Page 48 of The Innocent Sleep

Ginevra didn’t look away, only met my eyes with a challenge of her own, and I could no longer hold myself back. She didn’t flinch as I flung myself into motion, slamming her back against the wall. She hissed at that, lips drawing back and nose wrinkling, and I heard Dianda start to rise from her wheelchair.

“No,” said Pete. “This is how the Cait Sidhe settle things. My father gave them his consent when he granted them their own Court.”

“If you scare her away, we lose,” spat Ginevra. “If you treat her like the woman you know, we lose. This task is mine.”

I snarled at her, pressing her harder to the wall. She continued to glare at me, not yielding.

“You’ll see her, and you’ll tell yourself that you’ll resist, you’ll swear you can follow the plan, and then someone will insult her as a changeling or order her to do some menial task, and you’ll take them apart, and scare the life out of her in the process,” she said. “This can’t fall to you.”

“How long have you been planning to betray me?” I demanded. She was silent. I shook her. “How long?!”

“She’s right, Tybalt,” said Dianda. “That’s why I can’t go either. Even if we’d been able to get abovewater by now, there’s no way I could look at Amandine and not break her nose. Right before I lost my grasp on my legs and fell into fins in the middle of some Court that thinks we all died a long, long time ago. We’re both sidelined for this one.”

“Ah.” I released Ginevra, who dropped to her knees and clutched her throat, still glaring at me. As long as she didn’t look away, she hadn’t lost her challenge. “So you’ve been planning to betray me together.”

“No one’s betraying anyone,” said Patrick. “This is the best way to bring our people home. To bring back our world.”

I stared at him, a thread of surprise penetrating my anger, as I had expected that he and his wife would side with me in this matter. He looked back, and sighed.

“You’ve been doing the right thing for this long,” he said. “Can’t you make it just a little longer?”

Patience is at times a necessity of kingship. I sagged, the fight going out of me. So much was riding on this, for everyone. Ginevra was unquestionably invested in the situation, but she stood a better chance of keeping a level head and handling things in a rational manner.

“Fine,” I said, sullenly. “But if it seems in any way that things aren’t proceeding as we hoped, I will intercede at once.”

“If that’s what has to happen,” said Pete, voice soothing, as if she were trying to quell an irrational child. Which I suppose we all were, to her.

The thought took some of the sting out of the situation, and I returned my attention to the others. I offered Ginevra no apology. That’s not how we do things among the Court of Cats. She had won; she would be the one to take our case to October. That was better than an apology, as we measure things.

Beyond that, once I had accepted the necessity, I could even see some advantage in it: Titania had known me when she was Stacy, known me too well for me to take many risks where she was concerned, but she had never had much knowledge of Ginevra. That, combined with her distraction, might be what we needed to succeed—and Titania was distracted. We had determined that she spent most of her time traveling, but when she was in the Mists, she stayed with her beloved daughter at Goldengreen.

And she had been preparing for a Ride.

On that final night of our wait for Moving Day, I came back to my room at Shadowed Hills after leaving my leather jacket among the knowe’s repository of cast-off human clothing—October would have laughed at the amount of time I spent arranging it to catch the eye while still appearing innocently haphazard—to find Grianne once again keeping silent watch from her habitual corner. I stopped in the doorway, frowning at her. “Why do you help us?” I asked. “You’re loyal to Duke Torquill, in this reality as much as in the one I remember, and we’ve never been particularly close.”

She shrugged. “Candles,” she said.

“I realize the rest of us have far more of a tendency toward verbosity than you do, but I do need more than a single word if I’m going to understand.”

Grianne sighed like I’d just asked her to do something entirely unreasonable. She held out her hand, and one of her Merry Dancers came to nestle in her palm. “Candles exist to light the way,” she said. “We used to have all the roads, a long time ago, before Maeve’s Ride was broken. If a path could pass through Faerie, we could pass there. Shadows and thorns, blood and children, we led you all to your destinations. Candela exist to light the way.”

“And you’re helping me because . . . ?”

“The Shadow Roads are anchored by the Cait Sidhe. We’ve been trying for years to figure out how they hadn’t collapsed in your absence. Then Garm started saying the world was an illusion, and that the real history was something else that Candela couldn’t see. He didn’t know the real history, but he knew this one was a lie. That made so much sense. The Roads were still there because the Cait Sidhe were still there. We don’t have many paths left to us, and more and more, our purpose is forgotten. Do you know what happens to a candle no one needs?”

“Not in specific.”

“It gets blown out.” She put her hand over the Merry Dancer in her hand, blocking its light, and looked at me gravely. “I help you because if you’re telling the truth, you can help the Candela keep our purpose. And if you’re not, who cares? You’re not hurting anyone. Nothing you’ve said or done has threatened my duke, or asked me to go against my oaths. Either you’re going to save us, or you’re harmless and deserve to have someone looking after you so you don’t hurt yourself.”

I blinked at her. “That is . . . very practical. You have my respect.”

She nodded, mouth tightly closed once more as she released her Merry Dancer into the air.

“You also have my apologies for making you talk so much when I know it discomforts you,” I said. “I needed to understand, especially with Moving Day approaching.”

The festivities would begin at midnight. Eion would start his journey toward Golden Shore, and the period in which changelings could move freely would begin. I had entertained a few quiet fantasies of October realizing her situation and running away the moment Moving Day made it acceptable, but had dismissed them as it became more and more clear that she had no idea anything was wrong with her life. She wouldn’t run.

According to Mary, however, on Moving Day October would “leave the safety of the nest,” and I would be able to intercede. I could enter the tower once she was gone. I could verify for myself that her life there was as kind as it looked from the outside, that she wasn’t being bled behind closed doors, that she faced no dangers. I might attract Amandine’s attention if I had to push through the wards, but October wouldn’t be there for me to endanger. No more waiting. No more staying so close and yet so far away.