Page 23 of The Brightest Fell

Finally, I lowered my hand and said, “I have Simon. He knows where August was seen last. He knows her magic. I have Quentin. He can watch my back in case Simon finds a way around the binding, and I can watch his, since the binding doesn’t cover him at all.”

“You have me,” said Raj.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

He stared at me, eyes wide and pupils narrow, until they were almost lost in the glass-green depths of his eyes. “What?”

“Raj, you’re the Prince of Cats, and your uncle is missing,” I said. “If someone attacked the Court right now, there wouldn’t be anyone there to defend it. Honestly, I shouldn’t have let you come here. Your people need you.”

“But . . .”

“When I agreed to marry your uncle, we both knew there’d be times when his position would come between us. Times when he had to put the needs of the Court of Cats before me. It hurt. It still hurts. Right now, it feels like it’s killing me.” All that time we could have spent together, and hadn’t, because he’d had a duty to uphold. I had my own life, my own job to do, but suddenly it all seemed like such a waste. “While he’s gone, the Court of Cats needs you.”

Raj’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t want to,” he said.

“I know.”

“Bring him home.” He darted forward, flinging his arms around my waist for one heart-rending moment. Then he tore himself away and ran for the door, shifting into feline form as he went. He was faster on four legs. He would reach the edge of the wards and disappear, heading back into the shadows, back to the Court of Cats.

I let out a shuddering breath. “All right,” I said. “All right. We should—”

“If I may,” interjected Simon. “As this seems to be the time when you set the members of our party, I recommend your fair Fetch remain here.” He nodded toward May.

She recoiled. “What?” she demanded. “No! Why? No!”

“There are spells that can be woven—spells I can weave, and you can trust, so long as my brother’s binding limits the damage I can do—to let blood call to blood.”

May and I blinked in unison. I was the first to speak. “Okay, first, I’m not sure what that means, and second, if blood can call to blood, why can’t you use that to find August? We could all go home and actually get some sleep.”

“I’ve been sleeping for some time,” said Simon.

“Not long enough,” muttered Sylvester. Louder, he said, “We tried blood charms to bring August home. Wherever she is, she’s outside their reach, or something is blocking them. My brother is proposing using your Fetch as an anchor. Your blood calls to hers, no matter how far apart you are, and if we make that calling . . . louder . . . she will be able to know more of where you are. She would know immediately if you were in danger, and we could send aid.”

“Why not just, I don’t know, take aid with her in the first place?” asked May.

“There are many reasons, but the simplest is that a smaller force moves faster,” said Simon. “Send a hundred knights and all you’ll do is slow us down. But that doesn’t mean I’m refusing to be sensible. Anchoring her to you, and leaving you here with my brother to serve as an early warning system, only makes sense.”

May looked at me, silently pleading for me to disagree. And I wanted to—sweet Maeve, I wanted to. May had as much right to bring her lover home as I had to go racing after mine.

At the same time, May’s combat experience was all borrowed from my memories, and while she had knowledge, she lacked muscle memory. She couldn’t drive—not well, anyway—couldn’t sharpen a knife, couldn’t do anything that required her to have actually done the things she remembered doing. All my sword training had come after her creation. She didn’t have any of it. She was indestructible, but she healed as slowly as I had before my blood was shifted.

“I need you here,” I said, and my words were a betrayal: I could see it in her eyes.

“Okay,” she whispered. “But you bring them home. You bring them both home. If I find out you saved Tybalt over Jazz—”

“I won’t,” I said. “You know I won’t.”

“But I won’t be there,” she said, and burst into tears.

I put my arms around her. She buried her head against my shoulder, weeping loudly. Looking over her head to Simon, I asked, “Is this really necessary? Can’t she come?”

“We are going to travel to places that are not safe,” he said. “There’s no one else to serve as anchor to your blood.”

“Sylvester can serve as anchor to yours, can’t he?” I felt May stiffen in my arms, waiting for his response. This could be the solution: a way for May to come with us while still having an early warning system on the ground at Shadowed Hills.

“Yes, and you could slit my throat in a fit of pique,” said Simon. “It’s safer if we’re both anchored.”

“I don’t care. She needs to be there.” May was a liability in every sense imaginable, except for the one that counted: she loved Jazz more than she loved anyone else in the world. If I had been left behind while someone else went to rescue Tybalt, it would have devastated me.