I think I make a little gasp. It’s a really, really, really pretty sword.
“You’ve been training so diligently that I knew it should be yours. Its maker called it Nightfell, but of course you are welcome to call it anything you like or nothing at all. It’s said to bring the wielder luck, but everyone says that about swords, don’t they? It’s something of a family heirloom.”
Oriana’s words come back to me: He’s besotted with you girls. He must have loved your mother very much. “But what about Oak?” I blurt out. “What if he wants it?”
Madoc gives me a small smile. “Do you want it?”
“Yes,” I say, unable to help myself. When I pull it from its sheath, it comes as though made for my hand. The balance is perfect. “Yes, of course I do.”
“That’s good, because this is your sword by right, forged for me by your father, Justin Duarte. He’s the one who crafted it, the one who named it. It’s your family heirloom.”
I am momentarily robbed of breath. I have never heard my father’s name spoken aloud by Madoc before. We do not talk about the fact that he murdered my parents; we talk around it.
We certainly don’t talk about when they were alive.
“My father made this,” I say carefully, to be sure. “My father was here, in Faerie?”
“Yes, for several years. I only have a few pieces of his. I found two, one for you and one for Taryn.” He grimaces. “This is where your mother met him. Then they ran away together, back to the mortal world.”
I take a shuddering breath, finding the courage to ask a question I have often wondered but never dared voice aloud. “What were they like?” I flinch as the words leave my mouth. I don’t even know if I want him to tell me. Sometimes I just want to hate her; if I can hate her, then it won’t be so bad that I love him.
But, of course, she’s still my mother. The only thing I can truly be angry with her for is being gone, and that’s certainly not her fault.
Madoc sits down on the goat-footed stool in front of my dressing table and stretches out his bad leg, looking for all the world as though he’s about to tell me a bedtime story. “She was clever, your mother. And young. After I brought her to Faerie, she drank and danced weeks away at a time. She was at the center of every revel.
“I could not always accompany her. There was a war in the East, an Unseelie king with a lot of territory and no desire to bend his knee to the High King. But I drank in her happiness when I was here. She had a way of making everyone around her feel as though every impossible thing was possible. I suppose I put it down to her mortality, but I don’t think I was being fair. It was something else. Her daring, perhaps. She never seemed cowed, not by any of the magic, not by anything.”
I thought he might be angry, but he obviously isn’t. In fact, his voice holds a totally unexpected fondness. I sit down on the bench in front of my bed, holding on to my new silver sword for support.
“Your father was interesting. I imagine you think I didn’t know him, but he came to my house—my old house, the one they burned down—many times. We drank honey wine in the gardens, the three of us. He loved swords, he said, from the time he was a child. When he was around your age, he persuaded his parents to allow him to build his first forge in their backyard.
“Instead of going to college, he found a master swordsmith to take him on as an apprentice. From there, he got himself introduced to an assistant curator in a museum. She snuck him in after hours, allowing him to see ancient swords up close and honing his craft. But then he heard about the kinds of blades that could be wrought only by the fey, so he came looking for us.
“He was a master smith when he came here and even better when he left. But he couldn’t resist bragging about stealing our secrets along with his bride. Eventually, the tale came to Balekin, who gave it to me.”