Rhys smiled indulgently. “But, you see, that’s the difference between myself and our missing Father. He believed Faerie could be balanced, that there was a place for everyone. I believe he was wrong—and since it seems I remain while he is gone, I must assume that I was right.”
I stared at him. For once, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
The problem with arrogant assholes is that all too often, they’ll take silence as agreement. “You understand, then,” said Rhys, his smile widening. “I’m so very glad. It’s going to make the rest of this process ever so much easier.”
I frowned. “Process?”
“Yes. You see, my lady was indulgent with the Mists, and look where it got her. Deposed and dishonored and treated as a traitor to a land which she only ever strove to improve upon. It will not do. It will not stand. I know you have come here to plead the case of the Mists, and while you have done poorly, you have navigated these waters better than I expected you to.”
“See, I know you think you’re complimenting me, and yet somehow I still feel insulted,” I said.
“That’s because you are smarter than your breeding justifies,” said Rhys. “Please understand, I do not harbor you any specific ill-will. Changelings have their place in Faerie. Someone should remain belowstairs, otherwise, what value will it have to be above them? But you represent the decay and dissolution of the Mists, and I am afraid I’ll be sending you home as a failure. The war is going to happen, Sir Daye. Unless you are prepared to negotiate the surrender of your regent and her people, your work here is done.”
I stared at him again. I hadn’t been expecting to change his mind—not once I’d seen Silences, and the way that changelings were treated in his Kingdom—but this casual dismissal didn’t seem to fit with his earlier demand that I bleed for him. “I thought . . .” I began, and stopped, unsure how I could continue that sentence without locking myself into a promise I didn’t want to keep.
His smile widened still further, until I began to worry that his head would come unzipped and split in two. “Oh, you mean you actually want to prevent the war? I told you how you could do that. How you could call it all off with a single word. All you need to do is tell me ‘yes,’ and all of this can go away forever. It will be a bad dream that threatened your precious Arden briefly in the night before wisping away into nothingness.”
All I had to do to save countless lives was die. I picked up my napkin, making a show of touching the corners of my mouth, and stood. “Your kitchens are superb,” I said. “All praise to your chefs. If you will excuse me, it seems I have packing to do.”
Then I turned and descended the dais, trusting Quentin and Tybalt to follow as I made my way toward the door. I didn’t look back.
I didn’t dare.
EIGHTEEN
QUENTIN AND TYBALT CAUGHT up with me in the hall outside the dining room. They moved into the flanking positions that had become so natural for us, and we continued through the knowe as a small, tightly contained wedge.
We were halfway up the stairs when Tybalt spoke, asking, “Did he request your death again?”
“He made it clear that there’s no other way I’m going to broker peace between Silences and the Mists,” I said. My voice was strangely thin, like I was being strangled. I forced myself to swallow, trying to chase some of the tension away, before I said, “I don’t think we’re going to accomplish anything more here. But we need to try.”
Tybalt looked surprised before he nodded, understanding chasing his confusion away. If we left Silences now, Walther would have to come with us. He wouldn’t be able to finish working on his current countercharm for elf-shot, and his family—and May, and Madden—would sleep out their hundred-year terms without anyone coming to save them. War would disrupt everything. Even if the Mists managed to win, which was something I wasn’t sure of, it would be years before Walther could get back to work on the project. Rhys could do anything he wanted to his hostages in the meantime, as long as he came short of killing them, and if he saw that he was losing, even that barrier might come down.
It was now or never.
“Our window of hospitality lasts for three days, so unless we’re actually being kicked out of the Kingdom, we have two more days of protection,” said Quentin.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t put much stock in our ‘protection,’” I said. “May’s asleep for a hundred years, and the King already tried to arrest Walther once. I’m not really feeling safe he—” My sentence devolved into a squawk as hands reached out of the wall, grabbed my arm, and yanked me into darkness.
Not absolute darkness: we weren’t on the Shadow Roads, but in a narrow passageway lit by a single hanging globe of pale white light. Its glow revealed Marlis’ anxious, tightly drawn face. She pressed a finger to her lips, signaling for me to be silent, before leaning to the side and thrusting her arms through the apparently solid wall a second time.
Pain transformed her face from anxious to agonized, but she didn’t make a sound. She just leaned back, pulling Tybalt through the wall. He had his hands latched around her forearm, claws extended and piercing her flesh. There was so much blood. The smell of it filled the space, hot copper mingled with the ice and milfoil smell of Marlis’ magic. I reeled, buffeted by the sudden desire to taste it, to know her life and her allegiances all the way down to the core of me. I had never felt anything like that before. It was terrifying. Tamping down that harsh, almost irresistible need took everything I had—at least until Tybalt looked wildly in my direction, pulled himself away from Marlis, and wrapped his blood-streaked arms around me.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered, mouth close to my ear. “Did she hurt you?”
“No, but you hurt her,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Please, quiet,” begged Marlis, and it was hard not to take a small degree of satisfaction from the obvious pain in her tone. She shouldn’t have grabbed me and, more, she shouldn’t have surprised Tybalt. We were all tense. She was lucky she was getting away with nothing worse than flesh wounds.
Marlis turned to thrust her now bloody hands through the wall again, and stopped as Quentin stepped through. She blinked at him. He glared at her before dismissing her as completely as a member of the nobility could, turning toward me and Tybalt instead.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize what was going on faster.”
“Is this another kind of servants’ hall?” I asked.
Quentin nodded. “It’s a shallow standing illusion, like the kind we use to hide the mouths of some knowes, only it’s designed to remain static and buffered from the dawn, so it doesn’t take regular recasting. Coblynau work, probably. It’s usually part of the heating system, since air moves through but light doesn’t.”
“Sound also moves through,” hissed Marlis, shoving between us. Her left arm was cradled close to her body, and the smell of blood was getting stronger. “Please, be quiet.”
“If you wanted us to be quiet, you shouldn’t have pulled us through a wall,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just come to our quarters?”
“Because I would have been seen. I’m sorry I had to intercept you this way, but I needed you to come with me, and this was the only method I had of contacting you without endangering us all.”
Right. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but startling Tybalt is absolutely a good way to endanger yourself,” I whispered. “Your arm needs medical attention.”
Marlis glanced at her wounded arm like she was seeing it for the first time. Then she shook her head, a small, wry smile creasing her lips. “Time was that bleeding in these halls would have been a signal to the Cu Sidhe and the Cait Sidhe and the Huldra that there was something wrong. Now it’s just an inconvenience. Come with me.” She turned on her heel and walked off down the hall.