“Arden’s seneschal is a dog half the time.” Quentin walked across the room and sat next to me, settling with his back against the door. “I don’t think being a dog is so bad. Dogs are loyal. And fun to be with. And won’t call you names, or get mad at you for things you can’t help, like who your parents are.”
“You are a weird kid.”
“Whose fault is that?” I could almost hear him smiling. If I looked up, I knew he’d be looking at me, one corner of his mouth curved in lopsided amusement. He’d been with me long enough that I probably knew the man he was becoming—the man who was sitting beside me—better than his mother did.
There was something sad about that. Blind fosterage keeps the children of the nobility safe, and when the choice is that or what King Gilad had done, failing to acknowledge his children out of fear of losing them, I could almost understand. It was still a terrible loss. Childhood is precious whether or not you live forever. Quentin and his parents would have centuries to be adults together. They should have been allowed to see him being a child.
The smell of pennyroyal drifted into the room. I raised my head. Tybalt was standing half in shadow by the far wall. The interplay of light and darkness cast stripes across his skin, making him look like the tabby pattern of his feline form had somehow managed to carry over to his fae self. He met my eyes. Relief flooded his expression, and he took a step forward, leaving stripes and shadows behind.
“October,” he said. “It took long enough to make my way here that I began to fear I’d waited too long, and you would already be off on your fool’s errand, clawing your way down the walls of the world. I assume you’re partially responsible for the restrictions placed upon our movement?”
“I told the High King and Queen that we needed to lock down the knowe,” I said, and tensed, waiting for him to get mad. If the rest of the nobility was pissed about being confined to Muir Woods, a King of Cats might explode.
“Good,” he said, continuing across the room toward me. “As it happens, no amount of ‘please stay put’ can sever cat from shadows. I’ve already walked the Shadow Roads to my own Court to inform Raj that I am under a quaintly optimistic form of house arrest and he is not to return tomorrow. I’ll remain here with the rest of you until this is over. Shade will not be attending, as we do not wish to leave all the cats of the Bay Area without firm supervision.”
“I like the phrase ‘quaintly optimistic,’” I said.
Tybalt smirked. “Yes, well. If I’ve already broken the wall, gone out, done my business, and come back, who’s to say your large assortment of overly entitled rabble won’t do the same? I’m sure some of them were looking forward to a lovely afternoon of tourism before the conclave resumed.”
“Riding cable cars, looking at sea lions,” I said.
“Maybe punching them, if we’re talking about Dianda,” said Quentin.
“Now, now,” tutted Tybalt. He sat down on my free side, closer than Quentin, so I could feel the reassuringly solid warmth of him. I inched closer still, resting my head against his shoulder. “The Duchess Lorden no doubt has an excess of sea lions, which she can use for pugilistic exercises whenever she feels the need.”
“How are they going to keep her from drying out?” asked Quentin. “She’s, you know. A fish when she sleeps.”
I grimaced. “Please don’t use the ‘f’ word. She’s a mermaid. That’s different.”
“She’ll still dry out if she doesn’t sleep in a lake or something.”
“That’s easy,” I said, relieved to have a question I could answer. “One of the guest rooms has a private ‘reclining pool’ in it, according to Madden. They’ve put Dianda and Patrick there. She’ll just sleep in the water.”
Quentin looked dubious. “That doesn’t sound very comfortable.”
“Especially not for the poor, bipedal Duke.” Tybalt pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “I am deeply grateful that you do not transform into anything unpleasant when you sleep.”
“If you two are going to start talking about your sex life, I’m going to go help Queen Windermere’s staff make the beds,” said Quentin. I lifted my cheek from Tybalt’s shoulder and smiled at my squire.
“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” I said. “I want you to voluntarily show up for the wedding.”
Quentin laughed, and was starting to reply when someone rapped on the door. His laughter died, taking his smile along with it. Tybalt and I both twisted to look at the door, like it would somehow reveal the identity of whoever was on the other side.
It didn’t. “Who is it?” I called.
“Sylvester. Please, may I come in?”
I exchanged a startled look with Quentin as I picked myself up from the floor, Tybalt a reassuring presence behind me. As my liege, Sylvester could technically order me to open the door, now that he knew for sure that I was in here. The fact that he hadn’t done so probably meant he was here because he wanted to try rebuilding some of the bridges between us. That was a good thing. That was an important thing. That was a thing I’d been meaning to force myself to do for months, ever since the last time I’d been at Shadowed Hills. And it was absolutely not the sort of thing I wanted to deal with when I was getting ready to go out looking for a murderer.
I’d paused too long. Sylvester sighed, and said, “I promise you, October, I’m not here to make you have a conversation you’re not ready for. This is about Antonio’s death.”
“Just a second,” I said. Turning to Tybalt, I asked, “Can you please go walk the halls? Watch for anyone acting suspicious. See if anything looks out of place. Talk to the bats in the attic, if you have to. Just . . . do my job while I deal with my liege, okay?”
“For you, the world,” he said, and kissed me, quick and glancing, before turning to stride across the room, moving toward the shadow he’d used to enter.
I didn’t wait to watch him disappear. I just straightened my shirt, ran my hands through my hair, and turned back to the door. Quentin stood, moving to fall in behind me in the squire’s position as I opened the door for Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, my liege, substitute father figure, and technically, step-uncle.
Faerie gets confusing sometimes.
For his part, Sylvester looked . . . relieved. The emotion in his face was more complicated than that, seeming composed of equal parts exhaustion, worry, and pleasure, but relief was the end result. Fae don’t age, but there were shadows in his honey-colored eyes that hadn’t been there the last time we’d been face-to-face, and his russet-red hair was less carefully combed than it should have been. All these were small things, things I’d been able to miss from a distance. With him right in front of me, I couldn’t ignore them.
“October,” he said, and smiled.
For a moment—a single, heartbreaking moment—I wanted nothing more than to throw myself into his arms and let the familiar dogwood and daffodils scent of his magic surround me. He’d been my mentor, my teacher, and my surrogate parent for almost as long as I could remember. Compared to that, our estrangement seemed to be of little consequence, something so recent and pointless that I wanted to throw it aside. I just couldn’t.
He’d lied to me. He’d kept secrets that had caused me and the people around me to suffer. He’d done it because of promises he’d made to my mother, and while I could respect his desire to keep his word, I couldn’t forgive the fact that he’d hurt me in the process. Some prices were too high to pay. “Sylvester,” I said, moving to the side. “Please, come in.”