Page 28 of The Brightest Fell

Simon came next—or rather, the Simon I’d seen in his own blood-memory came next, all mulled cider and sweet smoke, with no hint of taint or rot to complicate matters. I inhaled and tried to push past it, digging deeper, looking for the unfamiliar.

And then, between one heartbeat and the next, I found it. The scent of sweet campfire smoke, close enough to Simon’s candle smoke to be a kissing cousin, but distinct enough that there was no question of whether it belonged to him. It was wrapped with a ribbon of rose. Not Amandine’s wild, woody roses: something small, cultivated, sweet, the sort of rose that would grow in a princess’ walled garden. August.

“Smoke and roses,” I said, and opened my eyes. “She smelled like smoke and roses.”

“Yes,” breathed Simon. “Can you follow it?”

I looked at him and nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I can.”

NINE

WE DESCENDED THE TOWER steps with me in the lead, all my concentration focused on teasing out the often-thin, always-faded scent of August’s magic. Only the fact that it had been so concentrated in her room had allowed me to find it at all, and if I lost it, I was going to need to start over from the beginning. Mom was nowhere to be seen. I was grateful for that. She was a distraction, and if there was anything I didn’t need, it was to be distracted.

At the same time, if she’d been there, maybe I could have used the fact that I had the trail to convince her to return Jazz. One hostage was enough. Tybalt was better equipped to take care of himself. More importantly, he would understand why I had saved Jazz first. He would forgive me.

Maybe if I told myself that enough times, I would believe it, and stop being faintly grateful that I hadn’t been forced to put the theory to the test. We walked to the tower door and out into the garden, which was a riot of perfumes that should have made my task even harder. Instead, having so many things that weren’t the scent of August’s magic narrowed my focus more and more, until the trail was the only thing that mattered, like a thin ribbon road stretching out to the horizon, shimmering, intangible, and mine.

We stepped through the gate and out of the garden. The trail divided, heading toward Shadowed Hills and heading away at the same time, and with equal strength. I frowned, pointing down the line of the second trail.

“Where was she going, Simon?” I asked.

He followed my finger before adopting a frown of his own. “There’s not much in that direction. September and Malcolm discussed breaking ground there for a home of their own, but abandoned the idea when they decided to return to Londinium.”

“September,” I said. “Your sister.”

“Yes.” A shadow crossed his face. “She’s long dead and gone now, and the rose has fallen from the tree.”

There was real pain in his voice. I put the rest of my questions aside. September was a matter for later, if ever. Purebloods rarely want to talk about their dead. “If no one built there, what is there?”

“Well, there’s a stretch of marshland, mostly. A flock of pixies lived there the last time I checked; they probably still do. That sort of terrain makes a perfect kingdom for the little things. I used to visit them sometimes with Patrick, after the pixie population from his workshop relocated, and—”

“Wait,” I said. “Patrick?”

“Yes. Baron of Twycross, although he set that title aside when he married a mermaid. I believe he’s Patrick Lorden now.”

A memory flashed by, of Patrick standing in Arden’s knowe, ordering Sylvester never to say Simon’s name again: calling himself “more a brother to him than you ever tried to be.” I’d been distracted with murders and a major political conclave at the time, but . . . “Patrick Lorden is your friend.” It wasn’t really a question, more a statement waiting to be confirmed.

Simon chuckled wryly. “He may not be anymore, given everything that’s happened. But once, he was the dearest person to me in all the world, outside of my own family.”

“Huh,” I said thoughtfully. “So he knew August?”

“Yes.”

“Would she have gone to see him, maybe, before she disappeared? Since we know she didn’t go to Shadowed Hills.” I was pretty sure Sylvester would have said something if she had. He knew better than to keep secrets from me these days, especially where my family was concerned. Simon was an uneasy ally and August was a stranger, but Tybalt was the one in danger, and Tybalt?

Tybalt was the cornerstone of my new family, the one I’d constructed for myself, and Sylvester had been working too hard at rebuilding the bridges between us to let them be broken again. Especially by Amandine. We had been over that ground, and I trusted him not to betray me there.

“Possible,” said Simon, slowly. “She was never a gregarious child—or I suppose, if she had wanted to be, that she never had the opportunity. Amandine worried about her, you see. She kept her close to home, and August didn’t seem to mind. She doted on her mother, and her mother doted on her.”

If there had been time, I would have sat down and asked Simon to explain, exactly, what the dynamics of their little family had been. I was starting to draw a picture, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. But there wasn’t time. Every minute that passed was another minute where Tybalt and Jazz were at my mother’s mercy. Both of them were purebloods, immortal unless something came along to kill them. That didn’t matter. Having a lot of time didn’t mean they deserved to have it stolen from them like that.

“This way, then,” I said, and started following the second trail, the one that led away from Shadowed Hills and my mother’s tower at the same time.

Quentin stuck close by my side, while Simon lagged behind, hands in his pockets, looking at the landscape with the grave, regretful eyes of a man who had seen too many things change to be truly comfortable anywhere.

The meadows surrounding the tower gradually gave way to forest. Not the tame, almost decorative forest that divided the tower from Shadowed Hills: this was a dark, overgrown, tangled thing, a forest that belonged in either a nightmare or a fairy tale. The trees—which had some aspects of oak and some of elm and some of nothing that had ever grown in the mortal world—rose around us like giants, their branches clawing at the sky, their trunks heavy with strange burls. Red shelf fungus dotted with white spiraled around the bodies of the trees, while glowing blue-and-white toadstools grew among their roots, filling the air with a strange, lambent light.

Bushes laden with berries I didn’t recognize grew on all sides, clogging the underbrush. They smelled like candy and Christmas and all good things. I shuddered, sticking to the thin trail someone else had beaten through the wood.