TWENTY-TWO

ARDEN SCREAMED. I IGNORED HER, rushing for the place where the hole had been and breathing in as deeply as I could. The smell of Dugan’s magic—cinnamon and cardamom and how had I been so stupid, how had I not considered that he was a courtier born and bred, fully capable of observing protocol well enough to conceal himself in a noble court—swirled around me. I breathed it in, searching for the shallower scents beneath it.

“What are you doing?” Arden’s hands grasped my shoulders, spinning me around to face her. “Who was that man? Where is my brother?”

“His name is Dugan Harrow, he works for the false Queen, and I’m trying to figure that out,” I snapped. “Tybalt?”

“Yes,” he said, and took Arden’s arm, pulling her back. She stared at him in shock. His smile was quick and cool. “I think you’ll find, my lady, that as a King, my title is equal to yours, and so while my setting hands upon you is rude, it is not a proper insult, nor have you the authority to punish me. Let her work. She does her best under pressure.”

He was still talking as I turned back to the place where Dugan had opened the door, doing my best to tune out everything but the thin scent of cinnamon and cardamom. The false Queen and her people had always been fond of borrowed magic. They had cultivated it, hoarded it for occasions just like this one. I had always wondered where they could get so many tricks—it wasn’t like the Luidaeg had been brewing for them—but things had started making a lot more sense when I discovered that Eira had sponsored the false Queen to the throne. Eira was the mother of the Daoine Sidhe. Of course, she could bottle blood and magic together. There was nothing to stop her.

Reaching under the cinnamon and cardamom scent of Dugan’s magic, I strained until I caught the faint hint of some sweet, half-familiar fruit. “It’s not pear,” I said aloud. “It’s close, but it’s . . . quince.” I breathed in again. “Juniper sap and quince. Whose magic is he using?”

Arden gasped. I looked over my shoulder. She was staring at me, looking even more stricken than she had before.

“My father,” she whispered. “That was his.”

“Your father’s magic? Are you sure?”

The look she gave me could have split stone. “I’ll never forget my father’s magic.”

“Okay. That’s . . . that’s good. He’s been dead a long time. There shouldn’t be anything confusing his trail.” I turned back to the trailhead, such as it was, and inhaled again. “Arden, what are you willing to do to find your brother?”

“Anything.” There was no pride in the word, no anger, only the earnest need of a woman who was no longer willing to be alone in the world.

I understood the feeling. “Good,” I said, drawing the silver knife from my belt. There was a gasp that ran around the room as the real servants realized I’d drawn a weapon in the presence of the queen. Madden even growled, the sound cut off quickly as he realized what I was doing.

It was good that they were loyal to her. It was good that they were willing to get angry on her behalf. She was still going to bleed for me. Maybe this was what it was like for the Luidaeg: she always knew why she was asking me to let her hurt me, but she didn’t have the vocabulary, or the time, to explain it all.

I held out my free hand. Arden slipped hers into it, and I ran the edge of my knife across the back of her knuckles, cutting as shallowly as I could. Blood welled up fast and red and all too tempting. There was a time when I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Now I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

“Think about your magic,” I said, and raised her hand to my mouth.

Her blood tasted like her magic, like blackberries and the trees, and her memories slammed down on me like a hammer.

He’s gone Nolan is gone he’s gone and she isn’t going to be able to get him back, I’m going to lose him forever and it’s all my fault, I should never have—

I broke the connection with a gasp, blinking away the red-tinged veil of Arden’s fear. “Arden, please. Think about using your powers. I know it’s hard to stop focusing on your brother, but this is how we follow him.” I could feel the trail and she couldn’t. She had the magic to follow it, and I didn’t. By borrowing her magic, I could bridge that gap and try to bring him home.

“I’m trying,” she said in a small voice.

“Try harder,” I said, and took another mouthful of her blood.

This time, the memories slammed down harder, carrying with them the effervescent joy of using her magic freely after spending so many years concealing herself from Faerie. Images of Arden opening a gate to get from one side of the gardens to the other, all for the sheer delight of doing so, danced across my mind. I grasped them as firmly as I could, swallowed one more time, and reached.

An archway appeared in the air, smelling of her magic but also of mine, a blend that should never have been possible. My head spun, pain lancing through the space behind my ear in quiet warning that even when I was using someone else’s blood to set the shape, it was my own power fueling the enchantment. That was fine. That was dandy. I didn’t need to stay on my feet for much longer.

“Quentin, watch her,” I snapped, and jumped through the arch, the knife still in my hand.

I landed heavily in the mists of the false Queen’s receiving hall, my legs buckling beneath me. I turned my fall into a roll, remaining low to the ground, where the mist would have a chance of concealing me. Something moved near me in the gray. I didn’t think. I just turned and swung, aiming for what should have been the center mass of anything human-sized.

Tybalt grabbed my wrist, stopping me before I could actually stab him, and raised an eyebrow in silent question. I grimaced and shook my head. If he didn’t want to be stabbed, my expression said, he shouldn’t sneak up on me in foggy rooms full of potential enemies.

It said something about how well he had learned to read me that after a beat he sighed silently and let my wrist go, ceding the point.

“I know you’re there,” called Dugan. “Did you really think I wouldn’t hear you? You walk like an ox, Sir Daye. It’s a wonder you’re allowed shoes, with as loudly as those mortal feet of yours seem determined to tread.”

I remained low to the floor, even going so far as to press one finger to my lips and signal Tybalt to silence. He gave me a disgusted look. I shrugged. Yes, he’d been taking care of himself for longer than I’d been alive, but this was my show, and I needed him to take his cues from me.

“You lied, Sir Daye. You told my mistress you couldn’t restore what wasn’t there anymore, and then you turned around and gave your daughter her eternity back. Naughty girl.” He sounded almost amused. “My lady doesn’t care for liars, but there’s still a chance for you. Anything can be forgiven, if you’re useful enough. If you’re willing to work for the privilege of returning to her good graces.”

Dugan paused, clearly expecting me to say something. When I didn’t, he stomped his foot, making an audible huffing noise.

“You’ve done your best to ruin everything, but you’re just one woman, and you can’t be everywhere. You’ll always be vulnerable. You’ll always be a target. Why not give it up now and join the winning side?”

He was somewhere ahead and to the right. I began crawling through the fog, keeping my head low. Tybalt matched me, moving with a little less grace than I was accustomed to seeing from him. The sight woke a strange, out-of-place ache in my chest. He should have been in cat form by now, slinking along on four legs and ready to pounce. Instead, thanks to my mother, he was stuck like this. It wasn’t fair.

This wasn’t the time to dwell on past damage. I rolled closer, grabbing the collar of Tybalt’s shirt and pulling him as close as I could. Pressing my lips to the curve of his ear, I breathed, “Get the others,” before shoving him away.

He looked at me for a moment with wide, startled eyes. Then he nodded, silently agreeing to follow my commands, and rolled into the fog, disappearing from view. That must have been enough to qualify as a shadow. The scent of pennyroyal and musk rose, and I knew he was gone, leaving me alone with Dugan.

Dugan Harrow: Daoine Sidhe. Blood magic, illusions, and whatever tricks he might have borrowed from the false Queen. His loyalties were first to power, second to himself, and third, ridiculous as it seemed, to her. He was still trying to be loyal enough to earn her good regard. What he thought that would get him was less clear—although with Daoine Sidhe, it’s so often about what gets them a path to the throne. The false Queen had no spouse, no heirs. Her relationship with the deposed King Rhys of Silences was the closest I’d ever seen her come to caring about another person. Staying close to her, letting her think he was sorry for his attempted betrayal and had become faithful . . . that might seem like a way to one day add “king” to his list of titles.

It was never going to happen. Even if he killed Nolan, Arden would still have her throne, and there was no way she was going to name her brother’s murderer as her heir. But if he didn’t understand the legitimacy of her claim, or if he somehow believed that he could override the decision of the High King and put his own nameless figurehead back in charge . . .

When all else fails, count on the arrogance and corruption of the purebloods. It almost always carries the day. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the arrogant, it’s that they really, really don’t like to be mocked.

Tybalt was on the Shadow Roads. He’d be halfway to Muir Woods by now, where he could gather forces to help him help me. Quentin and May, at minimum; Arden and her guards. I only needed to stall for a few minutes.

I pushed myself away from the floor and rose out of the fog, holding my knife in front of me as I turned to sneer in what I guessed was the correct direction. Dugan was standing at the base of the dais, Nolan kneeling in front of him with his hands bound behind his back. Nolan’s eyes were bright with rage. I guess no amount of temporal displacement will make kidnapping seem like anything but what it is.

There were no illusions on him now. Dugan Harrow stood before me revealed, from his dark green hair to the planes of his cheekbones, sharp enough to slice glass. He was handsome, there was no denying that. He was also horrible, rendered such by his own choices, which had stripped every scrap of decency away.

It was hard not to look at him and see exactly what Eira had been hoping to make of her descendants. He was here for power. Everything else was secondary.

“There you are,” said Dugan, sounding satisfied. He held up a rowan sheath, large enough to hold a blade slightly longer than mine. “Do you know what this is?”

“I have a bunch of guesses, but most of them aren’t fit for polite company, and the prince, at least, is polite.” I nodded toward Nolan. “Your Grace. Has he hurt you? I’ll cut off his ears if he’s hurt you.”

“Nothing I can’t recover from, Sir Daye,” said Nolan. “A few bruises. A few scrapes. Some wounded pride. Have you come to take me home?”

“That’s the plan.”

Dugan scowled. “Your attention should remain on me, if you want your precious prince to remain among the living.”

I lifted one eyebrow. “Why? Are you going to threaten stabbings? I love it when people threaten stabbings in front of witnesses. That makes it self-defense and means I’m much less likely to get in trouble for kicking the crap out of you.”

Dugan curled his lip and removed the sheath from his blade. My blood went cold. Nolan paled, leaning away as much as his current position would allow. Naturally. He was closer to the knife. He could probably feel the poison rolling off of it.

Dugan smirked, holding the iron knife up to make sure I saw every cold, pitted inch of it. It looked almost raw, like it had barely been touched by the blacksmith’s hammer. Every inch of me wanted to turn and run, fae instincts kicking in at the worst possible time. “Not so cocky now, are you, Sir Daye? Are you ready to negotiate? Or shall I slit this poor princeling’s throat, and remove one more pretender from the line of the throne?”

“Iron knives are sort of your thing, aren’t they, Dugan? Where do you keep getting them?” My own knife was silver. It would be no match for his. Silver is a soft metal. Fae metalworkers imbue it with layer upon layer of enchantment, making it harder and more capable of holding an edge. Iron would cancel all that out. If his knife hit mine, it would slice through the silverwork like it was butter, and I would be unarmed.

Since I wasn’t willing to attack him with what I had, I already functionally was.

“Only a fool refuses to use every tool available to him,” said Dugan.

“A fool, or a man with honor,” I snapped. Muir Woods wasn’t that far from the false Queen’s knowe. Tybalt had to be there by now. He had to be explaining. Arden wouldn’t want to wait—she would want to rush out and rescue her brother as quickly as possible—but Madden would be cautioning her to move slowly, to consider her actions. I didn’t know how much longer I would need to stall. “Does iron make you feel important? Does it make you feel big? I don’t care how much rowan you put between yourself and that shit, it’s going to eat you alive. You’re playing with fire. Or enriched uranium, assuming you even know what that is.”

Dugan sneered. “You talk a good game for someone who’s staying out of range. Not everyone has that privilege.” He grabbed Nolan by the hair, pulling his head back and laying the iron knife across his neck.

Nolan cried out in shock and pain, a look of raw embarrassment washing across his face on the heels of the sound. He didn’t want to show how badly this was hurting him. I wanted to tell him I didn’t think less of him for this, that no one could stay silent in the presence of iron, but I didn’t dare. Anything I said to him, instead of to Dugan, could make things even worse.

“What do you want, Dugan?” I asked, taking a step forward. “Do you want me? I’ll come to you if you’ll let him go.”

“What, so that your little friends can sweep in here and rescue you? No deal, Daye. I’ve heard the stories of what you’ve been up to since the last time we met. I could stab you a hundred times and you’d still get up and walk away. You’re no hostage, especially not against your own good behavior.”

“So what do you want?”

He looked at me, utterly arrogant and utterly calm, and said, “I want you to restore my lady to her former glory. Return to the pretender’s knowe, release the true Queen from her prison, and pour the sea back into her veins. When she stands before me, whole and hale, I’ll let this little liar go. He and his sister can live a happy life in exile, far from our shores. I have my lady’s word that no harm will come to them if they agree to go.”

“I can’t do that, Dugan.”

He pressed the knife harder against Nolan’s skin. Nolan whimpered. Eyes gleaming, Dugan looked at me and spat, “You can, and you will. If you can restore your whelp, you can restore a queen.”

“I didn’t restore Gillian!”

I hadn’t intended to shout, but the words came out of me barely shy of a scream, echoing through the room, stunning both of us into silence. Nolan held himself rigidly still, clearly struggling to maintain the dignity of a prince while under the touch of the iron knife. I kept my focus on Dugan, hoping he would believe me, knowing that he probably wouldn’t. Believing me would mean admitting that he had failed—that this, all of this, had been for nothing.

“I’m not the one who saved her,” I said, more softly. “I’m not the reason she’s alive. The Luidaeg did that. She wrapped my daughter in a Selkie skin to keep her alive. They can be bonded to humans, if there’s someone to start the process. Gillian isn’t human anymore, but it’s not because I was clever, or quick, or powerful. It’s because the sea witch took pity on her. I can’t save your queen. I never could.”

Dugan stared at me. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. You have an iron knife to the throat of the Crown Prince in the Mists. If I could do what you wanted, I would do it. If I thought I could lie convincingly enough to make you let him go, I’d do that, too. Why would I stand here saying exactly what you don’t want to hear if it wasn’t the absolute truth? Let Nolan go. If you run, no one but me can follow you. Release him and run, and as long as you don’t come back to the Mists, I won’t help anyone track you down. I’ll swear on the root and the branch and in Oberon’s name, if that’s what you need.”

Dugan wavered, the knife in his hand dipping slightly—enough that I could see the blisters forming on Nolan’s throat. I swallowed hard, trying to keep my chin up, so neither of them would see how frightened I was.

“You’re lying,” Dugan said again, with less confidence this time.

“I’m not,” I said again. “If you let him go, you have my word, I won’t be the one who brings you back here.”

Nolan closed his eyes.

“You have no right to decide who is and is not fit to rule,” said Dugan. “You’re just a changeling. You have no authority to do what you’ve done.”

“And your queen is just a pawn, chosen by a woman who wanted to destroy everything King Gilad had built,” I said. “We could play this game all day. Your time is running out. Go. Once the others get here, this deal is off the table.”

Dugan opened his mouth to reply and froze as the scent of blackberry flowers and redwood bark wafted through the air. I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to.

“Time’s up,” I said, as Arden and her guard moved into position behind me. “Put down the knife, Dugan.”

He looked at me with the calm, resigned face of a man who knew he had nowhere left to go. He had backed himself into a corner. The odds were good that he was going to die here—or worse. The Law only forbade killing, after all. The purebloods were capable of doing so much worse than that, especially when they felt their families were threatened.

“No,” he said calmly. “I don’t think so.”

He pulled the knife away from Nolan’s throat and shoved him forward into the fog. I had time for an instant of relief before I realized what he was going to do.

“No!” I shouted, dropping my knife and breaking into a run, bolting toward him as fast as I could.

I wasn’t fast enough to stop him from slashing the knife across his throat. He fell, the blade still clutched in one hand, and I fell with him, clasping my hands over the wound to keep his blood as contained as possible. It wasn’t enough to stop that same blood from drenching me before I got it damped down, spattering on my cheek and lips.

So much blood. I closed my eyes and licked my lips, tuning out the sound of the people rushing all around me. The red haze of his memories descended, showing him creeping up on Gillian’s car with a potion in his hand, ready to attack and abduct her. I fought my way past it and saw him carrying her clothing into the walled courtyard that belonged to Janet. There was no sense of familiarity there. He was baiting a trap he had been told about by the false Queen, a secret from her reign that she was trying to use against me.

I licked my lips again, struggling not to laugh bitterly. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known Janet was my grandmother, or that she was masquerading as Gillian’s stepmother, or that she owned the courtyard at all. She hadn’t told him, if she even knew. It had been a secret his Queen had been instructed to keep at all costs, and he’d been trying to use it to hurt me. Not stop me, no. Kennis, the courtyard, none of it had been intended to stop me. It was all a game, meant to slow me down and weaken my resolve, to panic me so much that when I finally found my daughter, I’d be willing to do whatever they asked in order to save her.

Save her. We had saved her. She wasn’t the same anymore, would never be the same again, but she had a future now, even if it wasn’t the one she had wanted. Dugan was captive. Nolan was safe. The false Queen was in Arden’s custody, with no allies left to help her get away and come after us again. It was over.

It was over.

Someone pushed me aside, Arden’s people rushing to do what they could to save a man who shouldn’t be saved. I dropped to my knees in the mist, put my hands over my face, and cried. Tybalt knelt beside me, putting his arms around me, but that didn’t change anything. The tears kept coming. He buried his face against my hair, and he cried, too, and everything was over, and everything was different, and I no longer knew what safety was, or what “home” looked like.

I didn’t know anything at all.