“I don’t understand.”

“She thought he’d save her, and when he didn’t, she thought you would. Oh, my dear, what she did to you, what you didn’t know she was doing, and how you fought! Like a lion you fought, never knowing the battle.” Lily sighed. “You were the last of her protections against roses and crossroads and all they meant, and when you failed her, she didn’t know what to do. My foolish princess who thought she’d be a shepherdess, if only she could make you a sheep. I loved her because she brought me to this wonderful land where I found such friends—I even loved her when she left me for you.”

I frowned. “She didn’t leave you.”

“You both left me. But you came back, and you brought her shadow with you, to sit at my table. I was so grateful when you brought her back to me. It was never your fault; you carry the sins of your mother as she carries the sins of hers. Try not to blame her. She didn’t mean to lay those sins on you. She tried to take them back, when she thought she could.” She closed her eyes, shivering. “I’m cold. Why am I cold?”

I lifted her icy hand, pressing it to my cheek. “I don’t know, Lily. I’m sorry.”

“No sorrow. There was so much your mother never let me say. Anata wa jibun no koto wa shiranakatta wa . . . you never knew yourself. So much like my Ama-dear, trying to prove she didn’t need me when she needed me more than ever . . . do you remember where the Undine began?”

“I do.” My mother and I used to walk in Lily’s gardens, back when she never let me out of her sight. I lived my life at arm’s reach, and thought that was love. Childhood is a game of concessions, and everyone pretends to understand the rules, even though the only constant is that no one wants to be alone. Back then, we were content with our mutual captivity, before she started shoving me away; before I started running.

We were in Lily’s gardens when Amandine taught me about the Undine. “Even new Undine are older than the rest of us,” she said. “They remember when the ocean ruled the world.”

“Where do they come from?” In those days, her every word was gospel truth, and I would have asked anything to keep her talking to me.

“Tears. The first time Oberon left Maeve for her pretty sister, she didn’t understand, and she nearly died of sorrow.”

“She cried?” I pictured Maeve as looking like my mother, beautiful and alien and broken, and I would’ve done anything to keep her from crying.

“She did. Her tears were the first Undine. They’re hers alone, and because of that, they can’t mate with humans.” Her smile was bitter. I knew she was thinking of my father. “There are no changelings among the Undine.”

Then she took me back to the Summerlands—home for her, and never for me—and put me to bed. I dreamed all day of children who’d never break their mother’s heart, because they were born from nothing but tears.

Lily’s cold fingers pulled me back to the present. I shivered. Lily was a constant, like the Torquills; someone who’d always be part of my life. I’m fae enough not to take kindly to change, and she was dying. “Please don’t go. I’m not ready.” I was begging. I didn’t care.

“Don’t worry, love.” Cracks were opening around her eyes; water glimmered in their depths, where bone should have been. “It doesn’t hurt. You silly ones with your blood and your bones, always so concerned about dying.”

Tears ran down my cheeks. I wiped them away, but they kept coming. “Please.”

“Don’t cry.” Lily pressed her free hand against my neck. I was numb enough not to flinch from the cold. “I’m sorry to go, but it’s all right. Rivers dry up; tides ebb; the sea goes on.”

“We don’t.”

“Are you sure? Immortality isn’t flesh. You know that.” She took a bubbling breath. Soon those breaths would stop, and she’d be gone. I was holding as tightly as I could, and she was slipping away. What’s the point of holding on if I can’t save the ones I can’t afford to lose?

The whispering of Lily’s subjects was like a roar behind me. Who would look after them now? I wanted to care, but I couldn’t find the strength. I’m the changeling. I’m the one with the impure blood. I should have been the first to go. Not Lily, not Evening—not any of them. I’m the mortal one, and the world has no right to make me watch them die.

“I’ll live forever,” she said, hand slipping from mine. “In the rise of rivers in spring, in winter’s snows, in rain running down autumn’s forests. It’s not the immortality of men, but it’s immortality. I know it’s not something you can understand. I wish I could put it in words to comfort you, but the shape of your world and the shape of mine have always been different. Here, more than anywhere, we’re alien to each other. Just believe me when I say this isn’t the end . . . and I am not afraid.”

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t.”

“I won’t leave you. That’s the glory of it; don’t you see? The night-haunts won’t come for me, because there won’t be anything to come for. What I am, what I’ve been, it’s all part of the water.” Lily smiled, eyes closing as the outline of her face faded into the ripples around her. “Look to the water.” Her voice changed, becoming distant; she wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was done talking to me. “Oh . . . oh, look, Ama-chan, look. Konya no sakura wa totemo kirei da na . . . the cherry blossoms . . . so beautiful . . . ”

And she was gone, body melting into the pool, hair becoming nothing but a shadow. I pitched forward, arms driving into the water up to the elbows. For a moment, there was silence. Then someone made a single, sobbing sound of protest, and it was like a dam breaking. A keening wail rose on all sides as Lily’s subjects realized that it was over, it was finished. She was gone.

Tybalt pulled me to my feet, drawing me into an embrace. I didn’t fight. For the moment, I belonged there. And when I didn’t belong in the Tea Gardens anymore, someone was going to die. Oberon’s law be damned.

FOURTEEN

ISTEPPED FROM THE MOON BRIDGE into the darkness of the Tea Gardens, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets in a vain attempt to warm them. It felt like the cold had crept all the way into my bones; between that and the pounding in my head, it was a miracle I was upright at all. Tybalt walked beside me, not saying anything. That was good. I wasn’t sure there was anything to say.