Page 70 of Night and Silence

“You said there was a man,” I said, pulling her attention back to me. “What did he look like? Did he have green hair?”

Tybalt’s head whipped around, eyes narrowing as he put two and two together and came up with an unhappy five. Kennis shook her head.

“Plain. Inconsequential. He stank of Daoine Sidhe beneath his illusions.”

So it could have been Dugan, or it could have been somebody else. Swell. I frowned as I stepped off the dais, wading through the mist until I found the false Queen, curled into a ball with her eyes tightly closed. Kneeling, I felt the side of her neck, relaxing only a little when I found her pulse. “She’s alive. Weak, but alive.”

“I said as much,” said Kennis.

“You also tried to kill me multiple times, so I wanted to confirm it for myself.” I jerked my head toward the sobbing Jocelyn. “Can someone grab her before she runs? I really don’t feel like playing spoiled brat scavenger hunt today.”

“Of course,” said Tybalt. He moved toward her. Jocelyn screamed and tried to dodge. Deftly, he snaked an arm around her waist, grabbing her wrists with his free hand as he pulled her close. “Where do you think you’re going? We need to have a conversation, you and I. It will hurt less if you don’t struggle.”

He grinned, showing the full scope of his inhuman dentition. Jocelyn screamed again before collapsing in a dead faint. Only Tybalt’s grip kept her from falling to the floor. He turned to look at me.

“Will this do?” he asked.

I nodded. “That’s fine.”

“October—”

“No.” I moved through the mist until I found Quentin’s slumbering form. Kneeling next to him and beginning to go through his pockets, I said, “I don’t want to know. Not yet. As soon as I know one way or the other, I’m going to fall apart, and I can’t do that until we get someone here to take this whole mess over. So I don’t want to know. Even once I do know, we have to deal with the fact that the false Queen wasn’t working alone. I think she had help. I think Dugan was helping her.”

“Dugan Harrow? But wasn’t he—”

“Arrested? Yeah. And then he vanished into the dungeons, and we all figured it had been taken care of. Surprise, surprise. We were wrong.” He’d been with Raysel when she kidnapped Gillian the first time. He’d betrayed his liege, and when he’d tried to assassinate her, she’d locked him away.

Stupid me—assuming that out of sight and out of mind meant no longer my problem.

Dugan Harrow had been a courtier in service to the false Queen, a landless Daoine Sidhe noble sent to the Court from Deep Mists—and since Deep Mists was in Marin, he might have grown up with stories of how once, the royal court had been located in Muir Woods, well away from the human city, in the trees where it belonged. It would certainly explain why he’d been willing and eager to help Rayseline Torquill kidnap both the Lorden boys and my own daughter, holding them hostage in an attempt to start a war. Kidnapping was his go-to move, the only thing he could be absolutely sure would get the reaction he was looking for.

He’d been arrested after drawing a cold iron knife on the false Queen, and when we hadn’t found him in her dungeons, we all assumed she’d just done the inevitable and made her problem . . . disappear. The Law forbids killing. It doesn’t forbid transforming an enemy into a stone and dropping them into the ocean, even if you know that when the spell wears off, they’ll drown before they can make it to the surface. There are always loopholes for people vicious enough to look for them.

The thought that she might have slapped him on the wrist for failing at his coup and released him to go home had simply never occurred to me. He’d tried to kill her. But he was working with her now, and he hadn’t been there when we’d taken her knowe. Her letting him go was the only thing that made sense, and it didn’t make sense at all.

And I didn’t have time to worry about what did or didn’t make sense right now. Too much was going on. As usual, Quentin’s phone was in his jacket pocket. He had a lock screen, but the day I can’t remember my squire’s combination is the day I tell him his training is finished. I keyed in the code, revealing a picture of him and Dean sitting on Dean’s private underground dock, their shoulders touching, neither of them in a human disguise. It was an adorable moment. I dismissed it with a sweep of my thumb.

“Dianda’s on her way. We won’t have to hold the scene for long.”

“Good.” Dianda was a natural disaster, but she was a natural disaster on our side. She would keep things together. I pulled up the address book on autopilot, dialed, raised the phone, and waited.

What time was it? We’d been running hard since the early morning. Was it afternoon yet? Were people going to be awake? The phone rang, and I held my breath, until there was a click, and Etienne’s familiar, somewhat puzzled voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”

“Etienne.” I closed my eyes. Maybe I should have called Arden. Maybe this was a matter for the Queen in the Mists. But I was tired, and I was scared, and I wanted my family. My real family, the one that had always been there for me. “It’s October. I . . . is Sylvester awake?”

“He could be.” Etienne’s tone turned gentle. “Bridget told me she saw you on campus this morning. She told me why. October, is . . .” His voice trailed off. It was clear he didn’t know how to ask the question, and that he wouldn’t have wanted to ask it if he could.

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “I’m in the false Queen’s knowe. The receiving hall. It’s currently open. Can you please get Sylvester and bring him here? I . . . I need him.”

There was a long pause. The last time I’d seen Sylvester Torquill was when I’d told him that his brother, Simon, had managed to escape from my custody. Sylvester was still my liege. He still held my loyalty, in more ways than one. But until I found Simon and brought him back, I didn’t feel like I’d earned the right to go home. Even bringing his niece back from the dead—a pretty impressive trick, if I do say so myself—hadn’t felt like enough.

Besides, January deserved some time with her uncle without me sniffing around the edges, trying to intrude. Where I went, chaos followed. They had the right to ask for better than that.

Etienne didn’t seem to share my opinion about keeping my distance. Without hesitation, he said, “Stay where you are. We’ll be there as quickly as we can.” The phone went dead. I lowered it, staring at the screen.

Then I raised it again. This time, I pulled up Walther’s number. He picked up on the second ring.

“Hello? Quentin?”