Maybe it was unhealthy to consider making a change that big for the sake of a man, but this wasn’t just about the man. This was about the boy on the next bier, the one I’d promised to usher into knighthood. This was about the mermaid who would have wanted me to look out for her family, and the alchemist who should never have been involved in this bullshit. Tybalt was my lover, yes, but this wasn’t about love. This was about family. This was about keeping my word to all of them. If I had to become a little less human to hold on to my humanity, then there was no question of what I needed to do.
I just had to be strong enough to do it.
The tears finally started falling as I curled up next to Tybalt, resting my head on his chest and tucking my hands under my cheek. I closed my eyes. “I don’t think you can hear me, but if you can,” I whispered, “if you can, please. Remember that I love you. I love you, and I am not sorry. No matter what it costs me. I am not sorry.”
His chest rose and fell beneath my hands, and for the moment, I could almost believe he was honestly sleeping, not enchanted to stay that way for a century. Healing, even magically aided, always put a strain on my body. Sometimes I didn’t even realize it was happening until the collapse came later. My eyes stayed closed, and eventually the tears stopped, and I fell asleep.
A hand touched my shoulder. “Toby.” The voice was soft, almost gentle, but it left no room for argument: I was going to listen. “You need to wake up now.”
I didn’t want to. I was warm, and I was comfortable, and since I hadn’t been elf-shot, I wasn’t going to get the questionable luxury of sleeping for a century. I just wanted to rest for a little while longer.
“You can be just like your mother sometimes, you know that?” The exasperation in the statement gave the identity of the voice’s owner away: the Luidaeg, sometimes called Antigone, my mother’s eldest sister.
Insults weren’t going to be enough to make me open my eyes. I nestled tighter against Tybalt.
The Luidaeg touched my shoulder again. This time, she left her hand there. “Toby, the conclave is over. They’ve voted, and the High King has given his decision.”
I opened my eyes but didn’t roll over. Instead, I stared at the slope of Tybalt’s cheek, and waited to hear the shape that my life was going to take.
“You want to know something funny? I think my jackass sister decided the vote, at least a little. No one wanted to side with her. She’s evil. You never want to side with the forces of evil, at least not where anyone can see you.” She paused. “But I think you decided it a lot more. You shouldn’t have been allowed to speak, and that meant that when you did, they listened. They heard you. And none of those assholes wanted to think about how confused they’d be if they missed a hundred years of Internet memes.”
I rolled over, staring at her. My heart felt like it was going to explode. “Do you mean . . . ?”
The Luidaeg smiled. Openly, honestly smiled. Her eyes were green as driftglass, and her features had settled in the broad, acne-scarred teenage face that I was most familiar with. “They’re going to allow the cure for elf-shot to be used.”
I was on my feet before I knew it, throwing my arms around her shoulders and squeezing her as tightly as Sylvester had squeezed me back in the hall. It was a full second before I thought to question the wisdom of hugging the sea witch without consent, and by that point, she was hugging me back, which made the question, if not moot, at least a little easier to answer.
“Not everyone’s going to get it,” she said. “People who were sentenced to sleep for their crimes will still need to wait and wake up the usual way, and we’re sure as shit not going to go onto Mom’s old Road to wake my sister. I’ll find a way to ward her away from Karen. Kid deserves a break. But the innocent and the targeted and the accidental, them, we can wake up.”
“When?” I let her go, taking a step back. “When are we waking them up?”
“Arden is trying to decide how they’re going to wake the Prince. Guess he’s sort of a big deal.” The Luidaeg nodded toward Nolan, making sure I knew which of the available princes she meant. “And I’m pretty sure they’re planning to buy all the sushi in San Francisco and wake Dianda up as part of a formal apology to the Undersea. Siwan is figuring out the materials they’ll need, and she’s coming up here to wake her nephew in a little bit. Says she wants him to help her get everything in order.”
I nodded slowly. “And Quentin and Tybalt . . . ?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She held up her empty hand. “Nothing up my sleeves.” She closed her hand. When she opened it again, a glass potion bottle on a long silver chain dropped to dangle near her elbow. At my shocked look, she smirked, and asked, “You really thought some wet-behind-the-ears alchemist would come up with an elf-shot cure and I wouldn’t demand samples? Walther will be able to help his aunt brew a fresh batch, but I didn’t figure you’d be big on patience. You’ve got three doses there. Enough for all three of the boys.”
“I can’t . . . I don’t . . . I mean . . .” I stammered to a stop, took a deep breath, and said the only thing that seemed even halfway sufficient: “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” She seemed almost sad as she held the pendant out to me. “I guess you’d have to.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by that. I didn’t want to know. I held the potion bottle in my hand, feeling the cool glass getting warmer where it pressed against my skin, and looked from one bier to another. I needed to wake one of them before the other. But which one?
The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Mom’s sake. Feed it to your kitty, and give the rest to me. I’ll wake up the kid and the alchemist. They don’t want to see you sucking face first thing out of their coma anyway.”
Thanking her again would have been excessive and potentially dangerous. I bobbed my head in silent understanding and turned back to Tybalt. His lips were parted. That seemed like a prompt. I pulled the glass stopper out of the potion bottle and leaned forward, pressing the rim to his lips. Then, keeping my movements slow and easy, I tipped the bottle upward until a third of the liquid trickled into his mouth.
He wasn’t choking. That was a good sign. I turned to hand the bottle to the Luidaeg.
When I looked back to Tybalt, his eyes were open. He seized immediately on my face, eyes widening as his hand scrabbled on the bier, looking for mine. I gave it to him, and he clutched my fingers tight. The color was already starting to come back into his cheeks, slow but steady, as Jin’s magic woke and finished its healing.
“October?” he asked, and his voice was raspy, and the sound of it mended something in my heart that I had thought was broken forever.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Your hair. It’s still brown.” He reached up with his free hand, running his fingers through my hair before bringing them to rest against the tapering curve of my ear. Then he smiled. “You didn’t have to change for me.”
I knew instantly what he meant, and nodded, raising my hand to curl over his, keeping him in place. “The conclave just ended. They voted to wake up everybody who isn’t asleep for good reason.” I could hear Quentin stirring behind me—his squawk of indignation, and the Luidaeg’s pained exhale as he threw his arms around her neck. Everything was normal, then. Playing out exactly like it was supposed to.