“Sunshine Cleaners, we put the sun back in your shirts,” said a voice that clearly felt it had better things to do with its time than answer phone calls, even if it was being paid to pick up the phone.
“Hi, this is October Daye. My sister, May, was supposed to drop off some laundry for me a few hours ago, and I was just wondering if you were able to get the stains out of my dress? I really love that dress.” I tried to match the voice’s disinterest with earnest need-to-know. Standing in the alley where my Fetch had been elf-shot and pretending that the most important thing in my world was laundry.
“Please hold.” There was a clunk as the phone was set down. I heard rustling. Then the phone was picked up again, and the same bored voice said, “No one named after a month has dropped anything off today. Either your sister sucks at doing her chores, or you need to call another cleaner. Have a nice day.”
The connection went dead. I lowered my phone, turning to look at Quentin. “She didn’t drop off the laundry, and she’s been elf-shot,” I said. “You know what this means?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking miserable. “King Rhys has an awful lot of your blood, and May’s going to be asleep for a hundred years. Toby, what are we going to do?”
I looked at him, and I didn’t have an answer.
SIXTEEN
WE EMERGED FROM THE Shadow Roads into the master bedroom of the diplomatic suite. May was already stretched out on the bed. Spike was curled on her chest, thorns flat with distress. Walther was standing next to her, crouching as he trimmed the ends of her hair into a small bowl. He stopped and straightened when he heard my butt hit the floor. Spike made a whining sound, but didn’t move.
This time it was Quentin who managed to keep his balance, largely by grabbing hold of the bedpost and hanging on for dear life. Only Tybalt—winded and wheezing—remained upright, his baleful glare going to Walther as the only moving target in the room.
Walther was unmoved. “Good, you’re back,” he said. “I need you to come help me extract this arrow.”
“Rhys sent people after us into the city, and they got the laundry, which means they have a lot of my blood,” I replied. “What can they do with it?”
“Whatever they want,” said Walther. “Now come help me. We have too many emergencies to deal with them all at the same time, and I can’t start trying to provide May with medical treatment until I have the arrow out.”
I picked myself up from the floor. “I hate this Kingdom,” I announced. “I hate everything about it. There is nothing in Silences that I do not hate.”
“Noted, and under the circumstances, not offended,” said Walther. He handed me a piece of red leather. “Wrap this around the shaft and push as hard as you can. The idea is to force the arrow out through the back of her shoulder, not yank it toward us. That could break her collarbone, and she’s going to have enough problems without adding broken bones to the mix.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, even as I followed his instructions. “You’re calm.”
“I’m furious, and I’m scared out of my mind,” said Walther. “May’s my friend. Don’t mistake my calm for anything other than anger, and the need to focus.”
“Got it.” I pushed down. The arrow slid through her flesh with sickening ease. I could feel it break the skin on the other side. I stopped pushing. “Now what?”
“Let go.” Walther waited until my hands were clear. Then he reached over, shifted the leather up slightly, and twisted until the remaining shaft snapped in two, leaving the part with the fletching in his hand. He offered it to me. “I’m assuming you’ll want to confront the King about shooting her. This proves the elf-shot came from his armory.”
“I know how to read arrows,” I said. “Still, I appreciate it. This is probably better than carrying the whole arrow into the presence of the King.” Angry as I was, I didn’t want to give him an excuse to try and arrest me again—and I knew that the false Queen would be more than happy to encourage him to do it. She’d hated me even before I took her crown away. I couldn’t imagine how much she had to hate me now.
Then again, maybe I didn’t need to. I watched Walther lift Spike off of May’s chest. The rose goblin whined as it slunk off to the side, thorns rattling. Walther lifted her halfway into a sitting position before he reached around with his leather washcloth, wrapping it around the point of the arrow. It came free of her flesh with a wet sucking sound that turned my stomach. He placed the arrow on the nightstand, still wrapped in red leather, and eased May gently back down to the bed. Spike immediately leaped back onto her chest.
“I’ll wrap and bandage her shoulder, and I have some herbs that will help to prevent infection,” he said.
“What about the antidotes you were working on?” I asked. May wasn’t moving. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I heard Tybalt move up behind me, but he didn’t say anything or put his hands on me, and for the first time, I was grateful for his restraint. If he tried to offer comfort, I would break, and then I wouldn’t be any good to anybody.
“I’m still working on them.” Walther turned to look at me, expression grave. “I have five different rose strains that fit your description. One of them might be the answer, or none of them might be. I’m not going to stop, but I can’t make it happen any faster.”
“Try.” I stood, looking at the broken arrow shaft in my hand. “We came here to prevent a war, not to get picked off one by one by an asshole with an ax to grind. I need to talk to the King.”
“I will come with you,” said Tybalt.
“No.” The word was out before I was even fully aware that I was thinking it. I turned to find Tybalt staring at me. “I want you there. I want you there more than anything. But you can’t be. Having the monarch of a political structure completely outside our own standing next to me is actually a political weakness. It implies that I can’t take care of myself. I’m taking Quentin, because he reinforces my place in this political structure, and because I want witnesses. But I can’t take you. I’m sorry.”
Tybalt looked at me flatly for several seconds. Then, seemingly against his will, he smiled. It wasn’t a big thing: his lips barely moved, and while the smile touched his eyes, they remained sad, too dark with all the troubles of the past few days to ever lighten. “You are learning, and I can’t fault you for that,” he said. “If anything, it will keep you with me longer. But be careful, and don’t be afraid to run. Do you understand? If your safety is threatened, run. I refuse to wait a hundred years to be married.”
“You won’t have to,” I said. I looked down at my tank top and jeans, and shook my head. Rhys no longer got to make me dress up for him, and if the false Queen wanted to transform my clothes again, she could go right ahead. Every spell she cast sapped a little of her power. Let her exhaust herself on things that didn’t matter.
But only on the things that didn’t matter. I shrugged out of my leather jacket, draping it over the foot of the bed. “I’ll be back. Quentin, you’re with me.”
I didn’t wait to see what Tybalt would say to that. I just turned and stalked toward the exit, Quentin dogging my heels like he was afraid letting me out of his sight for a second would mean letting me out of his sight forever. I didn’t blame him for feeling that way. I sort of shared the sentiment.
Leaving Tybalt behind to protect Walther and strengthen my own position might have been the smart thing to do, but as we stalked along the empty, echoing halls, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising and my muscles tensing, every inch of me preparing for an attack. There was a time when all my grand confrontations involved me and me alone. That time was in the past. I had grown accustomed to having backup when I went to bait my metaphorical dragons, people who would fight with me, rather than against me. I still had Quentin, but that was almost worse, because even if he tried to jump between me and someone’s sword, I wouldn’t let him. I could never let him. He was my squire. He was my friend. He was my semi-adopted son, and I loved him too much to be the cause of his suffering.