Rob shook his head. “Impossible,” he murmured. “After all these centuries…”
Linden’s heart thumped painfully. Was he saying that it was too late to help the Oakenfolk? She was about to plead with him, but Rob cut in:
“And you truly believe that all you need do is ask, or offer some crude bargain, and the rest of us will rush to help you, just like that?”
“I–I don’t know,” she said. Put like that, it did sound hopelessly naive. “But I had to try. There are only a few of us left alive now. And now that the spells that protect the Oak are weakening, soon it won’t even be safe for us to live there anymore-”
“Then why not ask your human friends to take you in? Surely there must be room for you all in that big House of theirs.”
“But that wouldn’t be fair to them,” protested Linden. “And it wouldn’t be safe for us, either. One or two of us might be able to hide away in the House, but not all. And if the other humans found out, they’d try to capture us, study us-”
“Then perhaps you should have thought of that before you threw in your lot with the humans in the first place,” said Rob coldly as he got to his feet. “Because I can tell you that the Empress rules the whole of this great island, and no faery under her command will ever give help to one of the Forsaken.”
“The…Forsaken?”
“I had believed you to be no more than a legend,” Rob went on in the same flat tone. “Faeries who so loved humans that they would serve them like slaves, choosing even to wed with them and bear their children rather than be true to their own faery blood. Traitors and renegades, exiled from the rest of our people centuries ago. If the Empress knew that I had helped you, even in ignorance…” He pulled up his hood and moved toward the door.
“Wait!” Linden leaped off the bed and darted to intercept him. “Where are you going? You’re not going to tell her, are you? Please!”
Rob closed his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. “No,” he said. “But Veronica will not be so discreet-and she was not the only one who witnessed your rescue of the human boy. It will not be long before the Empress learns what you did this night and draws her own conclusions. And then your life, and the boy’s, too, will be forfeit.”
Linden stood rooted, trembling with horror and fury. Then she burst out, “Well, if that’s the kind of law you live by here-if that’s what your Empress calls justice-then it’s no wonder my people decided they’d be better off with the humans!”
“Linden…” It was the first time Rob had spoken her name, but she was too upset to care.
Hotly, she went on: “Maybe we are renegades, as you say, but at least we know enough to care about something besides ourselves. At least we still remember that we belong to the Great Gardener, and not to some Empress who goes around putting people to death at the flick of a wing! I’m sorry I wasn’t one of your precious Children of Peace-”
“Rhys,” said Rob.
“-but if you ask me, it makes no difference. Because if they’re known for being generous and kind to humans, I can’t imagine that they’d be any more impressed with your attitude than I am!”
She finished the sentence with a glare, daring Rob to make some caustic retort. But unaccountably, his stern expression softened. He reached out and touched her hair, letting the brown curls tumble between his fingers.
“You are young,” he said. “And altogether too innocent to survive in this hard world. But you have courage. And the human boy-he played well tonight.”
He glanced over at Timothy, still sprawled oblivious across the bed. “Let him sleep a little while longer, then wake him and go to the nearest train station. My people are not fond of places where many humans gather; you should be safe there until you can find transport out of the city. Return to your Oak quickly, and remain there, and you may yet escape the Empress. I cannot promise you anything more.”
Linden caught his arm. “But if we leave, how will I find the help we need? Surely not all the other faeries serve the Empress-if I just knew where to look-”
“That,” said Rob, “was what I had hoped you would be able to tell me. So it seems we are both disappointed.” He shrugged away from her grasp, flung the door open, and was gone.
“Timothy. Wake up.” Linden was shaking him. “We have to go.”
He groaned and rolled onto his back, blinking his sleep-gummed eyes against the light. “What, already?”
“Yes, right away. Rob’s gone, and-” She cast a nervous glance at the open door. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
Timothy swung his legs around and sat up, squinting at his watch: 5:47 A.M. Beyond the cracked window the sky was still dark, the streetlights glowing eerily through a haze of mist. He felt dislocated, as though he had wakened on some alien planet. “Okay,” he mumbled, “just give me a few minutes.”
“There’s no time to waste.” She dragged his backpack and guitar case toward him. “If any of the Empress’s faeries find us, we’re dead.”
Abruptly he was wide awake. “What?”
“Just come,” begged Linden. “I’ll explain on the way.”
As they stepped onto the landing, Timothy nearly tripped over a pair of leather shoes sitting just outside the door. “What the-” he said, but Linden had already snatched them up.
“Rob must have left them for me!” she exclaimed, slipping them on and bouncing a little. “They fit perfectly.”
“How’d he know your size?” asked Timothy, but to his surprise, Linden only blushed and hurried down the stairs.
She told him the story as they walked, passing one street after another on their way toward the nearest train station. The glamour she’d put on herself before they’d left the flat made her look like an ordinary human girl in a winter jacket and jeans, but it plainly wasn’t keeping her warm: By the time she had finished speaking her cheeks were rosy with cold, and she was hugging herself in an effort not to shiver. Timothy fished his last sweatshirt out of his backpack and handed it to her.
“Oh, I am grateful,” she breathed as she floundered into it, rolling up the sleeves that drooped over her hands. “But you haven’t said anything.” She looked up at him, eyes big with apprehension. “Are you angry?”
Timothy shoved a hand through his hair. “No, it’s all marvelous,” he said bitterly. “I’m glad you and Rob had such a nice chat. Lovely people, your folk.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked stricken. “I never imagined it would be like this. I thought if I could only find more faeries, everything would be wonderful. But to meet them, and then hear that they all despise us and call us Forsaken…and even worse, that they’re ruled by someone evil… ”
“So now we’ve got no choice but to run back to Oakhaven.” Timothy stomped on a discarded soda can and kicked it aside. “It’d be one thing if I’d been gone a week, or been in an accident or something. But coming back to Paul and Peri’s the morning after I left, because I was scared of a lot of homicidal faeries-that’s just pathetic. They probably haven’t even found my note yet.”
Linden said nothing. Her head was bent, her face invisible behind her turbulence of hair.
“On the other hand,” he continued, “it’s the perfect excuse not to go back to Greenhill. Hello, Mum and Dad, England’s fine, I met some faeries and now they want to kill me. Sure you don’t want to send me to school in Canada instead?”
Linden gave a quavering laugh and then, to Timothy’s horror, burst into tears. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her away from the road, hoping desperately that she’d calm down before someone stopped and demanded to know what was going on.
But though Linden put her hands over her face and sobbed until her body shook, none of the passing cars even slowed down. And once she’d wept herself into dry hiccups and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, Timothy was finally able to make out what she was saying:
“I’ve done everything wrong,” she choked. “I thought I could help the Oakenfolk-I thought I was helping you-but all I’ve done is put all of us in worse danger than ever. What if the Empress sends her people after us? What if they find the Oak? Valerian was right. I wasn’t ready for this. And what am I going to tell the Queen when I see her?”