Page 64 of Night and Silence

There was a door at the bottom of the stairs. I hesitated. Then I handed Tybalt my turkey leg, grasped the knob, and opened it.

The hallway on the other side was familiar, stretching out for what looked like forever. The walls were mist-colored marble; the ceiling was a blue so dark that it became virtually black, blending into the shadows at its edges. White marble pillars held the whole thing up, as much for show as any architectural reality. My breath caught in my throat, choking me.

This was the first place we had seen when the false Queen had pried the knowe open, calling it back from whatever sleep waited for our hollow hills when we didn’t need them anymore. The walls had started to bleed fog as she had led the way along the hall, softening the lines of the pillars and blanketing the floor, erasing it. So why weren’t they doing it now?

The answer was obvious, when I stopped to think about: they weren’t bleeding fog because it would have attracted attention, and I had done something the old Queen would never have thought to do. I had asked the knowe for help.

Knowes don’t always like the people who hold them. They don’t have to. Power keeps them open, and power keeps the throne. But the king is the land in Faerie, and when the king is the land, the land gets to have opinions just like a person would. The false Queen’s knowe liked me, even though she didn’t. Buildings have always been among my biggest fans.

I reclaimed my turkey leg from Tybalt, caressing the nearest wall with my free hand as we resumed walking. I was eating as fast as I could, bolting down roast meat without doing more than the most cursory job of chewing. Taking time to eat in this sort of situation felt frivolous, but the wound at my neck still itched, and there was enough blood on my clothing to make it clear that I needed to replenish my veins before I was forced to open them again. Even my body can’t build something out of nothing.

“Please don’t choke to death,” said Tybalt, voice low. His feet made no sound on the marble floor, unlike my own. If anyone heard us coming, it wouldn’t be because of him. “I would be distraught if I had to contend with your corpse before I could even call myself a decent widower.”

“Sweet talker,” I said, around another mouthful of turkey.

He smiled faintly. We walked on side by side until we reached a closed, filigree-laden door. The patterns were abstract as ever, the echo of wind and waves and the distant rolling lines of what could have been hills or dunes. They might have held the secret of who had opened this knowe in the first place, whose hands had done the crafting and whose tears had sealed the doors. There wasn’t time to worry about that now.

“Sorry about this; I’ll come back and clean it up if I can,” I said, bending to set my turkey bone in the corner with as much respect as I could muster. “If I can’t, if I’m dead or something, maybe you could let some pixies in? They’d be happy to clean it up for you.” They could also keep the knowe open, assuming it wanted to be. They’re always looking for safe places to build their houses and raise their children, and while much of Faerie might think they’re vermin, they love their homes. They defend them.

I glanced at Tybalt. He nodded. I opened the doors.

The central receiving hall was a fairy-tale nightmare of white marble and vaulted ceilings, everything shrouded in thick, cloying mist. The scent of rowan and ice hung over everything like a warning. We were behind the central dais. Voices drifted in our direction, one raised in irritation, the other cool, calm: the voice of a woman who thought she had everything under control.

“You promised me they’d be here by now! Why aren’t they here?”

“Patience, Jocelyn. One would think you had been raised by wolves and not by mortals. Even humans understand the importance of manners.”

“I’m tired of this. I want what I was promised.”

“You’ll have it. You’ll have everything.”

I looked at Tybalt and pointed to the right side of the dais before making an exaggerated shooing motion. His eyes narrowed as he nodded understanding. He didn’t like splitting up, but he saw the sense in it.

Where were May and Quentin? The seaside entrance led directly to this room. They should have been here by now, taunting the false Queen, throwing her off-balance. The fact that they weren’t here was bad.

My foot hit something buried in the fog on the floor, and the situation went from bad to worse. I knelt, trying to be as quiet as I could, and fanned the fog away from May’s sleeping face. She was wearing a ballgown I’d never seen before, a confection of heather gray and soft lilac, and any hope that the false Queen might have mistaken her for me died at the sight of those colors. The false Queen always dressed people as she considered suitable. She had never dressed me like a cloud. Usually, she dressed me more like an abattoir.

The pallor of May’s gown made it easy to see the arrow protruding from her abdomen, short and blunt and dangerous. Her chest was rising and falling in the easy rhythm of the sleeping: elf-shot. The false Queen had hit her with elf-shot.

Even now that we had a cure for the stuff, I was still damn tired of it.

I straightened and resumed my cautious forward movement. Quentin was probably asleep somewhere in the mist on the other side of the dais, similarly dressed for a party that was never going to happen, that he was never going to attend.

“They should be here by now.” Jocelyn again, her voice descending into a whine.

The false Queen sighed heavily. “They’ll come. We have something October can’t possibly resist. Don’t we, Gillian, dear?”

There was a sound, like flesh striking flesh, and a whimper. I hadn’t heard it in years. It didn’t matter. The sound bypassed my brain and lanced straight for my heart, breaking it and lacing it back together in the same moment. All thought of stealth or subtlety fled my mind as I drew my knife and broke into a run, flinging myself around the front of the dais.

The false Queen of the Mists turned her head, looking at me with moonstruck eyes as cold as light reflecting off the water, and smiled.

“Hello, October,” she said. “So nice of you to join us.”

SEVENTEEN

THE FALSE QUEEN HAD clearly put a great deal of time and thought into this moment, staging everything to make the biggest possible impact. She was standing at the center of the dais, dressed in a gown of dark blue silk that darkened to black where it pooled at her feet, shimmering with oil-slick rainbows that almost distracted from her skin, which was as pale and faintly blue as the flesh of a drowned sailor. Her hair—fine, straight, and white as sea foam—was pulled over her shoulder and allowed to fall in a tangled line all the way to her feet.

Jocelyn stood behind her, dressed in a blue linen version of that same gown, looking for all the world like a child playing in her mother’s closet. She was beaming, triumphant and cruel, as if she had finally been given her heart’s desire.