, I thought. Aloud, I said only, “So what are you? Human, or fae?”

“Does it have to be one or the other?” Chelsea looked at me hopefully, eyes searching my face for an answer. My silence must have been answer enough. Chelsea sighed. “I’m fae. I wanted to be human, but I’m not. I wouldn’t know how to start. I’m me, and being me means being fae.”

“Okay.” I took a breath, not sure how to say what needed to be said. Finally, I settled for just coming out with it: “Chelsea, right now, you’re dangerous. The way you’ve been jumping isn’t normal for Tuatha de Dannan like you and your father. It’s because you’re half-human. Usually, being half-human means you’re less powerful. Sometimes it means the opposite. Sometimes it means you get all the power in the world and nothing to help you control it.”

Chelsea frowned. “So how do we fix that?”

Here it was. “I take the human out of you.”

“You can do that?” Her eyes widened. “Can you put it back if I change my mind?”