Sixteen
THE SUITE WAS LARGE, even for a member of the royal household: it had to be, in order to house five people.
The central room could have held all five of them and a guest for each, spilling easily into a dining room whose table would seat ten without adding extra chairs.
The attached kitchen was equally spacious, well lit and airy, with windows positioned to capture the sunlight bathing the arbor and light up the whole workspace.
It was some cunning design, working with the way the knowe worked, and giving everyone who used it their best chances at success.
I pushed deeper in, Chelsea close behind me, until I was faced with a series of smaller doors leading into private quarters. I took a deep breath, stilling myself, and closed my eyes.
Chelsea tugged on my sleeve. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Shush,” I said, and then, more loudly, “I am Sir October Daye. I serve your mistress as a Hero of the Realm. The man who lives here, Eion, has been dishonest in his oaths to her. He is a danger to your mistress. Arden lives. Help me keep it that way. Show us where we need to go.”
“You can’t ask the knowe to help you with … everything…” said Chelsea, voice tapering into confusion as one of the doors ahead of us swung slightly open, the latch releasing with a soft click.
“You were saying?” I asked, starting forward without waiting to hear my reply.
Chelsea followed.
Tuatha de Dannan are teleporters, as I think Chelsea had handily demonstrated by this point.
They can go from any point within their range to any other in the blinking of an eye.
That would make them unthinkably powerful, if not for the fact that they’re limited by the need to know where they’re going.
When Chelsea had helped to ferry my wedding party across the continent, she’d been opening portals based on pictures and personal knowledge.
When she’d still been a changeling, she’d demonstrated one of the dangers changelings really do represent, because she’d been able to open portals to places she’d never seen before, and keep them stable long enough to jump through.
Now that she was fully fae, she had the limits on her magic that should have always been there, the limitations that would keep her safe.
She was sticking close despite her desire to charge after Eion, because she didn’t know where he was going, and until she’d seen all the possible places he could run to, she couldn’t jump ahead of him.
The door opened on a short, dark hall, passing a small bathroom and ending at a round bedroom with multiple curtained-off windows set into the walls. There was no sign of Eion.
Potted spider plants hung around the perimeter of the room, and every flat surface other than the bed was covered in smaller pots, the room a riot of growth.
There was even a small potted tree in one corner.
I paused, then walked toward it, lifting my chin as I sniffed the air.
The magic that lingered there was too faint for me to pick up the scent of it, but its presence was undeniable, and stronger around the tree.
“You can come out now,” I said.
Nothing happened.
So we were doing it like this. Great. I pulled the horn knife from my belt and leaned forward, pressing the edge of it against the trunk of the tree, a few inches above the soil.
“If I cut this here, it’s going to die,” I said.
“It won’t kill you immediately, but it’ll hurt, and you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you could have saved this tree.
If you’re all right with that, well. I won’t judge.
But I’ll be sure to tell your wife that in addition to everything else, you were willing to sacrifice a tree to save yourself.
Not a great look, Eion. Especially not if you want me to believe that you were acting in good faith. ”
“Do you talk to everything?” asked Chelsea, exasperated.
“Only the things that might answer me,” I said, and wiggled my knife, just a little. The edge cut into the bark, not even deep enough to scar.
The tree shuddered, and then Eion was stepping out of it, somehow pulling the body of an adult man out of a tree no bigger around than my thumbs. I pulled the knife away and stepped back, not sheathing it.
He looked at me, exhausted. “Why?”
“Why what? Why did I threaten the little tree? I could tell you were inside of it, and I needed you to be out. Why did I come here? Because I knew you were the one who told Blind Michael’s Hunt where Raysel was going to be.
I even know why you did it, although I don’t agree with the decision.
She’s just a child. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for what the grandfather she never knew did.
That wasn’t her fault, and you know it.”
“Do I?” he asked, voice going flat and distant. “Or do I know that she’s been a pampered Duke’s daughter her whole life, that she got to have a life, while my brother didn’t get anything but screams in the night and the sound of hooves? It wasn’t his fault either. No one protected him.”
“Did the Riders you spoke to tell you that they wanted Raysel so they could restart the Rides? If I don’t get her back, more children are going to suffer like your brother did.
Maybe your children. Your younger daughter is still in the range that Michael used to target.
They’re hoping Raysel’s power can do what his did, that she’ll be able to unify them and open the Roads for them again. And you gave her to them. Why?”
“It wasn’t fair,” said Eion. “He was supposed to live forever. He deserved the chance to live forever, not to die because no one was willing to protect us. Well, now it’s time for them to learn what it feels like not to be protected.”
“Who is ‘them,’ Eion? Raysel isn’t ‘them.’ She wasn’t alive yet when your brother was taken.
Chelsea here is Raysel’s girlfriend. She’s not ‘them.’ She wasn’t alive either, and she’s never hurt anyone.
Sylvester isn’t ‘them.’ Maybe he shouldn’t have been willing to keep Luna’s secrets the way he did—that’s a conversation for smarter people than either one of us.
Luna had a right to ask for privacy, and you had a right to know what happened to your brother.
I don’t know how you untie a knot like that.
I just know that Raysel doesn’t deserve to suffer for the sins of her parents.
You need to tell me where they took her. ”
“I don’t know,” said Eion. “The Rider who approached me said she knew what happened to my brother. She said she could help me find him again if only I’d help her find the daughter of her master’s youngest child.
It seemed so straightforward in the beginning.
I was just helping a family reunite. And then I realized who she meant, and that it was the Duke’s daughter everyone gossiped about after court, the one who was scared of her own shadow.
I felt bad by then. But it was too late.
They already expected to be told where she was going to be.
They knew about Ashla and Gable. They made it clear that they were going to have a child.
I couldn’t let it be one of mine. I couldn’t. ”
“So you’d condemn another family to the hole you can’t fill in your own heart?” I asked, disgusted. “Where did they take her?”
“Toby—”
“Don’t say my name. Don’t try to plead with me for forgiveness. If you’re going to get that, it’s going to be coming after I have Raysel back, and not before. She’s my responsibility. She’s part of my household. I’m the one who bleeds if I lose her, not her mother.”
Chelsea was silent, but she was vibrating beside me, crackling with the need to move, to act, to do something. If Eion named a place she’d seen before, she was going to be there before I could tell her not to go anywhere.
Instead, he sighed, shoulders sagging. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. Not really. I thought I was doing the right thing, right up until I didn’t think that anymore, and by then, it was too late.”
“Where did they take her?”
“The Rider I spoke with said that they would get her away from her mother when they came to the skerry, and that from there, they’d sound the horn and carry her back into their territory.
There’s a place they call ‘the Children’s Hall,’ where new captives are kept until they change enough to Ride.
They’re going to put her there, and keep her until she’s ready. ”
Chelsea stiffened. I turned just in time to see a tear run down her cheek, and grabbed for the back of her shirt as she began to lunge at Eion.
She was faster than I was, or maybe I wasn’t really trying.
She slammed into him, shoulder impacting with the center of his chest and knocking him back against the wall.
“How could you?” she shouted. “Do you know how scared she is of what her grandfather’s magic does?
Do you know how scared she is of her own family?
And now you’ve made things even worse! She really is going to be scared of her own shadow after this! ”
I finally got hold of her shoulders, hauling her away from Eion, who looked at me with sheer terror in his eyes. I shook my head.
“You’d better explain to your family why you’re going to have to move along again,” I said. “I don’t think Queen Windermere is going to want you sticking around here after you committed an act of treason against one of her vassals.”
Eion stared at me, stricken. “She wouldn’t punish my family for my actions, would she?”
“That depends on whether you consider her sending you away and leaving them to survive without you a punishment,” I said.
“If you would, then yes, she’d punish them.
If you wouldn’t, then no, she wouldn’t, unless they insisted they had to stay with you no matter what.
If that’s the case, yeah, she might well banish your whole family. ”