I closed my eyes and crumpled the leaves in my hands, mixing them with spider-silk until they formed a gummy paste that stuck my hands together. Once the mess stopped crackling as I squeezed it, I ran my hands down the sides of my torso and hips, picturing a simple cotton dress in golden brown—I’ve always looked good in that color—with matching slippers sensible enough to run in. One night in heels was enough to hold me for a while. The scent of copper and cut grass grew thick around me, almost banishing the taste of roses as the spell took shape.
The gummy feeling on my hands faded, replaced by the swish of heavy skirts around my suddenly bare legs, and the absence of hair brushing against the back of my neck. With a final burst of copper, the spell snapped closed, sending me reeling. Even as fresh as I was, casting a spell that complex was enough of a strain that it took a moment of leaning heavily against the laden table before I could get my eyes to focus on the mirrors. Once they did, I studied myself, and sighed.
The dress was wrong.
I’d been aiming for cotton, and I wound up with velvet; the neckline was substantially lower than I’d intended, and the bodice was embroidered with climbing ivy, making it look even more like I’d been trying to draw attention to something other than my eyes. The slippers were practical, thankfully, but they were embroidered to match the dress. Even my hair was wrong, pinned up in an elegant series of layers that made it almost look like it was something other than stick-straight. I glared at my reflection. It didn’t change.
It wasn’t what I’d intended, but it was a decent dress, and I didn’t feel like crafting a new one. It would have to do. Turning, I left the room.
Despite exiting through the door I’d entered by, I stepped out into a different hallway altogether. The footman who had ushered me in was gone, replaced by a page standing at rigid attention in front of the audience chamber doors. His starched tunic and breeches were probably real, unlike my dress: this kid was definitely upholding the dignity of his office. Ah, well; he’d probably loosen up as he got older.
His expression hardened when he saw me, eyes settling on the dull points of my ears. Not just young; young enough to think changelings had no business at Court. Interesting.
Sometimes the best way to deal with prejudice is to ignore it. “Morning,” I said. “Here to see Sylvester.”
“And you are?” he said, giving me the sort of look usually reserved for people with contagious diseases and unpaid bills. There was something familiar about him. He had the blond hair and blue eyes common in young Daoine Sidhe, and looked like he was maybe fourteen years old.
“Sir October Daye of the Kingdom of the Mists, once of the Fiefdom of Home, Knight of Lost Words, sworn to Sylvester Torquill, daughter of Amandine of Faerie and Jonathan Daye of the mortal world,” I said. My full title takes far too long to say, and I’m just a knight. When the real nobles get going, it can take hours. “Also an old friend of the Duke and Duchess, so are you going to let me by, or should I sneak in through the kitchens?”
The page blinked, once, eyes narrowing. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
I blinked. “Have we met?”
“In only the strictest sense of the word,” he said. He spoke with a very faint Canadian accent.
It was the tone, even more than the accent, that tipped me off. “Oh,” I said. “Uh. Hello. You look much better this way. The whole human thing didn’t suit you.”
“I’m sure His Grace is waiting,” said the page frostily.
Sylvester absolutely wasn’t waiting; Sylvester didn’t know I was coming. Given that, I was tempted to stay in the hall and talk to the page a little longer, take the time to try to change his mind . . . but time wasn’t exactly something I had in abundance. Evening’s curse would move me if I didn’t move myself.
Reunions don’t get any easier when you delay them. Offering a last, formal bow of my head, I moved past the page and into the audience chamber.
The room was deserted when I entered, save for four figures sitting on the dais at the far end. Most of Shadowed Hills is built a little larger than it needs to be, and no single room defines that aesthetic better than the audience chamber, which could be used to host an indoor carnival, should Sylvester ever feel the urge. He hasn’t, as far as I know, but some of the parties he and Luna have thrown were large enough to become the stuff of legend. The knowe’s designer probably intended the room to seem majestic and to create an atmosphere of awe in the petitioner. All it’s ever done for me is create the urge to get a pair of roller skates and cut my travel time in half.
My steps echoed against the marble floor. I was halfway across the room before I could see any details of the figures on the dais; two men and two women, one man and the younger of the women with that characteristic fox-red Torquill hair, the other woman more literally foxlike, with silver-furred ears and three tails curled beside her on her velvet cushion. The younger man looked awkward and almost out of place alongside the other three, his hair an untidy mop of gray-brown curls, his concession to the Ducal colors a pair of blue jeans and a yellow tunic.
I must have seemed like just another member of the Court for most of my trek across the audience chamber, a brown-haired woman in a brown velvet dress with nothing unusual about her. Luna was the first to realize who I was. She straightened in her seat, ears going flat against her head, tails uncurling and starting to twitch. Her sudden attention alerted Sylvester, who turned toward me, frowning. I could see the confusion on his face, growing more pronounced as I continued to approach.
Then the confusion faded, replaced by something I hadn’t expected. I thought I was prepared for almost anything. I wasn’t prepared for this.
“Toby!” he cried, sheer joy transforming his features as he rose, almost knocking over his chair in his hurry to descend from the dais. I froze, stunned. Sylvester crossed the space between us at something close to a run, catching me by the waist and swinging me up into the air before I had time to remember how to move. He was laughing now, joy fading enough to show the emotion behind it: relief. Pure, unadulterated relief.
I’d been hiding from Shadowed Hills because I didn’t want to face him; I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when I came creeping back and admitted that I’d failed. But all I saw when I looked at him now was the joy of a friend who’s finally seen something they’d thought was lost come home.
Finding something to say seemed impossible. Luna saved me from the need, stepping up and putting a hand on Sylvester’s arm as she said, “Dear, you might want to put her down before she gets motion sickness. I’d really rather not have to explain to the Hobs why they need to mop the floor before tonight’s Court.”
Still laughing, Sylvester swung me back down to my feet, saying, “Yes, yes, of course,” before pulling me into a hug. He smelled, as always, of daffodils and dogwood flowers, and the solid, reassuring scent of him was enough to make it difficult not to cry. I sniffled, pulling away to wipe my eyes. Sylvester hesitated, and then let me go.
I stumbled back a few steps, taking refuge in formality as I bowed, holding myself at the low point of the arc. I can say one thing for the nobles: they probably have the combined thigh strength to take on every synchronized swimming team in the world. Holding a formal bow hurts, and it’s always good incentive toward doing heavy stretches before I have to do it again.
“Toby?” said Sylvester quizzically.
“I don’t think she’s going to stop doing that until you acknowledge her, dear,” said Luna.
“I picked her up. Doesn’t that acknowledge her presence?”
“I meant a little more formally.”
“Oh.” Sylvester cleared his throat. “Yes, October, I see you. Can you stop that, please? Where have you been? Well, I know where you’ve been, that was a silly question, forget I asked it, but we’ve all been worried sick about you, you know. We only found out you were back when Evening called out of courtesy.” He sounded faintly hurt now. “I’ve sent messages. Didn’t you get them?”
>
“Yes, Your Grace, I did,” I said, straightening. “I just . . . I wasn’t ready to answer them.”
“But why?” Sylvester asked, looking at me like a kid who’s just been told that Christmas has been canceled.
“I think I know the answer to that one,” said Luna, putting her hand on his arm and offering me a warm, if slightly sorrowful, smile. “Hello, Toby. You’re looking well.”
“As are you,Your Grace,”I said,smiling back.I couldn’t help it. It’s hard to look at Luna without smiling.
Short, slender, compact; you could describe the Duchess of Shadowed Hills in those words, if they wouldn’t make her sound so fragile. Luna was a small woman, but she was anything but breakable, with arms strengthened by hours of gardening and all the magical defenses her Kitsune blood implied. Their strength is advertised by the number of their tails, and she had three to call her own, silver-furred and sleek. Her waist-length brown hair was plaited back, and she was dressed for gardening, ignoring the formality of her surroundings. Luna has never been much of one for standing needlessly on ceremony.
“You should have come before this,” she chided lightly. “We’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” I admitted, and turned to face Sylvester. “Your Grace . . .”
“We looked for you,” he said. There was an urgency to his words, like there was nothing in the world I needed to hear more than I needed to hear what he had to tell me. “We looked for you everywhere. You have to believe me. When you vanished, I set Etienne to scouring the city, I sent half my knights with him, I did everything I could, and you were just . . . you were just gone, Toby. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry? He was admitting that he’d taken resources away from the search for his wife and daughter—admitting it while his wife was standing right next to him, no less—and he was telling me he was sorry? I gaped at him, not sure what I could say.
Rayseline saved me from answering by stepping up on her father’s other side, sliding her hands around his arm and looking at me. Her eyes were the same gold as her father’s, but while on him the color was warm and welcoming, on her it seemed almost reptilian, the gaze of a predator.
“Oh, look,” she said. “She’s finally deigned to come and see the consequences of her failure. Hello, failure. How’ve you been?”
“Hello, Rayseline,” I said, keeping my tone measured. Whatever relief I might have felt at her interruption died at her words.
We don’t know what happened to Luna and Raysel during the twelve years that they spent missing—twelve years that corresponded with the first twelve years of my own missing time. But while for me, those years were lost, whatever they went through, they lived it. The few people I’d spoken to said that Luna came back a little sadder, a little stranger, but Raysel . . . Raysel came back wrong. Growing up the way she did broke something inside of her, and looking at her now, I began to realize why the whispers said it might never be repaired.
“I wondered when you’d come sniffing around here,” she said. “Looking for something else that you can’t do? I’m sure Daddy has plenty of unsolvable puzzles and quests that can’t succeed. Go do some of those.”
“Raysel, that’s enough,” said Sylvester, sharply. “I’m her liege. October is always welcome here.”
“She wants something,” said Raysel. “I can smell it on her.”
“Rayseline, that’s quite enough,” said Luna. The normal calm of her tone was gone, washed in worry and barely concealed irritation. Raysel’s unpleasantness wasn’t just an act for my benefit, then.
“She’s right,” I said. Sylvester and Luna both turned toward me. Raysel smirked, looking triumphant. “I’m afraid I am here because I want something. Or, well. Because I need to tell you something, and I need to ask for a favor.”
“Anything,” Sylvester said. “You know that.”
“I’m not so certain about that,” I said, glancing from him to Luna and back again.“Have you heard the news?” Please say yes, I prayed. Don’t make me be the one that tells you. If the Queen were reacting at all sanely, her heralds would already have been and gone . . . but everyone seemed much too calm for that, and the Queen had said no one would even speak Evening’s name. That would make it sort of hard for her to send out notices.
If Sylvester didn’t know, it was my duty to tell him. And I desperately didn’t want to.
“We heard there was going to be an end of winter ball at the Queen’s knowe in two weeks,” offered Connor, finally abandoning the dais and moving to stand next to Rayseline—next to his wife. Smirking at me, she transferred her hold from Sylvester’s arm to his. “Please tell me you didn’t finally decide to come visit cause you thought we’d missed the latest exciting issue of the Kingdom newsletter. Hey, Toby.”
“Hey, Connor,” I said, smiling despite the grimness of the news I was about to share. It’s hard not to smile when looking at Connor.
Take your standard California beach bum, give him spiky brown hair streaked with seal’s-fur gray, brown eyes so dark they verge on black, slightly webbed fingers and a baked-in tan, and you’ve got Connor O’Dell. He was the Undersea emissary to Sylvester’s Court when I was serving there. We were . . . friends. Good friends. We might have been more than just good friends, if his family hadn’t objected to the idea of him being involved with a changeling before Connor and I could move beyond a few sweet, fumbling encounters in the gardens that dotted the knowe. He said he was sorry; so did I. And then I let myself get swept off my feet by a human man who would never say he couldn’t love me because my blood wasn’t pure enough.
I never blamed Connor for the way things happened. That’s just the way it goes for a changeling in a pureblood’s world. Coming home to hear that he was married to Rayseline Torquill was a shock, but it didn’t decrease my fondness for the man. Just the likelihood that I was going to let his wife catch me checking out his ass.
Sylvester, meanwhile, was simply looking puzzled. “No,” he said. “There’s been no news—at least, not anything big enough to bring you back to us. What’s going on, Toby? It’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but . . . why are you here?”
I swallowed. “So you haven’t heard anything about the Countess of Goldengreen?”
Sylvester’s look of puzzlement increased. “Evening? No, nothing. Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?” I bit back a near-hysterical giggle. “Yes. Something’s very wrong.”
“Is she hurt?”
“No. No, she’s . . . Your Grace, Evening was killed last night. She’s dead.”
Luna’s ears flattened against her head. “Dead?” she whispered.
Raysel’s sudden laughter cut off any answer I could have given. We all turned to stare at her as she released her husband’s arm, sweeping out of the room on the tide of her own merriment.
“What—” I said.
“Connor, go with her,” said Luna. It wasn’t a request.
Nodding dolefully, Connor shoved his hands into his pockets and trailed after his wife. He caught my eye as he passed, and the look on his face was sad, almost beaten. Raysel’s the one with the Kitsune blood, but he was the one who looked like a whipped puppy.
The three of us stood for a moment in uncomfortable silence before Luna glanced to Sylvester and said, “She’s still a little unstable from everything that . . . from everything. My family has always been subject to . . . well. We don’t recover quickly from the sort of things she was forced to go through. It’s just our way.” She shifted as she spoke, refusing to meet my eyes.
No one seems to know what “things” Luna and her daughter went through during their absence, but the haunted look in Luna’s face told me they might have been worse than I’d ever dreamed. “Of course,” I said, feeling somehow embarrassed to have witnessed Raysel’s outburst, and turned to Sylvester.
The color had drained from his face, leaving him pale and shaking. He didn’t seem to have noticed Raysel’s dramatic exit. “Dead?” he said.
/> “Murdered,” I said, looking down, trying to avoid the shock I knew I’d see in his expression. Too late. “They shot her, then slit her throat with an iron blade.”
A sharp silence fell over the room. I raised my head, meeting Sylvester’s eyes. “Iron?” he said.
“Yes. She died from her wounds.” Not from anything more merciful.
“So there’s no way it was anything but murder.” There was something broken in his tone. The purebloods have to stick together, because they have nowhere else to turn, and so every death hits them hard. Changelings don’t work that way. We’re too scattered and too different, and it can take us years, sometimes, to find out when someone dies. Death is more of a danger for us, and that makes it seem less impossible. That doesn’t make it any better.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.
“I . . . yes. Yes, of course.” His fingers sought Luna’s and gripped them hard. “Oh, Evening. Was there . . . was that all you had to tell?”
“Before she died, she asked me to find her killers,” I said, watching him carefully. “I’m here because I wanted you to know. And because I have to ask for help.”
“I wish you’d come sooner,” said Luna, very quietly. “We’ve missed you, and no homecoming should be darkened by this sort of news. It’s an ill omen.”
Sylvester’s concerns were more immediate than ill omens. Expression sharpening, he asked, “You said yes?” All I had to do was nod. Sylvester knew my word would bind me, whether or not I wanted it to. I didn’t see a reason to tell him about the curse; he was already going to worry enough. “Oh, Toby. Why did you agree?’
“Because I didn’t have a choice.” I folded my hands behind my back. “If you don’t want to help, I’ll understand.”
“I didn’t say that. I . . . damn. Can you give us a few minutes? Please?” His voice was tight with the strain of holding back tears. He didn’t want to cry in front of me anymore than I wanted to watch him cry.
“I haven’t been here in a while,” I said, taking the hint. “I’ll go see what Luna’s done with the gardens. Send for me?”
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