Page 2 of Night and Silence

It wasn’t pretty, but in the end, Chelsea survived, Riordan got her just desserts, and we wound up with a minor monster problem. Because, see, open portals go both ways, and Chelsea hadn’t exactly been watching to make sure none of the local wildlife followed her through. Being fae creatures, some of our unwanted guests had proven incredibly adept at concealing themselves, and we only found out they were in the mortal world when they popped out and scared the locals.

Danny snorted. “Pigs, hedgehogs, whatever. They have wings, they shouldn’t be here, and they’re not here, which means we have time to talk.”

“Danny, this isn’t—”

“If he blames you, he needs to stop. And if he won’t stop, then maybe you need to think about whether he’s good for you. Or whether you’re good for him.”

I froze. For a terrible moment, I wasn’t looking at Danny, my friend and ally. I was looking at Tybalt, my former enemy, current lover, and best friend, as he stepped into the shadows at the corner of my bedroom and disappeared, leaving me alone. The one thing he’d promised I was never going to be again. The scent of pennyroyal and musk hung in the air, taunting me with my inability to follow him.

I blinked. The moment passed. Danny reappeared, looking concerned, and I hated him, oh, how I hated him. Not for long. More than long enough.

“No,” I said.

“I’m sorry, but yeah,” said Danny.

Being a hero of the realm means I’m constantly putting myself in the path of danger, like I want nothing more than to have my bones broken and the skin stripped from my body. Being a person means I’m never doing it alone. I have friends. I have allies. Not just Quentin and Danny, but others, like my Fetch-turned-sister, May, and her girlfriend, Jazz.

Like Tybalt, the King of Dreaming Cats. The man who’d hated me, helped me, fallen in love with me, and saved my life more times than I cared to count. The man who was supposed to marry me.

The man who could barely even look at me anymore.

Who hadn’t been able to look at me since my mother, Amandine the Liar, had decided to lock him in a cage and trap him in feline form until she was done with him. Tybalt didn’t blame me for my mother’s actions—I blamed me more than he did—but when he looked at me, he saw her, and it was breaking us both.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said softly.

“I know. But maybe you should.”

“I don’t think that’s for you to decide.”

Danny sighed. “Toby, this isn’t healthy. You need—”

Whatever he thought I needed was cut off by the sound of Quentin’s sudden, high-pitched yelp. I whipped around, scanning the shadows until I spotted the outline of my squire, half a block away and struggling to keep hold of his butterfly net. He’d managed to snare something the size of a small raccoon, and whatever it was, it looked like it was winning.

“Later,” I snapped, casting a quick look back to Danny before I raised my own net and ran toward Quentin, ready to join the fray.

The trouble with hunting creatures no one has seen in hundreds of years is that when figuring out how to capture or subdue them, we have to rely on the accounts of people who have long since forgotten what the beasts were actually like and have, instead, started remembering them through pleasantly rose-tinted nostalgia. According to the records in the Library of Stars, arkan sonney are sweet, playful creatures, like hedgehogs with wings longer than their bodies, capable of bestowing great fortune on people and places that please them. Supposedly, they’re also about as intelligent as the average sheep, and regularly had to be fished out of wells or freed from hunters’ traps back when they coexisted with the rest of Faerie.

The thing Quentin had snared in his net bore about as much resemblance to something sweet and innocent and bumbling as I did to a eucalyptus tree. For one thing, it was far too large, and the records hadn’t mentioned anything about arkan sonney being chalk white with blazing red eyes and enormous tusks. It looked less like an ordinary hedgehog than it did the result of some unholy hybridization of a porcupine and a wild pig, with the wings of a falcon stapled on for good measure.

It thrashed. It squealed. It gnashed its terrible teeth at Quentin, who quailed but stood fast, refusing to let go of the net and allow the creature to escape. Brave boy. That was on him, although if I’d asked, he would have said it was all because of what he’d learned from me. Quentin had always been brave. He’d just needed someone to let him show it.

The sound of my approach caught his attention. He shot me a grateful glance, still struggling to keep hold of the net. Our location meant we couldn’t shout the way we normally would have, and Tybalt’s absence meant we didn’t have a major part of our backup. We’d grown shamefully accustomed to having someone who could step through the shadows in the field with us.

I am nothing if not a skilled improvisor. I glanced frantically around. A trash can rested on a nearby curb, set out for the garbage collectors. Saying a silent apology to the sleeping homeowners, I grabbed it, dumped its contents out, and hoisted it over my head as I ran toward Quentin. Realizing my intent, he let go of the net right before I slammed the trash can down over the shrieking pig-thing.

Silence reigned. I looked up, meeting Quentin’s wide, startled eyes.

“That’s one,” I said.

His shoulders sagged. “Her Majesty said there were at least three.”

“Her name is Arden,” I said. “She’s not here. You don’t have to use her title.”

Quentin actually smirked at that, although the expression wasn’t enough to drive the weariness and worry from his eyes. “Can I be there when you tell her that?” he asked. “Better yet, can I be there when you tell my father that?”

I grimaced. Arden is the daughter of the last legitimate King in the Mists, Gilad Windermere, and as such, has been a princess all her life. The throne was always going to be waiting for her, no matter what else she chose to do . . . or what else was done to her. Thanks to the machinations of Evening Winterrose—once my supposed friend and ally, always secretly my enemy, Firstborn daughter of Oberon and Titania, and stone-cold bitch—Arden had been in hiding for most of her life and had only recently been able to claim her father’s throne. We were all still getting used to the idea that we had a queen who wasn’t regularly going to try to have me arrested or banished from the Mists.

There are nights when I feel like my life should come with some sort of flowchart, and then there are the nights when I feel like even that would be too confusing to understand.