Firstborn

by Michelle West

  And it didn’t matter. On a visceral level, she was committed.

  Shadow began to growl. It was a low-throated sound, lost to the gentle lap of ocean waves, more felt than heard. Her hand, where it rested again on his head, tingled. She frowned.

  Night sighed—theatrically—and joined his brother’s low thrum of a growl, and after a second, Snow did the same.

  “What are their names?” the Winter King asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, as Shadow stepped on her foot.

  “You don’t know?”

  “They aren’t demons. They’re giant, winged cats. Most cats I know ignore their names unless it’s convenient not to.”

  The growling intensified, deepening. She felt a hand on her shoulder; it was Andrei’s hand. She glanced at him, and forced herself not to glance away, because the two hands he normally possessed were by his side.

  She was surprised when the whisper of butterfly joined the growl of cats; surprised when the wings of the butterfly opened. She could, if she twisted her head toward her own shoulder, see the echo of silver feathers in the small, contained wings of blown glass.

  She shook her head to clear it. “Andrei, you will break my collarbone.” The grip eased but did not vanish. She had the strange sense that he was holding her here, on this beach; that he intended to protect her in any fashion she allowed. She swallowed, nodded, and looked at the cats.

  Their fur had risen. Their wings had risen. Their lips were pulled back over long, long teeth. All of these, she had seen before. Even their eyes—golden, all—seemed familiar. But there was an intensity of light to those eyes that did not belong in a living face, and as it brightened, that light became harsh: a warning.

  She might have panicked—was, in fact, starting to feel the tight clench of fear in every muscle of her body—when one of the cats said ssstuuuuupid; his voice was an earthquake.

  They shook, she shook; she saw the spread of wings that might have been blades, they seemed to reflect light so harshly. Sooooo stupid. That might have been Snow. Their voices were unfamiliar, acts of nature; were it not for the familiar words, she might not have recognized them at all.

  The ground shook, the wind roared; sand flew up, and Jewel lifted a forearm to protect her eyes. The sand, however, was damp; it was beach sand. When she lowered her arm again, her hand was not empty. She carried three long feathers. Or what might have been feathers; their shape shifted even as she tried to categorize them.

  She blinked, shut her eyes, and felt Andrei’s grip tighten once again. She forced her eyes open. Felt a wave of nausea, of disorientation; she could no longer see Andrei. She could no longer see Hectore. Adam remained by her side, his hand wed to hers and tightening. But Angel and Terrick, like Hectore, were no longer visible.

  Calliastra was; her wings were high and wide—wider, of course, than the wings of the cats. Her hands had elongated, although they still looked like hands; her lips were bloodred, implying a hint of fangs. Neither could equal the cats. But her eyes were black; they appeared to be all pupil now, and those pupils threatened to change the width and length of her natural eyes.

  Or perhaps these were her natural eyes. She looked like death—or rather, like artistic renditions of death; there was a poetry to her appearance, and it was a poetry of absolutes.

  “Terafin,” a familiar voice said. She could not see Jarven. She could, however, hear him. “It is time, I think, to leave.”

  Chapter Twenty

  SHE COULD NOT DESCRIBE what the cats became in the moment Jarven’s last syllable dropped. The light that spilled from their eyes seemed to consume their forms—but it seemed to consume everything. Vision blurred as her eyes watered.

  “We can’t leave—”

  “Remain, then. I, however, have seen enough. Hectore, stop fussing. Andrei can take care of himself here.” Before she could ask, he added, “You have lost no one. We are all present. The cats, however, are not safe at this time.”

  “Shianne—”

  “She is with the Wild Hunt. They are the Wild Hunt, yes?”

  “Yes. I’m not certain it’s safe for her.”

  He laughed. He laughed, and his laughter made him sound decades younger. There was a warmth to it that she could swear she had never heard in his voice before.

  The water that had lapped the beach moments before began to rise; she couldn’t see the ocean, but she knew water when it hit her.

  She could hear the voice of the storm in the concerted harmony of howling cats. Icy water hit the back of her legs, trickling into her boots; she felt the familiar spray of active sea across her hair, her cheeks. She lifted her hand from Shadow’s head, and the storm stilled instantly.

  Yes, her Winter King said. There was no surprise in his voice, only a studied, deliberate neutrality. He had never liked the cats.

  The cats spoke in concert. She heard the words, although she could never repeat them, no matter how hard she tried. Come, mortal King. It has been long and long since we have been truly uncaged. You wish to own us? Try. Try.

  And she understood. To the Winter King, the living one, she lifted a hand. Opened her palm. Wind took the feathers that graced it, and they passed from her to him. What he grasped, however, bore no resemblance to flight feathers.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “Even so.” He was not speaking to Jewel.

  • • •

  She blinked; the light was gone. The butterfly remained, but it was nascent, sleeping, its light spent. Angel was once again beside her; Terrick, the only armed man in the clearing. And it was a clearing now; there was no sand. There were no cats.

  No cats.

  She glanced at Adam. “I’m sorry.”

  He understood why and smiled. “I would go home,” he told her gently, as if he were the elder of the two. “But I think . . . I think if we cannot win your battle, there will be no home to return to, except the Voyanne, and even that will not be safe for my kin. Where are we?”

  She looked around. “Forest,” she finally replied. She turned suddenly, breathed again when she caught sight of Shianne. Stopped breathing when she saw the Arianni that stood behind her. True to the Winter King’s word—his ancient word—they had accompanied Jewel.

  She remembered, vaguely, Evayne a’Nolan asking what the date was. She now understood why.

  “You are both right and wrong,” a familiar voice said. Coralonne.

  They were standing in Coralonne’s forest, their feet planted in a brook that had nonetheless crested the height of their boots. “The tangle has moved, for the nonce.” Her voice was soft. It was not, however, gentle or welcoming. “What have you brought with you?”

  The Arianni seemed to take no offense at the question. They drew neither sword nor shield and indeed seemed to be preoccupied with their surroundings.

  It took Jewel a minute to realize that her ire was not meant for them. Gently shaking her hand free of Adam’s, she moved and caught Andrei’s before he could step away from her. And he had already begun to make that attempt.

  “Not here, Hectore,” Jarven said quietly.

  “You are not responsible for me,” Hectore replied, less quietly. “I recall that I had a mother. And a grandmother who would make me weep with guilt at my inadequacy. You are neither, and it is unlike you to attempt something when you are doomed to remain out of competition.”

  This caused Coralanne’s expression to ripple briefly. Hectore had made a very handsome fortune by his ability to read the reactions of strangers. He now tendered Coralonne a very deep bow.

  “You are mortal,” she said. “At your age, such obeisance would be unnecessary.”

  “You are immortal,” he countered, rising, “and what you are due does not trifle with the infirmities of age.” His smile was warm.

  Hers was almost reluctant, but it did come. It died when she returned her attention to Jewel. “These are my lands, Sen, not yours. What crosses my borders must receive my permission.”

  “You hav
e given permission to me and my chosen companions,” Jewel countered.

  “Have I?”

  “Yes. He is one of my chosen companions. I trust him. My life has been in his hands before, and he has saved it, or I would not be here at all.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “And have you changed him, then? Or is it merely mortal arrogance and lack of vision speaking?”

  “Firstborn,” Andrei said, speaking for the first time.

  Both Jewel and Hectore lifted a hand in his direction, as if his words were houseflies. Neither looked away from Corallonne.

  “It is experience speaking,” Jewel said. Hectore was willing to cede the floor to her for the moment; she didn’t suffer under the illusion that he would continue to do so if she did not handle the discussion well. But she didn’t require Hectore’s approval.

  Coralonne’s gaze didn’t waver, either. “He is not one thing, or the other. In the long history of gods, he has betrayed many. My parents. Her parents,” she added, although she did not mention Calliastra by name. “It is in the very fabric of his being. He was created—”

  “I don’t care how he was created,” Jewel said, aware that cutting off the woman who ruled these lands was unwise but unable to summon the will to play at politics. “He has saved my life. He came into the tangle to come to my aid. I trust him enough that he has been given free passage throughout the lands I claim; there are no conditions laid against him. He is as much my compatriot as the mortals you see gathered here; he is certainly more helpful than my cats.” She spoke with a pang.

  Corallonne’s silence stretched. “Do you take responsibility for your cats?” she asked, as if Andrei had never been mentioned.

  Jewel blinked. Hectore, older and wiser, did not. “Do you take responsibility for the creatures that dwell within your lands?”

  “Of course,” Corallonne replied.

  Jewel was silent for another beat. Responsibility had been her Oma’s marching drum, while she lived. But she was not her Oma. She had come, with time and Haval’s nefarious questions, to understand that responsibility had layers. “I am responsible for my decisions and my actions. I am responsible for the damage done by those under my command. I am responsible for and to the power I’ve been granted through no work or choice of my own.

  “But I do not own those I command. And those I’ve no hope of commanding? No. I would not claim responsibility for the ancients whose roots are sunk in the earth I’ve claimed. I don’t own them. If, however, mine come in conflict with you or yours, I will consider reparations as part of my responsibilities as ruler.

  “I am in no wise responsible for actions taken before I was accepted as ruler.”

  “And what guarantee will you give me? What will you stake against his behavior?”

  Jewel folded her arms. She caught den-sign to her left and ignored it. She was wet, she was exhausted, she was hungry. In theory, she shared enemies with the woman who had not, until this moment, seemed grim or forbidding. Arguing about Andrei was not what she wanted to be doing right now. Or ever.

  But she thought of Duster then. Of all the harm Duster could do, had done. Andrei was not, and would never be, Duster—but she’d had to negotiate over Duster, and she’d kept her.

  “If you will not have him in your lands, we will leave. He will do no harm while he is with me. I will vouch for every aspect of his behavior until it is irrelevant to you and your concerns.”

  Corallonne’s brows rose, her expression just shy of active condescension. She had, however, nothing on Haval when he was in a mood.

  “You do not know what he is.”

  “I don’t know what he was, no. And, frankly, it’s none of my business.”

  “Terafin,” Andrei said again. He fell silent when Hectore cleared his throat. It wasn’t even loud.

  “I don’t know,” Jewel continued, “what you were, either. I have some inkling of what Calliastra was because she’s not exactly private about it. It is far, far safer to have Andrei at the very heart of my home than it would be any other immortal whose path I’ve crossed.”

  “You are Sen,” Corallonne said, after a long pause. “What do you see when you look at him?”

  “I see Andrei,” was Jewel’s firm reply.

  “He cannot look mortal to you. He cannot appear as my sister and I do.”

  “No. I don’t see how this is relevant.”

  Jewel.

  “You are in the heart of my lands. It is relevant for that reason, and that alone.”

  “Terafin,” Andrei said, a third time. She saw Hectore lift a hand in his servant’s direction, but this time she didn’t choose to ignore him.

  What was a Sen? What did it mean? She was seer-born. She’d come to terms with that, over the years. She’d come to understand that the power offered was not a curse. As a child, with a child’s responsibility, it had been. She had been able to see the future, but she had not had the power to change it. She couldn’t make people listen—not even the people she loved and depended on.

  But what did the seer-born see? She could see demons. She could see them even if they resided at the heart of mortal bodies. She could see shadow; she could see magic. Magic had color and texture. She hadn’t chosen those colors; hadn’t considered whether or not the vision was voluntary.

  But she had looked at Andrei before, and she had seen . . . Andrei. Perhaps she’d seen what she wanted to see. Or perhaps she’d seen what was necessary to see.

  “Terafin.” This time it was Hectore, and she heard the warning in his voice. She lifted her chin in acknowledgment; there was no obedience in the gesture. Nor had Hectore the right to demand it. No one did now. The Kings, in theory the rulers to whom she had pledged allegiance, were in Averalaan Aramarelas.

  She turned to face Andrei. She was not Haval, not Jarven, not even Hectore; she had not learned to school her expression as carefully as they had. But the woman who had had power in her early life was her Oma, and her Oma had hidden nothing. She had not been kind, had not been gentle, had not, perhaps, been nurturing; her power had never risen above street level.

  But she had been the bedrock beneath their family’s feet. She could be angry, yes. She could be more than angry. But life did not break her. Shock did not break her. Pain did not break her. Jewel was her granddaughter.

  She looked.

  What she saw now was some hint of what she’d seen in the statuary beneath the Kings’ Palace: something that was not bird, not beast, not reptile; something that cohered as parts of all these things, as if limbs, torso, even face, had been composed of the bits and pieces of random corpses. She felt no shock; it was almost as if she expected what she now observed.

  And if that had been the whole of it, she would have been fine.

  But what she saw was not visual. It wasn’t as simple as form. She saw shadows in him; she saw death in him—demons, at base, were dead; she saw an almost sickening blend of the colors that magic shed when cast, but they pulsed and moved and shifted in a way that made her dizzy, almost nauseous. And even this, she could have accepted. She knew Andrei.

  And she did not know him.

  He spoke her name. She heard him clearly. But she heard, as well, the multitude of voices that underlay the familiar one, the known one. She heard her name spoken with disdain, with disgust, with—uncomfortably—desire, obsession. She heard her name spoken through tears, through something strangled that sounded like a scream. She heard all this and more, and she understood that it was all Andrei. All of it.

  She stood, frozen for one long minute, the seed of doubt planted by Corallonne attempting to take root. And it did. It took root. It sank those roots into her viscera. She was, for one long, silent moment, afraid.

  This was worse than Kiriel had ever been. Kiriel, upon whom she could turn her back only by ignoring every screaming instinct that had kept her alive through demons, assassins, and gods. Even Calliastra’s danger paled entirely into insignificance. Was this what
the immortals saw, when they looked at him at all? Was this what they felt?

  “Terafin,” Hectore said. Once again, there was command in his voice.

  “Hectore.” Andrei’s voice. And this time—for this single word—she could barely hear the rest of the cacophony that gilded it. She blinked, looked; it was an act of endurance. But she needed to see him, if only once. She needed to understand what other immortals saw.

  And she realized that there was a thread of ugly, colored light that reached for, that bound itself, around Hectore of Araven. It was knotted there, in the center of his chest; indeed, it seemed to pierce cloth and even flesh, as if it had bored its way past anything so insignificant.

  Yet it had not devoured Hectore.

  Would not, she thought, devour him. He stood encircled by its possessive, devouring weight, and as the Araven merchant studied Jewel’s face, she realized that he both knew what she now looked at and accepted it. As if to underline this, he lifted a hand to his chest.

  “We all make choices,” he said softly. Almost too softly. Andrei’s internal voice was loud, broken into so many syllables she wanted to cover her ears with her hands to make the sound stop.

  Jewel did not reply—not with words. But Hectore’s voice was blessedly simple. Was there anger in it? Yes. And fear—not of her, but for Andrei. Or perhaps both. She lifted a hand, as she had done several times in the past hour. But this time she did not speak with it. Instead, as Hectore had done, she reached for his chest, his heart, and the ugly, ugly threads that bound him to Andrei—or that bound Andrei to him.

  She had not expected that her hand would touch something physical but did not startle when it did; she had regained enough control that she could manage this. She kept her expression as neutral as she could, fighting the lines of her face, the pace of her breath, as she touched . . . something. It was both cold and warm, hard and soft, painfully spiky and yet slimy; it was fur and yet coarse and stiff as feather; it was hard as teeth and sharp as knives. It was all these things.