EIGHTEEN

“NO,” SHE SAID, anger and fear battling for dominance in her voice. “You stay right where you are. You have to fix me.”

“I’m not going to change the balance of your blood,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the blade. I’ve died at least twice, probably more, but I’d never died of brain trauma. Would it grow back? Would I still be myself if it did? Or would I be someone new, someone like May, who had most of my memories but no longer saw them the way I did, who could hold herself at arms-length from my life and not miss what she’d never really had.

“You have to,” she said, sounding like a child on the verge of a tantrum. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” The Folletti knife was still embedded in my kidney, freezing me slowly from the inside out, and the Baobhan Sith was no doubt going to lose interest in the false Queen eventually, choosing to go for the juicier meal—me. I needed to move. “You hurt my daughter. You woke a despot. If anyone’s in debt here, it’s you.”

“I didn’t wake her,” said Jocelyn, looking startled. “I wouldn’t even know how to start. She got in contact with Mom. She said she wanted to be my godmother, to make everything better for me. Mom pulled some strings with the residence hall to get me moved into Gillian’s room. Mom got paid, and I’m going to get a new life, a better life. The life I should have had from the beginning. But I didn’t wake her. Her friend did, the man with the green hair.”

I stared, the bottom dropping out of my stomach as everything suddenly, horribly, started making sense. I only knew one man with green hair who would have any reason to work with the false Queen . . . a man who smelled like cinnamon and cardamom.

Sweet Maeve forgive me, but I’d thought he was dead.

I was still staring when Tybalt stepped out of the mist behind her, reached down, and wrenched the sword from her grasp. Jocelyn cried out in pain. It looked like the act of breaking her grip may have also broken a few of her fingers, or at least sprained them.

Good. Anyone who pulls a sword on me deserves to hurt. Doubly so if the sword they’re holding is my own. That’s adding insult to potential injury, and I won’t stand for it.

“How many of your bones shall I break, kitten, to make clear that no one threatens my lady without some payment being demanded?” His hand engulfed both of Jocelyn’s, pinning her in place. He was making no effort to seem human, or even Sidhe: his pupils were wide ovals, consuming more than half of his irises, and when he spoke, he showed canine teeth too long and sharp to belong to anything but an apex predator. Stripes slashed down his cheeks and across his forehead, his tabby coloring carrying over onto the skin.

That was a bad sign. That was a very bad sign. Tybalt is powerful enough that he experiences that sort of slippage only when under extreme stress, and seeing it made me want to run to him and pull him away from her before he could do something he’d regret. Killing Jocelyn wouldn’t be a violation of Oberon’s Law. It would still hurt him, deep inside, and while I might not care about her life, I cared way too much about his.

And I didn’t know whether Gillian was alive. If she wasn’t, my ability to intercede on Jocelyn’s behalf might go way, way down.

The false Queen was still screaming somewhere in the fog. That was a good sign, in that the Baobhan Sith hadn’t torn her throat out yet. I wanted her alive to stand trial for her crimes. She may not have broken the Law, but all that meant was that I couldn’t demand her life. I could demand a hell of a lot else. I was planning to do exactly that.

Later. Right now, I had bigger problems. Like Dugan. Oh, Oberon, Dugan. “Tybalt, you have to let her go,” I said, struggling to my feet in order to make it easier to attract his attention.

He turned to me, and there was almost no rationality in his eyes. He looked like a feral creature, like he was ready to bolt with his kill.

“She hurt you,” he said, as if I might somehow have failed to notice.

I nodded. “I know. I was there. But I need you now, and she’s not going anywhere. She couldn’t get out of here if she tried. The doors won’t open for her without someone to help her. Let her go.”

He hesitated. “I came back,” he said finally.

“I know. I’m so grateful. But I’m kind of in a lot of pain right now, so if you could please let her go and take care of me . . . ”

Tybalt blinked, some of the blankness fading from his expression. “October?”

I turned, intending to show him the knife protruding from my back. The motion left me dizzy, and my legs buckled, sending me crashing toward the dais. I was almost getting used to hitting it face-first. I braced for impact.

Tybalt’s arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me back, scooping me against him. He searched my face with wide, worried eyes. “What have you done to yourself now?” he asked, voice low.

I blinked. He was blurry. “Jocelyn . . . ?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Good. She’s . . . patsy. Queen not working alone.” I closed my eyes. “There’s a knife. My left kidney. Can’t touch it. Still too human. Can you . . . ?”

“As the sword from the stone,” he said, and rolled me over in his arms. I went limp, allowing him to move me. I trusted him. Out of everyone in the world, I trusted him.

The blade sliding out of my kidney was an indescribable pain, followed by an absence that ached for a moment before the agony of thaw set in. I think I screamed. I know I convulsed, and only Tybalt grabbing me and refusing to let go kept me from taking yet another tumble.

When I was done screaming, when the cold had died to a manageable level and my legs were willing to hold me, I shuddered and leaned against Tybalt, trying to open my eyes. That was when I heard the silence, or rather, didn’t hear it.

The false Queen wasn’t screaming anymore. Neither was the Baobhan Sith. The only sound was Jocelyn sobbing somewhere nearby, the thin, reedy wails of a child who had been denied her favorite toy.

Unsteadily, I pushed myself away from Tybalt and looked around. The cut in my back still ached, healing slowly—assuming it was healing at all. The existence of one thing that could hurt me for more than a few seconds implied the existence of other things, things that might be a little more permanent than the bite of the Baobhan Sith.

“That’s why I have two kidneys,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

The mist covering the floor had grown higher, turning everything not on the dais into a sea of eddying white. I turned slowly. Jocelyn was standing in the shadow of the false Queen’s throne, cradling her hand against her chest and weeping. I dismissed her. She didn’t have a weapon, and judging by the glassy expression on her face, this was the first time she’d been seriously hurt in her entire life. She would be processing her way through the pain for a while. Once she did, she might become a threat again. Until then . . .

I stooped to retrieve my sword, taking a careful step in the direction where I’d last seen the Baobhan Sith. “Hello?” I called. “Is there anyone out there who can talk right now?”

“I call for truce,” said an unfamiliar voice. A woman stepped out of the mist.

Her hair was still the color of gorse, but blooming, yellow and green tangled together until she looked like a meadow going out for a stroll. Her eyes were an odd blend of the two, almost chartreuse. Her skin was clear, and her flesh had filled out until she could have been any woman on the street, assuming the women on the street had pointed ears and teeth like daggers, ready to slice through flesh to find the blood beneath. She was wearing plenty of that blood—maybe even more than I was, which was no small trick—in dried tracks down the front of her winding white gown.

“Why do the blood-workers always wear white?” I asked, almost dazedly. “It makes us look like the sloppiest eaters ever.”

“I was bound and buried, and a shroud is appropriate for that sort of thing,” said the Baobhan Sith, watching me warily. Most of her attention was on my sword. “Is truce granted?”

“For the moment, yes,” I said, lowering the weapon slightly. “You’ll forgive me: I don’t have a scabbard on me. Did you kill her?”

“No,” said the Baobhan Sith. Her lip curled in disgust. “She tried to push me into a violation of the Law, but as it seems I have avoided it, I refuse to waste the crime on her.”

I nodded. “You got a name?”

“Kennis. Yourself?”

“Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words. This is—”

“I remember the King of Dreaming Cats, even if we never had direct acquaintance with one another.” Kennis offered Tybalt a polite nod. It was strange, having her converse so calmly when only a little while ago, she’d been trying to kill us both. “The year must not be so very late, if you’re still the one leading the Cait Sidhe of this place.”

She had been emaciated when I’d first found her, as if she hadn’t eaten in years. I gave her a measuring look. “What year do you think it is?”

“I was taken by surprise in my bed, pinned and prisoned while the house burned around me, in nineteen seventy-four,” said Kennis. “I knew my captor by the smell of her, ice and rowan, but I couldn’t fight—not with as much magic as she’d poured into the room before the match was lit. I’ve woken twice since then, once when a man came to me with a cup of blood from a human girl, and again when you entered the room where I was tethered. You have my sincere apologies for what happened next. I was not entirely myself.”

“Meaning the false Queen starved you to use you as a weapon,” I concluded grimly. Not against me, necessarily; in the seventies, I’d still been in the Summerlands, following my mother like a good little shadow, trying to do everything within my power to make her proud of me. But the false Queen had always been fond of her weapons.

How many more traps were scattered throughout the Mists? How many more citizens of Faerie, people like Kennis, were bound and waiting to be triggered, reduced to their basest impulses by hunger, or isolation, or a dozen other factors? We had been careless. We had put Arden on the throne, and not followed the regime change by immediately beginning to ferret out every scrap of danger the false Queen had left behind.

“False Queen?” Kennis asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “She’s not the rightful holder of her throne? Oh, naughty girl. Have I brought a fugitive to justice, then?”

“You’ve helped,” said Tybalt mildly. “I am sure Queen Windermere will be glad to reward you by not punishing you for attempting to devour a hero of the realm.”

Kennis had the good grace to blush. “I was starving. I would apologize, but I had no control over my actions.”

“You said there was a man,” I said, pulling her attention back to me. “What did he look like? Did he have green hair?”

Tybalt’s head whipped around, eyes narrowing as he put two and two together and came up with an unhappy five. Kennis shook her head.

“Plain. Inconsequential. He stank of Daoine Sidhe beneath his illusions.”

So it could have been Dugan, or it could have been somebody else. Swell. I frowned as I stepped off the dais, wading through the mist until I found the false Queen, curled into a ball with her eyes tightly closed. Kneeling, I felt the side of her neck, relaxing only a little when I found her pulse. “She’s alive. Weak, but alive.”

“I said as much,” said Kennis.

“You also tried to kill me multiple times, so I wanted to confirm it for myself.” I jerked my head toward the sobbing Jocelyn. “Can someone grab her before she runs? I really don’t feel like playing spoiled brat scavenger hunt today.”

“Of course,” said Tybalt. He moved toward her. Jocelyn screamed and tried to dodge. Deftly, he snaked an arm around her waist, grabbing her wrists with his free hand as he pulled her close. “Where do you think you’re going? We need to have a conversation, you and I. It will hurt less if you don’t struggle.”

He grinned, showing the full scope of his inhuman dentition. Jocelyn screamed again before collapsing in a dead faint. Only Tybalt’s grip kept her from falling to the floor. He turned to look at me.

“Will this do?” he asked.

I nodded. “That’s fine.”

“October—”

“No.” I moved through the mist until I found Quentin’s slumbering form. Kneeling next to him and beginning to go through his pockets, I said, “I don’t want to know. Not yet. As soon as I know one way or the other, I’m going to fall apart, and I can’t do that until we get someone here to take this whole mess over. So I don’t want to know. Even once I do know, we have to deal with the fact that the false Queen wasn’t working alone. I think she had help. I think Dugan was helping her.”

“Dugan Harrow? But wasn’t he—”

“Arrested? Yeah. And then he vanished into the dungeons, and we all figured it had been taken care of. Surprise, surprise. We were wrong.” He’d been with Raysel when she kidnapped Gillian the first time. He’d betrayed his liege, and when he’d tried to assassinate her, she’d locked him away.

Stupid me—assuming that out of sight and out of mind meant no longer my problem.

Dugan Harrow had been a courtier in service to the false Queen, a landless Daoine Sidhe noble sent to the Court from Deep Mists—and since Deep Mists was in Marin, he might have grown up with stories of how once, the royal court had been located in Muir Woods, well away from the human city, in the trees where it belonged. It would certainly explain why he’d been willing and eager to help Rayseline Torquill kidnap both the Lorden boys and my own daughter, holding them hostage in an attempt to start a war. Kidnapping was his go-to move, the only thing he could be absolutely sure would get the reaction he was looking for.

He’d been arrested after drawing a cold iron knife on the false Queen, and when we hadn’t found him in her dungeons, we all assumed she’d just done the inevitable and made her problem . . . disappear. The Law forbids killing. It doesn’t forbid transforming an enemy into a stone and dropping them into the ocean, even if you know that when the spell wears off, they’ll drown before they can make it to the surface. There are always loopholes for people vicious enough to look for them.

The thought that she might have slapped him on the wrist for failing at his coup and released him to go home had simply never occurred to me. He’d tried to kill her. But he was working with her now, and he hadn’t been there when we’d taken her knowe. Her letting him go was the only thing that made sense, and it didn’t make sense at all.

And I didn’t have time to worry about what did or didn’t make sense right now. Too much was going on. As usual, Quentin’s phone was in his jacket pocket. He had a lock screen, but the day I can’t remember my squire’s combination is the day I tell him his training is finished. I keyed in the code, revealing a picture of him and Dean sitting on Dean’s private underground dock, their shoulders touching, neither of them in a human disguise. It was an adorable moment. I dismissed it with a sweep of my thumb.

“Dianda’s on her way. We won’t have to hold the scene for long.”

“Good.” Dianda was a natural disaster, but she was a natural disaster on our side. She would keep things together. I pulled up the address book on autopilot, dialed, raised the phone, and waited.

What time was it? We’d been running hard since the early morning. Was it afternoon yet? Were people going to be awake? The phone rang, and I held my breath, until there was a click, and Etienne’s familiar, somewhat puzzled voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”

“Etienne.” I closed my eyes. Maybe I should have called Arden. Maybe this was a matter for the Queen in the Mists. But I was tired, and I was scared, and I wanted my family. My real family, the one that had always been there for me. “It’s October. I . . . is Sylvester awake?”

“He could be.” Etienne’s tone turned gentle. “Bridget told me she saw you on campus this morning. She told me why. October, is . . .” His voice trailed off. It was clear he didn’t know how to ask the question, and that he wouldn’t have wanted to ask it if he could.

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “I’m in the false Queen’s knowe. The receiving hall. It’s currently open. Can you please get Sylvester and bring him here? I . . . I need him.”

There was a long pause. The last time I’d seen Sylvester Torquill was when I’d told him that his brother, Simon, had managed to escape from my custody. Sylvester was still my liege. He still held my loyalty, in more ways than one. But until I found Simon and brought him back, I didn’t feel like I’d earned the right to go home. Even bringing his niece back from the dead—a pretty impressive trick, if I do say so myself—hadn’t felt like enough.

Besides, January deserved some time with her uncle without me sniffing around the edges, trying to intrude. Where I went, chaos followed. They had the right to ask for better than that.

Etienne didn’t seem to share my opinion about keeping my distance. Without hesitation, he said, “Stay where you are. We’ll be there as quickly as we can.” The phone went dead. I lowered it, staring at the screen.

Then I raised it again. This time, I pulled up Walther’s number. He picked up on the second ring.

“Hello? Quentin?”

“October. Do you have the elf-shot cure mixed and ready to go?”

“Um.” He hesitated. “Yes? How much do you need?”

“Two doses. Quentin and May are down.”

He made a noise somewhere between a groan and a grim chuckle. “You know, I don’t know how much of that stuff it’s safe to take. You can’t keep running into arrows and expecting that nothing will go wrong.”

“Believe me, I’m aware. Sadly, they weren’t really consulted.”

“Got it. Where am I delivering the stuff?”

“I’ll send Tybalt to pick it up as soon as he has a free hand.” From the dais, Tybalt gave me a dubious look. I shrugged exaggeratedly. If he didn’t want to play courier service, he could . . . he could nothing. This was what I needed from him right now. “Okay?”

“Okay. Be careful, please. I can’t wake you all up.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to. Open roads.”

“Kind fires.”

I hung up the phone and tucked it back into Quentin’s pocket. When I straightened, Kennis was eyeing me oddly.

“What is that device?” she asked.

I smiled despite myself. “You’re going to really enjoy some of the advances in modern technology,” I said.

In the distance, a door banged open, followed by the sound of running feet. Kennis tensed, while Tybalt relaxed. I glanced back to the Baobhan Sith.

“You might want to hold very, very still, and keep your hands where people can see them,” I said. “The folks who are on their way don’t like it when they run into strangers covered in blood.”

“You’re covered in blood,” she said.

“Yes, but they know me.”

Dianda was the first into the hall, running remarkably well for a woman who only had legs when she really wanted them. She was wearing a thigh-length tunic, belted at the waist, and carrying a trident that looked like it had been designed to disembowel her enemies. Knowing her, it probably had been. Half a dozen Undersea soldiers were behind her, most of them the octopus-legged Cephali, although I spotted a few other Merrow.

Patrick, her Daoine Sidhe husband, brought up the rear, strolling while the rest of them rushed. He wasn’t here for combat. He was here to stop his wife before she killed anyone they were going to need later. It was nice to see someone looking so calm about the situation.

Dianda caught sight of me and pivoted, stalking in my direction. “Where?” she demanded.

“Over there.” I pointed toward the unconscious body of the false Queen. “You can’t keep her. Arden’s going to want to handle sentencing, whatever that’s going to mean. But you can kick her a few times, if it looks like she’s going to wake up.”

Several of the Cephali had surrounded Kennis—people with the lower bodies of octopuses and the eight associated arms could do a remarkable amount of surrounding—and were watching her closely, their spears and short swords trained on her. To her credit, she was holding very still and keeping her hands visible, as I had requested. Spending four decades locked in a burnt-out house seemed to have instilled a strong sense of self-preservation.

“That’s Kennis,” I said, indicating her. “She’s a Baobhan Sith. The false Queen had her locked in a house in Berkeley and used her as a pit trap to try to murder me. She’s bloody because she attacked me, but she was starving at the time, and she and I have worked it out.” That was a bit of an exaggeration. Somehow, I didn’t think Kennis was going to mind.

“I see,” said Dianda. She looked to the dais and frowned. “Who’s the child?”

“Her name is Jocelyn, and she helped the false Queen abduct my daughter.”

Dianda, who had never met Gillian, only heard about her in context of the kidnapping of her own children, stared at me. “Your girl is missing again? October, I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?”

Sometimes it’s nice to know that people have my back. “Nothing,” I said. Before Dianda could object to my refusing her help, I explained, “She’s with the Luidaeg. I’ll know something soon.”

Both statements were technically true, even if I couldn’t bring myself to look at Tybalt as I made them. Gillian was with the Luidaeg. Alive or dead, awake or asleep, I’d know something as soon as I was ready to ask, and I let him answer. For now, I needed to keep moving.

She was in the best hands she could possibly be in. If anyone could save her, it was the sea witch.

Please.

Dianda nodded, accepting my words at face value, and shot a venomous look at the false Queen. Patrick was kneeling next to the woman, one hand extended as he presumably took her pulse. It was nice to see him being thorough.

“I could overpower you,” she said. “She’s allowed crimes to be committed against my people. I could have her halfway to the Undersea before you had a chance to stop me. If you think Queen Windermere is going to be lenient . . . ”

“I don’t,” I said. “This woman took her father’s throne. She left Arden as an exile in her own kingdom for a century, and she had Nolan elf-shot. I think the false Queen will end up wishing she’d stayed asleep up in Silences.” Which raised the question of where we could find Dugan Harrow, and how many times I was going to punch him before he stopped fighting back. I glanced to Jocelyn, who was still slumped, unconscious, in Tybalt’s grasp. We were going to have a long conversation after she woke up, and she wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Etienne’s scent of limes and cedar smoke drifted through the air. I whirled in time to see a glowing portal appear behind me. My liege, Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, stepped through. I didn’t think. I dropped my sword and broke into a run, flinging myself into the comforting familiarity of his embrace. He didn’t hesitate before folding his arms around me, surrounding me with the scent of daffodils and dogwood flowers that permeated his skin. I inhaled deeply. His magic had meant home and safety to me for as long as I could remember.

“October,” he said, resting his chin against the top of my head and holding me closer still. I started to shake, all the fear and trauma of the day bubbling to the top. “Calm, my dear, calm. I’m here. It will be all right.”

I didn’t look at Tybalt. He was the only one who knew whether my liege was lying. I couldn’t look at him. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pressing my face against Sylvester’s chest. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t . . . I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it without you.”

“Nor should you have to. I’m your liege. That means something, October. Even when you feel you can do things on your own, you shouldn’t have to. I’m always here when you need me. Always.” Sylvester lifted his head, and I knew he was looking at the dais, at Tybalt, waiting there for me to be ready for whatever terrible thing was coming next.

I was almost prepared when Sylvester pushed me out to arm’s-length, his golden eyes grave as he searched my face.

“October,” he said, “where is your daughter?”

“With the Luidaeg,” I said, voice small.

“You should go to her. Duchess Lorden and I will see that Queen Windermere takes custody of these ruffians.”

I nodded, unable to speak. Then I knelt, retrieving my sword from the floor. “Tybalt will be back with the elf-shot cure,” I said, finally finding the words now that they weren’t about me. “Please don’t let any harm come to Quentin or May.”

“I would never,” Sylvester assured me.

Dianda looked at me sympathetically, but didn’t speak, as I walked back to where Tybalt waited. He shoved Jocelyn at her. She caught the changeling easily, locking her trident across the smaller woman’s body, so that there was no chance she could wake up and break away.

“I’ll be back for them,” I said, and stepped into Tybalt’s embrace. He drew me close as he stepped into the shadows, and we were gone.