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There is, you realize one day, something wrong with you.
The realization comes to you just after dawn one morning, when you’re curled up in bed and unable to fall asleep. Your burning eyes stare unseeing at the wall farthest from your bed–not that it’s a very far distance. Blind fosters don’t rate the good rooms. Blind fosters don’t rate anything, not explanations or friends or a kind word.
Not love.
You miss home, you miss your sister, you miss your parents, you miss everything you’ve ever known and you’ve been desperately searching for the answer as to why they sent you away, what you did.
The only answer that makes sense, you think, is that it’s not some big thing you did. It’s just–who you are. Your parents must have looked at you and found something wanting. And if you’re lacking somehow, if there’s something you’ve failed to measure up in, you can fix that. If the problem is you, you can change. You can be better, and, and if you just show them that you can be good enough, be perfect, that must mean they’ll take you back, right? You’ll get to go home, if you can pass whatever test there is.
You hope there’s a test. You hope you can go home.
You bury your face in your duvet and try to believe you’re not kidding yourself.
~~
The day you arrive at Shadowed Hills is miserable. You’re still in shock. You don’t believe this is happening. You can’t believe this is happening. It must be a joke, a mistake, anything. Nessa will pick you up and sweep you into her arms and she’ll tell you that of course your parents didn’t mean it, of course they want you–
A Tuatha de Dannan you will later come to know as Sir Etienne meets you at the airport. You’d never been in a plane before today, and you had shaken through the whole flight, terrified of the plane and of the unfamiliar humans around you and clinging onto your illusions for dear life.
The weather in San Francisco is overcast, cloudy. You follow the Tuatha out of the airport and to a secluded spot in between buildings, where he traces a portal in the air and ushers you through. You’re sure he’s been speaking to you, his mouth is moving as if he is, but for the life of you you can’t retain any of it. You just nod, and stare at your feet, and try not to feel like even more of a failure when he sighs at you.
The Tuatha puts his hand on your shoulder. You look up at him, a frightened child seeking reassurance.
He says, and you will remember this part, “You have my word that you will be safe and cared for in the Duchy.” His tone is solemn, his oath is true.
In that moment, he’s the picture of the perfect knight.
You kind of want to be him when you grow up.
You nod, and in your starstruck admiration you don’t think to wonder what you will be safe from.
~~
The knowe is cold.
Your footsteps echo hollowly, menacingly, no matter how lightly you try to step.
Sir Etienne introduces you to Melly. You learn that the kitchens, at least, are warm. They talk about you in low murmurs that you pretend not to hear, cobble together education plans, and the whole time you don’t see the Duke once.
You’ll learn why eventually.
~~
A kitchen Hob you only vaguely recognize is the one to rouse you the morning it happens. The knowe is wrong, you feel it the moment you startle awake from a sharp knock. The door swings open without waiting for a response.
The Hob rushes you out of bed, only lets you slip on shoes and wrap a blanket around your shoulders before you’re out the door.
You don’t know what’s happening, you just know that you haven’t even been here long enough to learn everyone’s names and yet something is already wrong.
Maybe they’re sending you home. Maybe your parents regret their decision, have realized what a mistake they’ve made.
Maybe they’re just sending you away, because you’ve managed to fail the people here, too.
“Go to the Children’s Hall.” The Hob says urgently, lowly. “Quickly, and through the passages—they’ll show you the way.”
“Why?” You croak.
“Hurry.” They say, and send you off.
When you stumble into the Children’s Hall, it’s to find the gathered children of the household staff, clumped together in groups and playing and dozing off like this is a normal occurrence.
There aren’t many kids in the knowe, you realize with a start. You’ve been so wrapped up in yourself that it hasn’t hit you until now. In every household you’ve visited, it isn’t uncommon for hordes of children to get underfoot. Children of visiting nobles, children of household staff, children of knights.
There are so few of them in front of you, and the ones that are here are a few years younger than you at the oldest. It is only the ones who cannot be left at home alone that are here.
You clutch your blanket around your shoulders, and decide sleep is more important. You amble over to a plush chair in the corner, curl up, and do your best to fall asleep.
~~
You rouse in fits and starts. You remember little hands playing with your hair, a warm worm of a body wriggling into your space, and lots of hushed whispering and giggling.
When you actually wake up, you blink blearily up at the unfamiliar ceiling and wonder why there is a pile of children on top of you.
There’s a crick in your neck, toddlers in every inch of your personal space, and not a single one of your questions has been answered.
“This is very rude of you.” You inform the pile of kids. One of them whines and throws a hand over the source of the noise. You sputter, trying to get chubby fingers which have been who-knows-where out of your mouth. Another of the kids giggles, and is hushed by the others.
“You have to let me up at some point.” You grumble. “I can’t live here.”
They evidently think you can live here, because no one moves. There are other kids scattered around the room, almost all of them asleep.
As you try to pinpoint what had woken you, your ears catch a faint murmuring from the hallway, beyond the main door out of the children’s hall.
Curiously overcomes you, and you manage to very slowly extricate yourself from snoring children so you can tiptoe over to the door.
“—weren’t prepared—“ A low voice is saying.
“—here now—“ another voice says back, and you chance pressing your ear to the door so you can hear the conversation more clearly.
“—not safe.” Sir Etienne’s voice says. “How can I expect any of the knights to take a squire this young? We can’t start him as a page right now. We don’t have the structure to justify it, Melly.”
You realize, with a sinking heart, that they’re talking about you.
“We can’t exactly send him back!” Melly whispers furiously. “None of us know where back is. The only one who could tell us is the Winterrose, and she thought it was a good idea to arrange the fosterage.”
There’s silence for a moment. Finally, Etienne says, “I know. But I still don’t want to put a child in the middle of Duchy business.”
Melly scoffs. “That’s a polite thing to call it.”
“Melly—“ Etienne begins warningly.
“I know.” Melly says, so quiet you have to strain your ears to hear. “I know.”
Holding your breath, you creep back as silently as you can.
You’re not quick enough.
The door swings open on Etienne’s soft knock. You stare at him with wide, guilty eyes, your transgressions written across your face.
He blinks back at you.
Melly unsuccessfully stifles a laugh. Etienne says shortly, “Ah.”
You clamp your mouth shut and try to look as contrite as possible with your heart beating in your ears. Your eyes dart over the both of them, looking for an excuse, an escape and—
“What happened to your neck?” You blurt with a faint horror.
Etienne’s collar, normally starched and crisp, is crumpled–which is a wrongness in and of itself. Peeking out from it is an arrangement of bruises, quickly purpling on olive skin.
Etienne’s hand goes up to touch his collar self-consciously, and suddenly you can’t read his face. As he readjusts it, you realize with a sickening sort of clarity that the bruises along the side of his neck are long and stacked atop one another, like someone had wrapped a hand around the base of his throat and squeezed. His cuffs are askew, too, his hands roughened. He’d fought back.
Your face is doing something, and Etienne straightens his shoulders. He says, with all the blandness of the perfect Seneschal and perfect knight, “Grappling practice.”
When you look at Melly, her face is similarly unreadable.
You swallow. You nod.
And you know the monster you are being kept safe from.
~~
A mad Duke haunts the halls of Shadowed Hills.
You learn the servant’s passages, ways to get around the knowe unseen. You can trace the path to the Children’s Hall in less than a minute from anywhere in the Duchy.
You learn to step quietly, rolling from your heel to toe without noticeably changing your stride.
You learn to be silent.
One day, you meet the Duke face to face.
The worst part is, he’s not scary. He looks at you with vacant eyes and limp hair and doesn’t seem to know who you are.
You keep your head down and you bow perfectly when required and you do not look at the Duke’s hands or Sir Etienne’s neck.
You especially don’t look at the piles upon piles of crumpled roses and little yellow flowers that surround the Duke’s throne.
The Duke’s wife and daughter are missing, you know.
He loved them very much, you were told. He is a monument to them, haunted himself just as he haunts others in turn.
Sir Etienne doesn’t hide the dogwood flowers and daffodils that he coughs up. Why would he? Half the Duchy shares his ailment.
You have never been more terrified of love.
That day, as you hide beneath the covers, you go through the daily ritual where you cough and you cough and you cough and finally a night’s worth of heather and hay and poppyseeds are expelled from your lungs.
You clutch fistfuls of plant matter in your hands and you can’t even bring yourself to cry. You’re too tired.
~~
The Duchess and the daughter of the Duchy are returned.
The shadow lifts. You meet the Duke as he should be, with clear eyes and lighter shoulders.
Others’ footsteps no longer echo strangely in the hallways.
More and more children swarm the knowe.
You don’t see a bruise on anyone again, not on Etienne’s neck or Jin the Healer’s wrist or Melly’s shoulders.
But you know, in the quickening of your heart and the softness of your steps and Rayseline Torquill’s piercing screams, that you are not safe in Shadowed Hills.
None of you are.
~~
There’s two years of the Duchy regaining its balance. Two years where the mountains of flowers disappear, though a dry cough still lingers in the throats of many of the knowe’s inhabitants.
Two years of learning how to be a Page, two years of gravitating to Melly or Etienne over either of your foster parents, two years of smiles tinged with sadness that no one ever explains.
And then, Evening Winterrose visits.
You wedge yourself in the passage behind Rayseline’s tapestry and you listen to what she has to say. You’ve gotten much better at eavesdropping over the years, though you would never call it that.
“October,” the Winterrose says, “is back.”
~~
If the time before the Ducal family reunited was a haunting, and if the time after was a recovery, Lady Daye’s return is a rejoicing.
They say she’s the only changeling Knight in the kingdom. They say she grew up in these halls. They say she got herself transformed for over a decade trying to bring the Duchess and Rayseline home.
She sounds like the kind of person who tries to do what’s right.
And despite all that—she doesn’t show her face.
Months crawl by, and even as her existence brings light to the Duchy, her absence sours something in your gut. They love her. They love her, every person here, and she turns away from it.
You would kill yourself to have someone love you the way Sylvester Torquill loves October Daye.
The Duchy is happy, you’re beginning to feel like you could be safe here, but you’re still so thrice-damned lonely.
Lonely in the kind of way that tangles in your throat and brings an ache to your lungs, lonely in the kind of way where you want to curl up in your bed and never move a muscle, lonely in the kind of way that makes you want to scream, lonely in the kind of way where you don’t think anyone would notice even if you did.
You don’t understand October Daye.
~~
Sir Daye, who insists on the title above “Lady”, is tired.
You can see it in the slant of her mouth, in the pinching of her eyes as she bids you to go.
There are flowers in her hair, a straining in her voice. She loves, and Faerie knows it. Faerie knows her, changeling that she is and human that she’s pretending to be.
“Go home, kid.” Sir Daye says.
In the end, you return to Shadowed Hills empty-handed and bitter.
~~
You really do try not to love her.
You’ve not grown flowers for Etienne or for Melly, even though you know they don’t love you. It’s easy, in the Duchy, to hold oneself apart. To not grow attached. Even as the halls once again swell with the children of the household, you don’t make friends.
You aren’t sure you remember how.
But there is Sir Daye, who looks at you with pale gray eyes and asks you questions until you answer her truthfully. There’s October, who doesn’t seem to understand why you can’t play with the other kids your age.
(They weren’t here, not during those dark few months. They don’t understand. She doesn’t, either, but she does understand her own version of the dark.)
There’s Toby, who sees you, and challenges you to do better. There’s Toby, who believes you can do better.
(You, whose own parents don’t—)
There’s Toby, and you can’t help loving her.
Day after day, you wait for cut grass to join your bouquet. Day after day, it fails to appear.
It isn’t until you’re on the ground, your arm aching and your blood on the tile floor and your knight crouched over you with fear in her eyes that you understand why.
You would never have been able to grow blades of grass in your lungs, not for Toby.
Hanahaki doesn’t bloom when you know they love you back.