“Hopefully?” echoed Raj. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Look at it this way, kiddo. At least now, if you’re going to be stranded, you’re not going to be stranded alone. Plus, hey, think about all those empty castles. We can totally take one over. Paint the whole thing pink.”
Raj smiled a little. “Where are we going to get pink paint?”
“We’ll improvise. We’re clever that way.” I tightened my hand on the rose, getting as many thorns to pierce my skin as I could. The smell of cut grass and copper filled the air. I looked toward Tybalt. “What’s our shadow status?”
“I can feel them, but I haven’t been here long enough to anchor them properly.” He frowned. “This is an…interesting dilemma, I must admit.”
“Then let’s do this the hard way.” I held my hand out to him, half the rose stem protruding from my fist in invitation. He nodded and closed his hand around it. The smell of Luna’s magic suddenly mingled with our own, as the Rose Road we had so recently stepped off of remembered that we had been going somewhere.
I wasn’t sure it would work. Luna had told us not to drop the rose, not to leave the path. But we never dropped the rose—it was on me the whole time—and we didn’t leave the path, not really. We just took a shortcut through the shadows and the brush, something idiots in fairy tales have been doing since the beginning of time.
Maybe it was the fairy tale impossibility of our situation; maybe it was the blood in the air giving me the strength to push while Tybalt pulled. Whatever it was, the smell of roses got stronger, and the wicker trellis wove itself together in front of us, opening on the long, rose-lined tunnel.
“Fantastic,” I breathed. “Raj, take hold of my jacket. I don’t want to lose you in here.”
“I have a better idea,” he said. He stepped back, jumped into the air, and landed on my shoulder as an Abyssinian cat, the smell of pepper and burning paper clinging to his fur. He wrapped his tail around my neck, yawning in that casual way cats have, and settled down to purr loudly in my ear.
“Sure, I’ll carry you,” I said. I looked to Tybalt. “Is he this respectful to you?”
“Believe it or not, my dear, he’s more respectful of you than he is of almost anyone else.”
I glared. Tybalt laughed, and kept laughing as we stepped onto the Rose Road.
The binding Oberon used to seal the deep realms must have been incredibly strong. We were barely through the door when it slammed behind us, with a ripping, tearing noise that made it sound like the whole thing had been torn right out of existence. I forced myself not to look back, mindful of Luna’s warning that looking back could screw everything up. Raj had no such compunctions. I felt him twist as he stared at whatever was behind us. He meowed, somehow managing to make the sound bewildered.
“Just stay on my shoulder and hold on,” I said, and began to walk. Tybalt kept pace beside me. Our fingers, still clenched around the stem of Luna’s rose, were tangled up enough that we were almost holding hands, if your definition was generous enough. I found myself wishing for a generous definition. Ears red, I tore my eyes away from the rose and looked toward the Luidaeg’s charm, instead.
It was still glowing starlight neutral.
“I hope Quentin’s having better luck than I am,” I said.
Raj meowed.
“He’s back at Tamed Lightning, waiting to see if Chelsea—that’s the girl who accidentally knocked you into Annwn, and she’s going to be really sorry, once she stops being freaked out and ripping holes in everything—shows up there. He’ll call me if she does.” Both my hands were full. I frowned and added, “Not that I’m sure how I’m going to answer my phone if that happens.”
“Always the practical one,” said Tybalt. He stopped walking, pulling me to a halt as well. “This is where we entered.”
“Are you sure?”
He shot me an amused look. “I find it refreshing when I notice the smell of blood before you do, little fish. It reminds me of old times.”
“I don’t think I enjoyed them as much as you did,” I shot back, and breathed in. Now that I was looking, I could see splashes of blood on the thorns, and smell the mingled traces of Tybalt and myself. “How do we get out of here?”
Tybalt considered for a moment before he said, “Let go.”
It made sense. It fit what Luna had told us to do. I still frowned before nodding. “I guess so,” I said, and opened my hand. Tybalt did the same, and we watched as the rose fell, a little more slowly than normal—gravity apparently doesn’t work the same way on magical roses—to land on the thorny ground.
Then the Rose Road collapsed around us, fading into nothing in an instant, and we were back on the lawn at Shadowed Hills, standing on a low hill. The vegetable garden was in front of us, and even the clean air of the Summerlands smelled dirty somehow, tainted by proximity to the mortal world. After Annwn, the pristine seemed polluted.
Tybalt reached out with his bloody left hand and wrapped it around my bloody right one, this time twining our fingers properly, with no rose to get in the way. My cuts were already healing. His weren’t, and he held me all the same. Raj was purring again; the Luidaeg’s charm was still glowing pale and inert.
“Well,” I said, looking at the garden, where Luna and her staff were still working. “That’s not something I do every day.”
Tybalt just laughed.
SEVENTEEN
LUNA LOOKED UP before scrambling to her feet, nearly upsetting her basket of strawberries. “You’re back!” she exclaimed. Her gaze flicked to our bloody hands, then to the cat sitting on my shoulder. Where her eyes settled, however, was on the sprig of broom behind my ear. Her skin was already the stark white of newly fallen snow. Somehow, she still managed to go pale.
“Where have you been?” she asked, voice down to a whisper.
“Annwn.” I didn’t have any hands free, and so I had to disentangle my fingers from Tybalt’s in order to reach up and pluck the broom from my hair. I held it out toward Luna. “No people, lots of hedges.”
Her fingers trembled as she walked forward and took the broom from me. “This isn’t possible,” she said. Her head snapped up. “It isn’t possible.”
“We have a Tuatha changeling tearing holes in things,” I said. That seemed safe enough. She wasn’t going to jump straight from “Tuatha changeling” to “Etienne.” I wouldn’t have. Sylvester might, if Luna told him about this, but it was a risk I had to take. “Raj got sucked through one of those holes. That’s why we needed the Rose Road. We were hoping we could find a way to track him if we could get between the Summerlands and the islets. We found it.”
“Mixing magic often has its unexpected rewards,” said Tybalt.
Luna didn’t say anything for several minutes, but her eyes were suspiciously bright as she stared at the sprig of broom. Finally, she said, “I was there when Grandfather evacuated Annwn. It was never a populous land; most of those who lived there immigrated to escape their lives in other, more rigidly ruled places. They wept when the walls were sealed. I think some of them are crying still…” She shook herself as though she was trying to clear away a memory she’d never wanted to keep. “You shouldn’t have been there. Those doors were sealed for a reason.”
I looked at her—my liege’s wife, a woman I once thought of as a second mother—and all I felt was tired. The fractures between us started forming when she knowingly sent me to die in her father’s land. They’ve only grown deeper since then. Luna comes from a different Faerie, an older one, and I don’t understand it. It’s as alien to me as the Summerlands would be to Bridget. Watching Luna’s reaction to a bit of broken broom, I realized I was glad. I didn’t want to understand that world.
“My nephew was on the other side of those doors,” said Tybalt frostily. “I was not willing to leave him stranded to salve your sense of what is and is not proper.” He turned to me. “I should return him to my Court. His father will be worried.”
“I’m coming with you,” I
said, almost before I realized I was going to. Tybalt blinked. I smiled. “I need a way back to Tamed Lightning, remember? I left the car there.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Expediency.”
“October, surely you can’t intend—” began Luna.
I looked back toward her. “Luna, I am begging you, think before you finish that sentence. I’m tired, I’m covered in blood, and I’m probably not going to get a nap for a long time. So don’t tell me not to rattle any more doors looking for our missing changeling. I owe it to her parents to bring her home.” To her parents, and to Faerie itself if the Luidaeg was correct in her warnings.
Luna frowned, rose-pink eyebrows furrowing. “You should leave well enough alone.”
Frustration overwhelmed my good sense, and I snapped, “Raj wound up on the other side of those doors because of the changeling I’m looking for. You say your grandfather sealed those doors? Well, she’s unsealing them, and she’s going to get a lot of people killed if I don’t stop her.” Luna gaped at me, and she was still gaping as I offered my hand to Tybalt. “Let’s go.”
His smile was weary but so bright that it seemed to light up the twilight. He took my hand, cautioned, “Breathe in,” and pulled me with him as he stepped backward, into the shadow of a hedge. I let myself be pulled, and together, the three of us fell into shadow.
Raj was a warm weight against my neck as we ran through the darkness of the Shadow Roads, his claws dug deep into the leather of my jacket. He could have made this run himself, but after what he’d been through, I wasn’t going to ask him to do that. He was small enough for me to carry, at least for now.
The distance between Shadowed Hills and the Court of Cats seemed substantially shorter than the distance between Tamed Lightning and Shadowed Hills. I wondered whether the Shadow Roads worked like the passages between the mortal world and the knowes, with every use making the next use just a little easier. The Shadow Roads didn’t run between knowes very often, but they always ran back to the Court of Cats.
We stepped out of the shadows and into the high-walled alley I used to think of as the Court itself before I was granted access to the true Court of Cats. Cats—both mortal and Cait Sidhe in feline form—lounged on crates and garbage cans against the alley walls, although there was no stink of trash or decay in the air. A pile of mattresses was pushed up against one end of the alley. The other was shrouded in darkness, hiding this temporary gathering place from the mortal world.
I shoved the Luidaeg’s charm back into my pocket as I wiped the cold from my eyes. “Hop on down, Raj,” I said. “We’re home.”
He meowed piteously.
“Right.” I sighed, and freed my hand from Tybalt’s in order to scoop Raj from my shoulder and place him, carefully, on the ground. He stretched. Then he stood up, returning to his human form in a swirl of pepper and burning paper. “Feeling better?” I asked.
“No,” he said glumly. “But I’m home.”
“Yeah, well. We’re a full service operation.”
Raj looked at me, glass-green eyes solemn. “I thought I was going to die there.”
“You didn’t. But you should get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot, and—”
I didn’t get to finish that sentence. Raj’s father, Samson, came stalking from the shadows of the alley. His hands were balled into fists, and his pupils were narrowed to hairline slits, making him look alien and strange. “You,” he spat, angling toward me. “What are you doing here, whore? You have no right to passage in these lands.”
“You really don’t like me, do you?” I asked, trying not to let my irritation show. “What have I ever done to you? I saved your son. Twice now. Doesn’t that at least warrant not calling me a whore every time you get the chance?”
“Consider your answer carefully, Samson,” said Tybalt, in a mild tone. “I find myself awaiting your reply with great interest.”
Samson glared. Then he turned to Raj, dismissing us. “Are you injured?”
“No, Father, I—”
Samson’s backhand caught Raj across the cheek, snapping his head to the side. He made a startled mewling noise. I started forward before I realized I was going to move and stopped as Tybalt’s hand closed around my upper arm, holding me in place.
“No,” he said, very softly. “You cannot intervene.”
“I hate your rules,” I muttered, but stayed where I was. Raj was a teenage boy. He was my unofficial squire. And he was also a Prince of Cats, and that meant some battles, he had to fight on his own.
“Sometimes,” said Tybalt, “so do I.”
Raj turned back to his father, eyes wide. Then he straightened, gathering himself with a visible effort. He was tired. He’d been through a lot. Coming home and getting challenged by his father probably hadn’t been included in his plans for the day. “You do not strike me,” he said, practically spitting out his words. “I am not yours to strike.”
“You are my son.”
“I am a Prince of Cats.”
Samson sneered. “What Prince needs a changeling whore to rescue him? You should have called the shadows. You should have brought yourself home triumphant and unaided, rather than begging like a kitten in the night for rescue.”
“I did the best I could,” said Raj.
“You didn’t do enough.”
There was a moment where things could have gone very, very badly—even worse than they already were, and they weren’t going all that well. Raj looked at his father, measuring him, clearly assessing his chances of winning. Samson glared back.
And finally, Raj smiled. “I can beat you,” he said. “I’ve been able to beat you for a long time. You know that too, or you wouldn’t be goading me. I love you, Father. I don’t like you very much. I think maybe you shouldn’t come around me for a little while.” He turned to Tybalt. “May I be excused? I want a bath and a nap and a meal, not necessarily in that order.”
Tybalt inclined his head. “Rest,” he said. “I will be away; the Court is yours until my return.”
“Yes, Uncle.” Raj’s eyes remained on Tybalt. He seemed to be paying no attention to anything else. Yet when Samson’s hand lashed toward his face again, he grabbed his father’s wrist without hesitation. Raj wasn’t a big kid, maybe five foot six and thin as a rail despite the amount I knew he ate. Samson still struggled against his grip like it was iron.
“Let me go,” he commanded.
“No,” said Raj. He sounded exhausted. “You brought me here because I was going to be stronger than you. Because you wanted to have power, and this was the closest you could come. You didn’t save Mother when she got sick—you wouldn’t let me feed her, because you said future Kings couldn’t show favors. That’s how you see Kings. That’s not how I see them. That’s not how the people I trust see them. I don’t have to listen to you.” He let go of Samson’s wrist, pushing him away at the same time, so that he went stumbling backward.
Samson started to step forward again. Tybalt was suddenly between Raj and his father. I hadn’t even seen him start to move.
“Your challenge has been refused, Samson,” he said quietly. “Now trouble the boy no further, or you’ll answer to me.”
Samson’s eyes narrowed. He looked past Tybalt to me, hissed, and spun on his heel, stalking toward the shadows. He stopped just before stepping into them, saying, “You will regret this.” Then he was gone, leaving Raj, Tybalt, and me alone in the center of the alley.
The cats on the crates and cans lining the walls watched us with unblinking interest, as though this was the sort of entertainment they expected to receive every afternoon. One yawned and began washing himself.
I shook my head. “Sometimes I’m not sure whose politics are worse, you know.”
“All politics are terrible,” said Tybalt. He looked to Raj. “Go rest in my quarters. Your father is a fool, but even a fool will think twice before troubling you.”
“And if you want to head for my place when you wake up, May will be happy to let you order
pizza,” I added. “She’s worried about you.”
Raj smiled a little. “Okay. See you both later.” He darted in and hugged me before turning to run into the shadows opposite the ones his father had disappeared through. He should have run right into the wall. Instead, he ran through it, and he was gone.
I pulled the Luidaeg’s charm out of my pocket. It was still glowing neutral. Chelsea wasn’t nearby. “Can you get me back to Tamed Lightning?” I asked, stepping closer to Tybalt. “I should get back to Quentin and the car and let him know Raj is okay. He’s got to be worried by now.”
“How angry do you think he’ll be that we went to Annwn without him?” asked Tybalt.
I laughed, a little unsteadily. This close, his presence was distracting. “On a scale of one to livid? Livid times ten. That’s the sort of field trip nobody likes to be left out of.”
“Perhaps we should have sent a postcard before departing. ‘Deserted heaths are lovely, it’s probably best you aren’t here.’”
I laughed and was still laughing when Tybalt took my arm and led me back into the shadows. They were no warmer this time than they’d been before, but they felt safer. I was getting more comfortable in them, and more at ease with the fact that Tybalt had me—he had me, and there was no way he was going to let me go while we were out there in the dark. Tybalt would never let me go. Maybe it was time for me to come to terms with that idea.
We ran together through the shadows. The blood on my hand was freezing again, but that didn’t matter; I could wash it off when we got back to Tamed Lightning. And after that—
I never finished the thought. Something slammed into us, knocking my arm out of Tybalt’s hand. I cried out before I remembered how thin the air was on the Shadow Roads. Tybalt roared…and the roar of another Cait Sidhe answered him, followed by another, and another. We were surrounded by his subjects. In the dark. Where I couldn’t see, or help him fight them.