Katherine nodded before gently pulling her mother’s hand away.
“I just want to keep you safe,” her mother said.
“And I want to have a future outside a cage,” Katherine admitted. “I remember how happy you were with Dad, but I also know that if he had left you . . . if he had seduced you and left . . .”
“He didn’t seduce me.” Her mother sat on the edge of Katherine’s bed, delicate and fierce, as if she were a tiny bird of prey.
“Really not wanting to talk about my parents’ sex life, Mom. I heard enough of it to scar me.” Katherine smiled at her mother to soften the words.
Not discussing it wasn’t exactly working because it was at the crux of things. Katherine’s genetics meant she was walking poison to humans, and she had no grasp of her lifespan, of if she was truly in peril from the fey. Her father had sworn she was, but was that true?
Or was he an overprotective dad?
“I’m going out today.” Katherine walked over to the closet and started to sort through clothes. She never tossed things because she didn’t know from year to year where she’d live.
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Her mother watched, worrying as she had for as long as Katherine could recall, but not overtly refusing.
She’d kept Katherine home, treating her like a child well past the age that such things were normal—but Katherine had allowed it by her very complacence. In all the world, it had been just them and Aunt Ida these past few years. Before that, it was them and Katherine’s father.
“I’m not leaving today, but soon . . . it’s time.” Katherine tried the words on her tongue.
“Your father used to talk about the compulsion.” Octavia looked at her now. “That sometimes he’d just need to roam or seduce . . . the way people experience hunger or thirst. The more you ignore it, the worse it grows.”
“Did he . . . when you were married . . . did he . . .” Katherine felt like her whole body was on fire with embarrassment. Asking about her parents’ sex life? Still weird. Still not things she wanted to know, but at the same time? Her father was the sort of faery she was. The older she got, the more obvious it was.
“Not all the way,” her mother murmured. “He flirted, prowled a bit, but he didn’tbedthem. He was worried about . . .”
“Killing them,” Katherine finished. “I don’t want that either.”
“You met someone.” Her mother twisted her hands together and shot a glare toward the window.
She couldn’t see him though, the man who had convinced Katherine that there were answers to be had.
It’s not about him, Katherine thought, ignoring the tightening of her throat. “I don’t know that it’s abouthim, but he offered me answers.”
“If he—or she—is a faery, I think they’ll survive your, err, affections.” Her mother stood. “You know I disapprove, right?”
“I do.” Katherine swallowed against her tightening throat because the truth was that if her mother had disapproved as much as she said she did, those words wouldn’t feel like lies.
“You have a ten o’clock curfew.” Her mother stepped in and kissed her on both cheeks. “I used to tell your father to be careful, to come home to me, to remember what would happen to me if he left too long. And I told him not to hurt anyone.”
Katherine nodded.
“But Kitty Kat, I don’tcarewhat happens to them”—Octavia waved her hand toward the window—"when it comes to you. I’ll slaughter the world to keepyousafe. If you need to exorcise this at his expense, whoever he is, so be it.”
Katherine stared silently at her mother.
“What’s his name?”
“His . . .” Katherine glanced back out the window. Urian still sat there in his makeshift throne watching her window.
He lifted his hand toward her, beckoning.
Katherine slammed the steel shutters closed, muffling a cry as the toxic metal singed her hand tonight.
“Katherine!” Octavia was across the room in a blink, grabbing Katherine’s now-bloody hand.
The smell of burning flesh worsened.