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.I thought she would go back to her own kind.If I had known that she was going to have a child, I would never have left, no matter what the Elders threatened to do to me.”I felt tears sting my eyes.How many times had I wondered why my father had abandoned me? It was a grief so deep I had long ago closed it up, like a door to an unused room.Now that door opened and I felt the sadness in his eyes fill it.“When did you find out about me?” I asked.“When your mother died.I felt her passing, all the way in the frozen North, and came to carry her to Faerie.She told me about you then.I wanted to come to you, but she told me I needed to find the book A Darkness of Angels, first.She said that you would never be safe without it.I traced it to the place where it all started—to Hawthorn in Scotland—and saw that Mr.Farnsworth was bringing it to you.I followed him to make sure it made it to you safely, but of course it didn’t.Farnsworth gave it to me when I saved him, but van Drood set his tenebrae on my trail.I’ve been running from them ever since, afraid to lead them back to you, but then a few weeks ago I had a dream that you were on the Titanic, too.I thought it was only a dream until Raven found me and told me you were soul-sick.I came right away—”“Even if it meant they might kill you for returning,” I finished for him.“What would that matter if you died?” he asked simply.“I would do anything to make up for the time I’ve missed with you.”I wanted to tell him that he had, but I knew that nothing would ever make up for my not having grown up with my father—for either of us.But at least I knew now that it wasn’t his fault.It was the Elders’ fault.I stood up, fully restored now, and Falco let his wings fall away from me.I turned to face the three Elders.Wren’s face was soft with compassion, but Gos looked like he wanted to spring across the table and throttle Falco and me.Merlinus’s face was stony and impassive.“How could you send him away from my mother when his only crime was loving her?” I cried.I heard a rustle above me and saw Raven inch closer to me so that I was between him and Falco.I had a feeling that this was not the way one was supposed to address the Elders, but I didn’t care.They had deprived my mother of the man she loved.They had deprived me of my father throughout my childhood.“You’re just a bunch of dried-up old crows,” I fumed, “jealous of other people’s happiness.”“He broke the law,” Gos spat at me.“It’s a stupid law!” I cried.Someone hissed above me.Gos braced his arms on the tabletop, his tendons straining, his wings flexing behind him.“Why shouldn’t a Darkling and a human love one another? Merope and Aderyn did—”“And cursed us to an eternity of banishment,” Gos hissed.“We can never return to Faerie.Do you know what it’s like to ferry the souls of humans to their afterworld and the souls of the fay to theirs, but never have our own rest? When we die we dissolve into dust.And all because a Darkling loved a human.” He spit the word out of his mouth as if it tasted bad.“No,” I said, recalling what had bothered me before about the story of Merope and Aderyn.“You weren’t cursed because they loved each other; it was because a shadow crow pierced Aderyn’s chest.A bit of shadow entered his soul.”“The darkness that entered his soul was his love for a human woman!” Gos snapped back at me.“Why do you hate humans so much?” I asked.“We don’t hate them,” Merlinus said with a stony glare at Gos.“We are charged with their care.If we allow ourselves to fall in love with them, we risk infecting them with our curse.Your mother, for instance, would not have been allowed into the mortal’s afterworld because of her love for a Darkling.Falco broke the laws to bring her to Faerie.And you, fledgling—” He gave me a sad look.“You are now subject to the Darklings’ curse.You won’t be allowed in your own afterworld or Faerie.”“I’ve already been to Faerie, thank you very much,” I snipped back at him.I hadn’t thought those marmoreal features could register surprise, but they did now.“You have?” he said.“How did you get in and come back in your own time without a Darkling to hold the door for you?”Too late I realized my temper had implicated Raven.Before I could think how to answer, Wren spoke.“What’s important is that she was able to pass through the door at all.It might mean a weakening of the curse.”“She hadn’t fledged yet,” Gos said.“And even if she can cross over, it only means a half-bloodling can.What good does that do the rest of us?”A chorus of hoots, accompanied by rustling, came from the upper tiers.Apparently Gos had his following.Encouraged by this response, Gos went on.“And why should we expect any help from her? She’s part of the accursed Order that lives to exterminate us.How do we know that her being here now isn’t part of a plot to infiltrate our ranks and then lead their Hunt to us? They might be on their way now.”The rustling above our heads grew to a roar, the hooting low and ominous.At the same time Raven and Falco extended their wings over my head as if they expected an attack from above.For the first time I felt frightened.Not just of what might happen to me, but of what might happen to Raven for bringing me here.I realized now what he had risked by being with me.But when he spoke he did not seem frightened; he sounded angry [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]