“But I also want to talk to you about theft. The theft of time. I’m standing in front of you today, wearing this face, wearing these clothes,” I plucked at my borrowed jacket, “because my stepfather, a pureblood, transformed me into a fish to save my life. I’m not saying he was wrong to do it—I like being alive, and at the time, he didn’t see another option—but when he made that choice, when he made that very pureblooded choice, he destroyed my life. I lost my child. I lost the man I was planning to marry. Everything I’d worked for was over in an instant, because someone who thought of time like it was air forgot I had a shorter supply than he did. That I lived in a faster world. Well, we all live in that faster world now. If you have a cell phone, if you drive a car, hell, if you watch soap operas, you’re living in the fast lane. Elf-shot doesn’t take away fourteen years, like Simon did. It takes away a century. It kills changelings, and it steals time from the people who survive it. Imagine trying to catch up with the last twenty years of mortal innovations. Now imagine trying to catch up with a hundred.”
The arcade was silent, everyone watching me, some of them barely seeming to breathe. I thought Liz, the Selkie clan leader, was nodding, but I couldn’t be sure; she was too far away, and my vision was blurry with unshed tears. I wanted to wipe them away. I wasn’t willing to show that kind of weakness. Not here, not now, not with all these people listening for a change.
“Duke Michel used elf-shot to remove Duchess Lorden from the conclave because he didn’t want things to be different. He wanted to disrupt this meeting and take your choices away. Queen Verona and King Kabos used their vassal as a weapon to remove the people whose politics and policies they didn’t like from the world, because they didn’t want to live in a world where a crown was anything other than an absolute pass to do whatever they liked. All three of the people who’ve disrupted this gathering did it because they want to keep living in the past. They want to steal our time. Don’t let them.” I turned to the three people seated behind me, Arden and Aethlin and Maida. “That was all. May I be excused now?”
“Yes, you may,” said Arden.
I couldn’t find the words. I had said too much, and my tongue no longer wanted to obey me. So I curtsied, as deeply and formally as I could manage, and turned to walk back down the stairs and along the aisle, through the silent arcade to the door.
I had done all that I could do, and there were people who needed me. Whether they woke up tomorrow or in a hundred years, I was going to honor that.
TWENTY-TWO
GUARDS FLANKED THE DOOR to the tower. More guards stood at the door two floors up. That was a welcome change. Maybe if there’d been guards stationed here before, Minna and Verona wouldn’t have been able to get inside. Maybe Quentin and Walther would have been awake. Maybe Minna and Verona would have been alive.
And if wishes were fishes, then beggars would ride. I didn’t recognize either of the guards at the door, but they clearly knew me; when I nodded, they nodded back, and the one on the left opened the door for me. I stepped through, still barefoot in my borrowed coat. The door closed behind me, leaving me alone with the sleeping.
Five of the spaces were filled now. Nolan, in his Gatsby-era finery, was the closest to the door. I wondered whether he would have been a good Prince, if he’d been given the opportunity; whether he would have made Arden a better Queen. I touched the bier beneath him and walked on. I paused when I came to Walther, who was still wearing his alchemy gear, leather apron and sturdy canvas shirt with burns on the hem. He’d never wanted to get involved with this sort of nonsense. That had all been me.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and walked on.
Dianda looked angry, even in her sleep, the surface of the water and the glistening sweep of her tail throwing back the room’s lights like a prism. They’d probably need to change the water periodically, to keep her from getting moldy. Keeping a mermaid on land was never going to be an easy task. Maybe that was why she and Patrick had chosen to live in the Undersea after their marriage: easier to keep her healthy down beneath the waves.
The next bier stopped me in my tracks.
Quentin was lying there with his eyes closed and his arms straight at his sides. He looked so small that for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I looked at him and saw the gawky teenager with the dandelion fluff hair, the boy who’d refused to listen when I told him “no,” who’d argued and challenged and demanded his way into my life. Our relationship had been one long process of me telling him to go away and him cleaving ever closer to my side. He was the same age as my daughter, but unlike her, he was never going to turn human and leave me. That alone would have been sufficient reason for me to burn the mortality out of my blood. If he was going to sleep, I was going to wait for him.
“Damn your eyes for making me care about you,” I said. My words were too loud. I kept talking anyway. “You could have backed off, you know? All you had to do was tell Sylvester I was a weird recluse who didn’t want to let you do your job. He would never have forced you to have anything else to do with me. You could have been fine. You could have been free. Not yoked to a loser like me.”
Quentin didn’t say anything. He just slept. Maybe that was for the best. I took a shuddering breath and moved on to the last, and hardest, bier.
Tybalt was still too pale. Whatever Jin had done to convince his body that it wasn’t on the verge of death, she hadn’t been able to restore all the blood that he’d lost. She said he was going to live, and I believed her. Maybe he’d recover immediately upon waking, and maybe he’d need time to recover, but I’d never known her to be wrong about someone’s chances of survival. Thank Oberon for that. I wasn’t some frail, fainting flower, to wither away to nothing because my lover died. That didn’t mean I was ready to grieve for another lover, not with Connor still flying among the night-haunts.
“Hi,” I said softly, and sat on the edge of the bier, reaching out to take one of his hands and lace my fingers through his. I could feel the edges of the claws beneath his skin, and somehow, that was reassuring; somewhere in the last year, that had become the way a hand was supposed to feel. “Jin told me you’re going to be okay. Just in case you were wondering. Not that you can hear me, which I guess means this is a good time to tell you this.”
I took a breath. It shook, and felt like it was burning my throat. I forced myself to keep going. “The conclave is going to be over soon. They’re going to vote, or . . . whatever it is they do at something like this, and then the High King and High Queen are going to pass a verdict they think their vassals will be willing to live with. The vote doesn’t matter, but I figure they’ll at least consider it, because they don’t want to start a war. And maybe they’ll say the cure can be used, and everything will be fine, but maybe they won’t. I think we have to be braced for the idea that too many of the monarchs will be set against it, and the cure will be buried for another seventy years, or whatever seems reasonable to immortal people. They have time.”
Time. That was the problem. I paused before I said, more softly, “I know you’ve always said you love me like I am. I know you’d never ask me to change. But I meant what I said before. If the cure is buried, I’ll take the humanity out of my veins. I’ll learn to live as a pureblood, whatever that means. And I will be here when you wake up.”
What would I look like, with the last of my father’s influence sliced away? Would my hair turn golden, like Amandine’s, or would it just keep getting lighter? Would my skin bleach to bitter paleness, my eyes lose all claim to color, and leave me as an outline of a woman, looking for the artist who could fill me in? The copper in my magic would leave me completely, I was sure of that; it was already turning bloody. I’d smell like a slaughter every time I cast a spell or spun an illusion. I would see a stranger in my mirror, and iron would burn me so badly that I’d have to avoid it like the poison it was, and I didn’t care.
Maybe it was unhealthy to consider making a change that
big for the sake of a man, but this wasn’t just about the man. This was about the boy on the next bier, the one I’d promised to usher into knighthood. This was about the mermaid who would have wanted me to look out for her family, and the alchemist who should never have been involved in this bullshit. Tybalt was my lover, yes, but this wasn’t about love. This was about family. This was about keeping my word to all of them. If I had to become a little less human to hold on to my humanity, then there was no question of what I needed to do.
I just had to be strong enough to do it.
The tears finally started falling as I curled up next to Tybalt, resting my head on his chest and tucking my hands under my cheek. I closed my eyes. “I don’t think you can hear me, but if you can,” I whispered, “if you can, please. Remember that I love you. I love you, and I am not sorry. No matter what it costs me. I am not sorry.”
His chest rose and fell beneath my hands, and for the moment, I could almost believe he was honestly sleeping, not enchanted to stay that way for a century. Healing, even magically aided, always put a strain on my body. Sometimes I didn’t even realize it was happening until the collapse came later. My eyes stayed closed, and eventually the tears stopped, and I fell asleep.
A hand touched my shoulder. “Toby.” The voice was soft, almost gentle, but it left no room for argument: I was going to listen. “You need to wake up now.”
I didn’t want to. I was warm, and I was comfortable, and since I hadn’t been elf-shot, I wasn’t going to get the questionable luxury of sleeping for a century. I just wanted to rest for a little while longer.
“You can be just like your mother sometimes, you know that?” The exasperation in the statement gave the identity of the voice’s owner away: the Luidaeg, sometimes called Antigone, my mother’s eldest sister.
Insults weren’t going to be enough to make me open my eyes. I nestled tighter against Tybalt.
The Luidaeg touched my shoulder again. This time, she left her hand there. “Toby, the conclave is over. They’ve voted, and the High King has given his decision.”
I opened my eyes but didn’t roll over. Instead, I stared at the slope of Tybalt’s cheek, and waited to hear the shape that my life was going to take.
“You want to know something funny? I think my jackass sister decided the vote, at least a little. No one wanted to side with her. She’s evil. You never want to side with the forces of evil, at least not where anyone can see you.” She paused. “But I think you decided it a lot more. You shouldn’t have been allowed to speak, and that meant that when you did, they listened. They heard you. And none of those assholes wanted to think about how confused they’d be if they missed a hundred years of Internet memes.”
I rolled over, staring at her. My heart felt like it was going to explode. “Do you mean . . . ?”
The Luidaeg smiled. Openly, honestly smiled. Her eyes were green as driftglass, and her features had settled in the broad, acne-scarred teenage face that I was most familiar with. “They’re going to allow the cure for elf-shot to be used.”
I was on my feet before I knew it, throwing my arms around her shoulders and squeezing her as tightly as Sylvester had squeezed me back in the hall. It was a full second before I thought to question the wisdom of hugging the sea witch without consent, and by that point, she was hugging me back, which made the question, if not moot, at least a little easier to answer.
“Not everyone’s going to get it,” she said. “People who were sentenced to sleep for their crimes will still need to wait and wake up the usual way, and we’re sure as shit not going to go onto Mom’s old Road to wake my sister. I’ll find a way to ward her away from Karen. Kid deserves a break. But the innocent and the targeted and the accidental, them, we can wake up.”
“When?” I let her go, taking a step back. “When are we waking them up?”
“Arden is trying to decide how they’re going to wake the Prince. Guess he’s sort of a big deal.” The Luidaeg nodded toward Nolan, making sure I knew which of the available princes she meant. “And I’m pretty sure they’re planning to buy all the sushi in San Francisco and wake Dianda up as part of a formal apology to the Undersea. Siwan is figuring out the materials they’ll need, and she’s coming up here to wake her nephew in a little bit. Says she wants him to help her get everything in order.”
I nodded slowly. “And Quentin and Tybalt . . . ?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She held up her empty hand. “Nothing up my sleeves.” She closed her hand. When she opened it again, a glass potion bottle on a long silver chain dropped to dangle near her elbow. At my shocked look, she smirked, and asked, “You really thought some wet-behind-the-ears alchemist would come up with an elf-shot cure and I wouldn’t demand samples? Walther will be able to help his aunt brew a fresh batch, but I didn’t figure you’d be big on patience. You’ve got three doses there. Enough for all three of the boys.”
“I can’t . . . I don’t . . . I mean . . .” I stammered to a stop, took a deep breath, and said the only thing that seemed even halfway sufficient: “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” She seemed almost sad as she held the pendant out to me. “I guess you’d have to.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by that. I didn’t want to know. I held the potion bottle in my hand, feeling the cool glass getting warmer where it pressed against my skin, and looked from one bier to another. I needed to wake one of them before the other. But which one?
The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Mom’s sake. Feed it to your kitty, and give the rest to me. I’ll wake up the kid and the alchemist. They don’t want to see you sucking face first thing out of their coma anyway.”
Thanking her again would have been excessive and potentially dangerous. I bobbed my head in silent understanding and turned back to Tybalt. His lips were parted. That seemed like a prompt. I pulled the glass stopper out of the potion bottle and leaned forward, pressing the rim to his lips. Then, keeping my movements slow and easy, I tipped the bottle upward until a third of the liquid trickled into his mouth.
He wasn’t choking. That was a good sign. I turned to hand the bottle to the Luidaeg.
When I looked back to Tybalt, his eyes were open. He seized immediately on my face, eyes widening as his hand scrabbled on the bier, looking for mine. I gave it to him, and he clutched my fingers tight. The color was already starting to come back into his cheeks, slow but steady, as Jin’s magic woke and finished its healing.
“October?” he asked, and his voice was raspy, and the sound of it mended something in my heart that I had thought was broken forever.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Your hair. It’s still brown.” He reached up with his free hand, running his fingers through my hair before bringing them to rest against the tapering curve of my ear. Then he smiled. “You didn’t have to change for me.”
I knew instantly what he meant, and nodded, raising my hand to curl over his, keeping him in place. “The conclave just ended. They voted to wake up everybody who isn’t asleep for good reason.” I could hear Quentin stirring behind me—his squawk of indignation, and the Luidaeg’s pained exhale as he threw his arms around her neck. Everything was normal, then. Playing out exactly like it was supposed to.
Tybalt nodded slowly. “I feel . . . better.”
“Jin was here.”
“Ah. That explains it.”
I was going to have to tell him about what had happened with Verona and Kabos, how they’d manipulated Minna and used her as their murder weapon. He needed to understand why all this had happened, and how it was that I’d found myself hauled out of a tower window and plummeting to my death. He wasn’t going to like that. Hell, I didn’t like it. But he was awake for me to tell, and right here and now, that was more than enough for me.
I bent to kiss him, quick and glancing, and left our hands joined as I twisted to cast a smile at my newly reawakened squire.
Things were getting back to normal.
TWENTY-THREE
THINGS WERE NOT GETTING BACK to normal. There was no version of normal I could envision where I would save the day—nearly getting killed in the process—awaken my lover, my squire, and my friend, and find myself not eight hours later standing in front of the High King and High Queen of the Westlands, the Queen in the Mists, and Duke Sylvester Torquill, listening to them deciding my fate.
Some days it’s not worth crawling out of the shallow woodland grave, I swear.
“Be that as it may,” Aethlin was saying, “she has now been present for the deaths of two monarchs, responsible for the replacement of two others, and directly responsible for the death of one of the Firstborn. These are issues we must consider.”
“I don’t see why,” said Sylvester. “October is a hero of the realm. It’s her job to become involved with awkward situations.”
“How many crowns did you redistribute, exactly, before your retirement?” asked Maida. Her question was mild, but Sylvester flushed red and turned his face away. “My husband is right. While October may be innocent of any wrongdoing, our vassals are starting to become concerned. One cannot simply leave a king-breaker unattended.”
“She’s not unattended,” protested Arden. “She’s a willing member of a noble household, and is here on a regular basis.”
“She has allegiances among the Undersea, she socializes with Firstborn, she’s set to unite the Divided Court with the Court of Cats, and our son thinks she hung the moon and stars,” said Aethlin. “Again, we know that she’s innocent, but to the outside eye, it certainly looks as if she’s gathering power for a political coup.”
I had been told to stay silent unless addressed directly, but I couldn’t help myself: I burst out laughing, causing all four of the people acting as my judge and jury to turn and stare at me.