Her face was sweet, pleasant, and kind; her eyes were brown. Her ears were pointed, although not as much as mine or Quentin’s, and stuck slightly out from her head, like the handles on a jug. Her hands were a little bit too large for her body, and thick-skinned enough that I’d seen her pick up burning coals without noticing the heat. They were still gentle, and sensitive enough that she could feel my lips against her palm.
I adore her. Call it selfish—I knew that I should peel myself away now, before things went any further down this road, which could never be ours to walk. Call it foolish and irresponsible. I don’t care. She’s the fire in my hearth and the heat in my home, and if anything is going to make me regret my eventual kingship, it’s her.
“You came,” she said, finally breaking off our kiss, if not our embrace. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering, and she’d never been more beautiful. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to, with your uncle out of town.”
“My Regent saw the wisdom of granting me my freedom,” I said solemnly, and kissed her nose. “Want to go inside? I’m sure your dad’s ready and waiting to remind me that he can break bricks with his bare hands. He really, really likes reminding me of that.”
“He’s just trying to make sure you won’t hurt me. I can’t blame him for being overprotective.” A shadow crossed her face, there and gone quickly enough that I might not have recognized it if I hadn’t been so incredibly familiar with it. “He’s in the living room. You should say hi before we go to my room.”
“Lead on,” I said.
I don’t have my Uncle Tybalt’s skill with flowery, archaic declarations of love, a fact for which I’m genuinely grateful—sometimes listening to him is like listening to the audio version of some dreadful period romance, the sort of thing where the men are constantly losing their shirts and all the women keep swooning at the shameful sight of their exposed pectorals. Besides, I might not be as fancy as he is, but I’m good enough for Helen. She smiled, glancing up at me through her lashes, and grabbed my hand, dragging me with her into the house.
Dean is surprisingly fond of romantic comedies, artifice-filled narratives where boy meets girl—always boy meets girl, which is remarkably limiting and pedestrian for a genre supposedly built on the shoulders of love—through some contrived coincidence, structurally called a “meet cute.” Well, Helen and I didn’t “meet cute.” We met in blood and terror, when Blind Michael’s Hunt stole us from our beds and cast us, defenseless and unprepared, into the unending fog of his private domain.
Helen doesn’t like my friends. October frightens her, reminds her too much of those terrible days when we both believed our bodies would be forfeit to a Firstborn’s whims. Quentin is too imposing—and that’s without her knowing that he’s going to rule the whole continent when he’s older. She’s never met Chelsea, or April, or Dean. She prefers the safety of her home, the locked door, the closed window, an Internet connection keeping her tethered to the world. She’s a modern anchorite, unwilling to venture farther from safety than her porch.
I understand it, and I don’t. Blind Michael was able to take her from her bed, was able to take me from the Court of Cats, where I should have been safe even from Titania herself. A locked door could never have saved us.
Blind Michael is dead. October killed him with iron and with silver and set us free from the monster. She couldn’t free us from the memory. That will haunt us for all the long centuries of our lives, and we will never find comfort in a hunting horn or in the flicker of a candle’s flame. He stole us, and he stole from us, and sometimes when I look at Helen, I wonder whether he stole too much for her to ever recover.
The front door led into a small, brightly-lit living room, decorated in rich, warm colors, like we were stepping into a snapshot of the living autumn. Despite the time of year, a fire burned in the fireplace, crackling and bright, casting flickers that were too bright and too steady to be mistaken for candles across the walls. Hobs aren’t technically fire fae—they could no more survive in a volcano’s heart than I could—but they find comfort in the presence of a hearth, drawing peace and strength from the flame. This was as traditional as they could get in a mortal neighborhood in the middle of San Francisco.
Helen’s father, Willis, was sitting on the couch pretending to read a book. It was the same one he always pretended to read when I came a visit, some dire medical thriller with a picture of an elegantly dead woman on the cover. Why is it always the women who are elegantly dead? I would make a perfectly lovely corpse, if the need arose.
“Good evening, Raj,” he said, looking at me over his book. “Slipped the leash again?”
“Leashes are a canine affectation,” I said. “But yes, I’m at liberty for the remainder of the night, and thought your lovely daughter might enjoy my questionable company for a few hours before dawn.”
Helen giggled. Willis, who had looked as if he might say something, settled deeper into the couch, an eloquent look passing between us. He knew as well as I did that my time with Helen was limited; that one day duty and the division between our Courts would pull me away. He feared that the longer I stayed, the more I’d break her heart when the time for leaving came, and to be fair, I couldn’t say he was wrong. But he hadn’t been with us in Blind Michael’s lands. He didn’t understand how much I was already going to break her heart . . . or how much we needed each other if we were ever going to heal.
Quentin is my brother and October is my knight and both of them went into that damned country voluntarily, with their eyes open, with consent lingering on their lips. Helen and I lacked that sweet decision. We were wounded, and we were going to stay that way for a long time yet to come.
“Hi, Dad, bye, Dad, don’t wait up, Dad,” said Helen, and grabbed my hand, dragging me out of the living room toward the stairs.
I could feel Willis’ eyes on my back every step of the way.
Her room was the first in the upstairs hall. She pulled me into it and kicked the door shut behind us, her mouth already finding mine as her hands went to my hair and snarled themselves there, thumbs brushing the curve of my ears in not-so-subtle indication that the time for illusions was over, at least for now. She preferred it when I was myself before her. Ego said that it was because she couldn’t live without my handsome face. Logic painted a grimmer picture.
She wanted to be able to see me because if she could see me, she’d know for sure that it was me. That I hadn’t been replaced by some dire Rider, come to finish what their fallen Firstborn started.
I released my illusions with a wave of my hand, the other hand clamped tight against her side, holding her to me. She made a small sound of delight, mouth still fixed to mine, pushing me backward toward the bed.
It had been a hard day, then. Some nights she wanted to talk, to show me silly videos online and discuss the affairs of the day. Those nights came after days where she slept deeply, where the horrors of our past allowed her some small measure of peace. Other nights, she wanted nothing more than to speed toward some unseen and unseeable cliff, trusting me to pull us back from the edge.
It would have been so easy to be the boy her father fears, the boy who’d take advantage of her needy, gasping fear. I could hurt her badly, and I could do it without meaning to. That’s part of why I had to stay with her. It wasn’t merely that I adored her, the scent of her hair, the roughness of her hands. I cared about her. She was my friend. I’d be a coward if I walked away from her now, when she still needed something to hold onto, something to believe in.
I could be her safe harbor, at least for a time. And if I knew I would have to leave her one day, I could try to make sure that when that inevitable day arrived, she would be prepared to stand on her own.
We reached the bed. She sat, pulling me with her, pulling her mouth from mine and burying her face against my shoulder as she started crying. I put my arms around her and held her close to me.
T
here was nothing else I could do.
THREE
As was so often my wont, I stayed too late. Helen’s tears had been followed by more kisses, and then more tears, need and grief alternating until well past the hour when I’d intended to return to the Court. The sun was teasing the edges of the sky when I stepped onto the porch, the sound of her father’s footsteps on the stairs a whisper of sound behind me. He knew what it meant when I stayed that late and came downstairs with wild, haunted eyes. He’d go to her and offer her a father’s comfort, feed her breakfast and brush her hair and do everything in his power to help her go to bed feeling safe and loved and unafraid.
Sometimes he could achieve it. Other times she’d call at noon and beg me to come over, to sit with her, to keep the night at bay. October attributed the amount of time I spent asleep at her house to my dual natures as teenager and cat. My uncle, I knew, suspected there was something more.
I dropped to all four feet before darting off the porch and into the nearby bushes. I wanted to run, to clear my head, before I returned to the Court and to Ginevra’s judgment. I glanced back. Cal was asleep on the porch where they had gone to wait for me.
Well. I’d promised to come out via the front door, and not to try and sneak away. I’d said nothing about waking my erstwhile chaperone. If they woke on their own, they might be able to track me. If not, well. I couldn’t be blamed for acting on my nature, now could I? I’m a cat. Cats are not meant to be confined.
The bushes ended at a fence. I scaled it easily, running along the top of it until I dropped down into a narrow alley. From there, I ran down a set of residential steps, feeling my muscles warm up and relax with every loping stride. The air was sweet and the sun had yet to rise and the city was stirring, neither fully awake nor fully asleep. I might as well have already been King, for I had all the freedom of the world, and all the stars to share it with.
That, perhaps, was my mistake. I was so wrapped up in the joy of running and the pride of my own strength that I darted into the street without looking first. There was a screech of brakes and the honk of a horn. I looked back, intending to gloat at the human motorist who’d stopped for my sake. They’d never stood a chance of hitting me.
The car that had slowed was already roaring away. But Cal, in feline form, was frozen in the middle of the street, ears flat and fur puffed up in all directions, seemingly hypnotized by the headlights of the second car that was bearing down on them.
There wasn’t time to think, to consider the possible consequences of my actions. There was only one of my subjects in immediate danger. I wheeled and ran back to the street, slamming my body into Cal’s, sending them tumbling out of the way.
The car hit me.
It sounds so simple, put like that. Four little words. The car hit me. The car struck me, fender slamming into my body before I had a chance to move out of the way, momentum launching me into the air like I weighed nothing, like I was nothing. There wasn’t any pain, or perhaps there was too much pain: I could almost taste it, something huge and implacable and amorphous nibbling at the edges of my awareness, ready to swallow me whole.
I tried to breathe. I couldn’t breathe.
The pain descended, and the world went away, taking me with it. In the span of a single failed breath, I no longer existed; I, Raj, was lost, swept away in a tide so much greater than myself that it would have been foolishness to protest. Even Blind Michael couldn’t have stood up to this, this nothingness, this cessation of being.
I was gone.
I don’t know how long the silence lasted. When it began to break, it was in flickers and sparks. Light, too bright to be either pixie or flame, steady and white and burning. Voices raised in agitation. The pain began to return. I tried to pull away from it, and something pricked my leg, distinct from the greater agonies only in its newness. I mewled, once, and then I was mercifully gone again, down into the dark, down where nothing mattered.
I’d always been afraid that if—that when—I died, Blind Michael would be waiting for me, ready to finish what he’d begun. But he was nowhere. There was only the darkness, the blessed darkness, and I allowed myself to fade into it with a sigh and a murmur of thanks. Whatever came next, I’d meet it on a night-haunt’s wings, and I would know no more of fear, or pain, or loss.
My last thought was of Helen.
And then even that was gone.
FOUR
The air was bitter with disinfectant and sickness. It stung the back of my throat and the inside of my nose, making breathing difficult. I sneezed, and the force of the gesture sent waves of pain through my body, awakening injuries that had been content to sleep until that moment.
If there was pain, I wasn’t dead. October had taught me that, whether she meant to or not. I’ve seen her get up from injuries that should have incapacitated her permanently, half her blood outside her body and still fighting. If she could do that, surely I could do something as simple as opening my eyes.
Thinking a thing and actually doing it are sometimes sadly different. I struggled to force my body to obey my commands until finally, exhausted, it gave in, and I was able to part my eyelids slightly. Even that small effort left me panting, and filled my mind with more questions than answers.
I was looking at the bars of a cage. Across from me, in what I assumed was a similar cage, a Siamese cat glared from a nest of blankets, a bandage wrapped around one paw and a long plastic tube taped beneath it, running some clear liquid from what looked like an IV bag from one of Chelsea’s hospital dramas. A great many of them share cast members with her beloved science fiction shows, and it seems that once a starship captain, always a starship captain, at least in her eyes.
Wait.
Digressions are normal things—May once likened a conversation between Quentin and myself to watching two kits chase a ball of string around the house—but not when things are actually happening. We’re capable of focusing. I’m capable of focusing. The fact that I was suddenly trying to remember the name of every show I’d seen Chelsea watch meant something was wrong with the way my mind was working. I turned my head, fighting the exhaustion that threatened to pull me back into the dark. There was a similar bandage wrapped around my paw, connected to a similar length of tubing.
They were doing something to me. They were putting something inside my body that didn’t belong there, and it was making it difficult for me to think the way I needed to. I would never be able to escape with this . . . this medication flowing into my body, unasked for and unwanted.
I would bite it. Yes. I would bite it, and then it would stop, and my thoughts would clear, and I could escape through the shadows.
The shadows! I blamed the tube in my arm for not thinking of them before. They would take me away from this dreadful place, get me out of this cage and back to someplace familiar, where I could think. I reached for them, or tried to. Everything was fuzzy. There were shadows pooled in the corners of my cage—I, a Prince of Cats, in a cage—but they were ordinary, mortal things, and they seemed entirely unaware of my presence. I reached again, and when they failed to respond, I went limp, panting from the effort.
No. Tube first, then shadows. The order mattered. I tried to bite at the tube, but I was too tired, and my body had no desire to obey me. Exhaustion stole over me like a thief, and I fell asleep again, mouth only half-open, tube still securely in my arm.
When I woke for the second time, a woman in pastel scrubs was standing over me, a clipboard in her hands. I opened my eyes. I considered her through the fog of pain and weariness and what I now understood to be some sort of drug, dulling my reflexes and keeping me from doing more than lying motionless, presenting myself like prey.
I am not prey. I am a Prince of Cats. I fought my way once more through the exhaustion and hissed at her, reminding her that I was a predator to be feared and respected.
It came out as the smallest squeak of a sound, bare
ly even worthy of the name. The woman smiled.
“Well, hello, you handsome little fellow. Good to see you feeling better. And those eyes! Dr. Bailey will be thrilled to know that she’s won our bet. See, some of us think you’re an actual Abyssinian, with that coat and that bone structure, and we just needed to see your eyes to be sure. You have the right eyes. Someone’s got to be missing you, buddy.”
Her voice was sweet, even soothing; she spoke to me like she believed the sound would help, even if she clearly assumed I wouldn’t understand a word she said. I decided against hissing at her again and simply stared, watching as she made notes on her clipboard.
“You did a very brave, very stupid thing. The nice man who brought you in said that you ran right out into the middle of the street to make a different cat move before it could be hit by a car. Were you friends? Were you fighting? Was it a female in heat? You’re not a stray, not with that coat, but whoever owns you did you no favors by keeping you intact.”
That’s an ominous way of phrasing things. I attempted to hiss again. All I managed to do was pant.
“Aw, poor guy, you’re exhausted.” She put down her clipboard and produced a syringe from her pocket. It was quite small compared to her hand, but I was quite small, compared to a human, and I wanted nothing to do with her needles or her human attempts to cure what ailed me. I needed to get back to the Court of Cats, where someone who was currently stronger than I could go and fetch me a healer. That Ellyllon from Shadowed Hills, perhaps, or an alchemist—Walther. Walther would be an excellent choice. He knew me and wouldn’t make any nasty jokes about my attempts to argue with a car. He’d just fix whatever was broken inside of me, and he’d do it without needles.
The woman unhooked the front of my cage, swinging it open. I lay where I was and panted, wishing I had the strength to run. Anything would have been better than being vulnerable and exposed, an easy target for whatever she wanted to do.
The Unkindest Tide Page 39