“Aw, you’d do that for me? You’re so sweet.” She took one hand off the wheel and reached over to ruffle my hair. I bore the indignity stoically. It helped that, for once, there was no one around to see. “You going to need me to come back and pick you up?”
“Nah. I can take a bus, or a taxi, or sleep in one of the guest rooms until it’s late enough that I can call Raj and tell him I’ll order pizza if he comes and gets me.”
Toby attempted to sound stern. “The Cait Sidhe are not a car service.”
“Can I be there when you tell Tybalt that?” I asked brightly. “He might faint from shock when he hears you admit that you knew that all along.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I liked you better before you had a sense of humor,” she said, turning off the freeway and onto the service streets that would lead us to the art museum housing the mortal side of the knowe.
“I always had a sense of humor,” I said. “It just took a while for me to adjust it to the tastes of non-Canadians.”
Toby snorted, and said nothing.
It was early yet; the streets were buzzing with humans on their way to work, most of them walking with their heads down and their eyes glued to their phones. Give it a few more years and none of us would need human disguises at all. We’d be able to go wherever we wanted with our true faces exposed, and anyone who saw us would just assume that we were part of an augmented reality game. That was going to be a fun future.
Toby was yawning when she reached the museum parking lot. It was still empty; the museum employees would start arriving within the hour, getting the place ready for the day to come. “Last chance to get a ride home in the car.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and waved as I hopped out. “Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t!” She drove off as soon as my door was shut. I stayed where I was for a few seconds, letting her see me dwindle in the mirror. Then I turned and started down the shallow hill, moving toward the cliff that ran behind the museum.
The County of Goldengreen had originally been founded and held by Countess Evening Winterrose, a Daoine Sidhe who’d been in the Mists for as long as anyone I’d ever spoken to could remember. She had ruled mostly in solitude, but her knowe was palatial, as befitted someone of her stature. After her death, the place had been sealed for a while before the false Queen had given it to Toby as part of an elaborate plan to shift Toby’s fealty and arrest her for murder. Not fun. Toby hadn’t taken too well to being part of the nobility, and had offloaded the place the first chance she got, giving it to the air-breathing, half-Merrow, half-Daoine son of our local Undersea Duchess.
Sometimes I feel like my life should come with a flow chart or something.
It was a beautiful morning. The sea air was sweet and tasted of salt. Everything in the field behind the museum was blooming, adding a dozen floral perfumes to the mix. I didn’t stop to smell the flowers. Even as early as it was, there are some things that are always best done quickly. I walked to the edge of the cliff, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant line of the horizon, and stepped off.
The world twisted and spun around me, rewriting itself before my feet hit the solid floor of the entry hall. It hadn’t been a long fall, and I’d done it often enough that I landed with my knees slightly bent, allowing them to absorb most of the impact. Something moved in the rafters above me. I didn’t look up. The bogies that infested the knowe were mostly friendly, but that wouldn’t stop them from turning into giant spiders and dropping down onto my head for a laugh. Their sense of humor is nothing to mess with.
Toby hadn’t been in charge of Goldengreen for long, but it had been long enough that I was familiar with the place. I started down the hall toward the kitchen. That was where I was most likely to find Dean’s seneschal, Marcia, and she, in turn, would know where Dean was.
Sure enough, when I stuck my head around the doorframe, there she was, kneading bread dough and humming to herself. She was a slight, thin-blooded changeling, more human than fae, and her eyes were ringed with a thick layer of faerie ointment. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to see through the illusions that surrounded her. Her hair was a blonde corona around her head, and her clothes were strictly mortal-modern; she could have gone anywhere in the city without raising an eyebrow.
I rapped my knuckles against the lintel. “Hey, Marcia,” I said. “Dean still up?”
“Quentin!” She beamed as she turned. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? Actually, scratch that. My eyes aren’t sore. That saying makes no sense. It’s good to see you! Dean’s down by the cove. You just missed Duchess Lorden.”
I grimaced. “Yay for timing, I guess.” Duchess Dianda Lorden was a good ally, and a good mother. She was also prone to threats of violence, and with her, those threats were never empty.
“Oh, you,” said Marcia, laughing. “Go on down. If you boys get hungry, just send a pixie, and I’ll send down a little something.”
“Okay, Marcia,” I said, and sketched a quick bow in her direction before turning and trotting down the hall toward the door to the stairs.
Toby has this theory that knowes are not only alive, they’re intelligent and can make their own choices. They just make them more slowly than people do, on account of how they’re buildings, and anything short of being on fire is unlikely to seem all that urgent. The cove-side receiving room at Goldengreen was a great piece of support for her theory. It hadn’t been there when she’d been in charge, or when Evening had been; it was a large enough part of the knowe’s structure that there was simply no way we could have all missed it.
The door opened on a wide-stepped spiral staircase, curving languidly downward to a chamber that seemed to have been hewn straight out of the side of a mountain. The ceiling was inlaid with an elaborate design in white quartz and mother-of-pearl, and the stairs ended at a wide expanse of redwood floor, magically treated to keep it from becoming slippery. The floor stretched onward to become a dock, stopping just short of a strip of gleaming white sand. Beyond that, the ocean, sheltered by the ceiling until it reached the narrow strip of daylight that allowed it to escape from the confines of the knowe.
Dean was sitting on the edge of the dock with his hands on his knees, staring out over the water. I stopped where I was for a moment, just looking at him.
He was almost two years older than I was, which seemed like a lot, even though I knew one day, when we’d both been alive for centuries, two years would be nothing but the blinking of an eye. He had his mother’s tawny skin and black hair, with streaks of oceanic green inherited from his father. His eyes were deepwater blue and distracting. I spent a lot of time when we were together trying not to stare into his eyes.
Right. This was verging on creepy. I started walking again, letting the scuff of my feet against the deck alert him to my presence. He turned and looked over his shoulder, smiling when he saw me.
“Quentin,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming over today.”
“It was sort of last minute,” I said. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Mom just left, and I was feeling a little down. It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” I walked over and sat down next to him on the dock. Not too close, but . . . close enough. “Did you come to Arden’s confirmation?”
“Yeah,” he said, and gave me a measuring sidelong look. “I’d never seen the High King in person before.”
“Mmm.”
“Maybe you should dye your hair.”
“Maybe,” I agreed.
Dean turned back to the water. “Mom went home after that and got really, really drunk. She said it was like seeing King Gilad finally laid to rest. I guess he was a pretty good king.”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“Where’s Raj?”
The question was surprising enough that I frowned, looking at him. “Home. It’s his day t
o be a proper prince, instead of hogging the TV remote at my place. And he has a date with Helen tonight, so unless I call him for a ride later, I probably won’t see him until the weekend. Why? Did you need him for something?”
“No. He’s just usually with you when you decide to drop by for a visit. He’s still dating Helen?”
“I think he likes the way she argues with him.” Helen was a half-Hob changeling. They’d met in Blind Michael’s lands. Trauma like that either builds bonds or breaks them down. In Helen’s case, I was never quite sure which that was. She was nice, and she seemed to enjoy Raj’s company, but she was an expert at dodging invitations to spend time with the rest of us. It was hard to take offense at that. She’d been through a lot. At the same time, none of us could really tell whether she and Raj were good for each other when we never got to see them together.
“Huh.” Dean picked at a thread on the side of his trousers. “I keep expecting them to break up so that Raj can start going out with you.”
If I had been drinking, I would have done a spit-take. As it was, I choked on air, coughing before I said, “What?”
“I said—”
“No, I heard you. What I meant was what?” I shook my head. “Raj and I aren’t going to date.”
Dean twisted to give me a dubious look. “Really.”
“Really-really! We flirt, but . . .” I paused to gather my thoughts. “Toby and Tybalt are getting pretty serious. If it gets too serious, he’ll have to step down. I mean, he can’t have a girlfriend he puts above the Court. That’s not how they do things. Raj is his only available heir. Raj plays at being selfish and self-absorbed, but he loves his uncle more than anything, except maybe the Court of Cats. He’d never do anything to endanger either one.” And Raj knew I was going to be High King. Our Courts could be friends. Could even coexist peacefully. But he would never, never allow a situation to arise where the Court of Cats could be seen as beholden to the Divided Courts. Being my boyfriend, however casually, would mess things up for both of us.
“Sometimes I wonder what dating is like for people who don’t have to think about the politics of everything they do and say,” said Dean.
I smiled wryly. “If Toby’s anything to go by, it’s sort of bloody and awkward.”
“Everything Toby does is sort of bloody and awkward.”
“Well, yeah.” I shook my head. “So no, Raj and I: not dating, not going to date. He’s my best friend. I’d bleed for him, and defend him before oak and ash and thorn. But he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
Was it my imagination, or did Dean sound just a bit relieved? I decided to push my luck. “You know I’m here on blind fosterage. That means I’ll have to go home when I reach my majority.”
“In what, twelve years?” Dean smiled lopsidedly at me. “That’s a long time. Twelve years ago, I was living in the Undersea, looking forward to a lifetime of SCUBA gear and air locks. And you were what, back with your folks, waiting for your fosterage to begin? Twelve years can change everything.”
“It really can,” I agreed. In for a penny . . . “Besides, even if Raj wanted to go out, I’d have to turn him down. I sort of have a thing for someone else right now.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He’s smart, funny, cute—really, if it weren’t for the part where I’m squired to a knight with hydrophobia, he’d be pretty much perfect. And I guess the hydrophobia thing means we’d never have to worry about Toby interrupting when I was over at his place.”
Dean turned to fully face me, blinking slowly. “You’re bold today.”
“I just had a bit of a shock to the system,” I said. “My parents threatened to end my fosterage. Made me really think about what I wanted to do while I was still here. And I like you, Dean. I like you a lot. I have since I met you, and I like you more every time I see you.”
“Are you sure you’re not scrambling for something to make you feel like staying here was the right thing to do?” Again, the identity of my parents hung between us like an unspoken oath. He knew. His comment about my father’s hair . . . he knew. He was just doing the socially appropriate thing, and not saying anything about it.
“No.” I’d been honest so far. Might as well stick with it. “And I’m not saying I’m in love with you, either. But I like you. We’re still kids. Isn’t that supposed to be enough?”
“I’m a Count. You’re a squire. We have duties.”
“And one day we’ll both be expected to marry long enough to provide heirs for our family names. I know that. I’m not asking you to be in love with me. I’m just asking you to . . . to hold hands with me, and see a movie, and maybe go out for ice cream.”
He smiled a little. “My parents spent their first real date looking for ice cream.”
“See, and now we have modern refrigeration. We can find ice cream, no problem.”
“Quentin.” Dean sobered. “You know that in the Undersea I was considered sort of, well, a freak. My dad’s Daoine Sidhe. I can’t breathe water. I can’t even put on scales. Mom nearly lost the Duchy because I was so weak and wrong.”
I nodded slowly. “Is this your way of saying you haven’t dated much?”
“It’s my way of saying I haven’t dated at all.”
“That’s okay. I’ve only had one serious girlfriend, and we had to break up after Blind Michael turned her into a horse and she found out Faerie was real and then the Luidaeg wiped her memory. So we’re on pretty equal footing here, I’d say.”
Dean blinked. “I think the worst part of that sentence was how every part of it was awful, and yet it all still made sense.”
“That’s life with Toby, and by extension, I guess that’s life with me. So if you don’t want to, you know, risk it—”
“Sometimes I think about how soft your hair must be, and then I have to go sit quietly for a little while until I stop blushing.”
I stopped.
“And sometimes I think ‘I should ask him out,’ and then I go no, he’s a blind foster, he’s someone’s important son, he has better prospects than some Merrow-maid’s half-breed son who’s still not sure how he even wound up with a title and holdings of his own. So I don’t.”
“Maybe you should,” I said softly.
“Maybe.” Dean took a deep breath, smiled, and asked, “You want to catch a movie?”
I smiled back. “Only if you’ll let me pay for the popcorn.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, and reached over to take my hand in his. His fingers were cool, with the ghosts of webbing extending from his palms halfway to the first knuckle. We sat there on the edge of the dock beneath the mountain, and we watched the tide roll out, and for a little while at least, it seemed like there was nothing else to say.
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