Page 79 of Night and Silence

“She’s a Selkie now,” I said, and laughed, tears and hysteria both threatening to break through the sound. “Can you believe it? A Selkie.” A small, terrible corner of my mind reminded me that if Connor and I had stayed together—if his family hadn’t come between us, if I hadn’t chosen Cliff over chasing after him—Gillian might not find any of this strange. She could have grown up knowing that one day a skin would come to her.

But she wouldn’t have been Gillian. Even if I’d given an imagined daughter with Connor the same name, she would have been a different little girl, growing up in a different world. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. That doesn’t mean the things it shows are always better.

“Perhaps she’ll be the first of them the sea witch can allow herself to love, as she didn’t choose it,” said Tybalt, and lightly touched my cheek. There were still shadows in his eyes. The damage my mother had done wasn’t the kind that could be washed away in a single adventure, no matter how hard we both wished it could be. “I am glad she is well.”

“Me, too.” I took a breath, letting myself relax into his touch. It was only for an instant. That instant was enough to make me feel like the rest of this might be something we could survive. “Quentin and May?”

“Awake, and in Muir Woods with the rest. The pretender Queen has been arrested for her crimes, as has her changeling accomplice. The Baobhan Sith who tried so industriously to devour you has been given a nice new robe and a place to stay while she adjusts to the decade.” He frowned. “I recognize she was a victim here, acting entirely on instinct, but still it galls me that someone with such a taste for your blood should be kept as a guest in your monarch’s halls.”

“Just don’t invite her to stay at the Court of Cats, and we’ll be fine,” I said. I took a step back, less to create distance between us than to make it clear that the moment had passed: we needed to move. “She’ll digest my blood and lose the ability to disguise herself as me soon enough. Are you feeling up to carrying me to Muir Woods?”

“You live, my love, and your daughter lives as well. Right now, I could carry you to Mag Mell if you asked it of me.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Having the groom collapse from exhaustion before the wedding does no one any good.”

The look of surprise on his face would have been amusing, if I hadn’t known he was, on some level, worried that I wouldn’t want to marry him when he was anything less than perfect. I put my hand on his arm.

“Come on, Tybalt,” I said. “Take me to see the queen.”

“It would be an honor.” He swept his arm under my legs, lifting me into the bridal carry that seemed to be the easiest method for conveying me through the dark, and stepped into the shadows before I could say anything else.

Most of the time, I preferred to run the Shadow Roads by his side, when we had to use them at all. It was easier on him if he wasn’t trying to carry me while he ran, and I preferred to know that I was at least technically in command of my own fate, even if a simple fall could mean being lost forever in the darkness. He could see. As long as I could hold my breath, he’d be able to backtrack and find me. Or at least I liked to tell myself that, since it made the whole experience a little less upsetting.

Ice formed on my skin and in my hair, gluing my eyelashes together, caking on my lips. I snuggled closer to the comforting warmth of him—the man I had chosen, who had chosen me; the man I was going to marry, no matter what the world threw at us—and tried to focus on the sound of my heartbeat, which thundered in my ears.

I should have put the pieces together sooner. I blamed my concern for Gillian and my rapid blood loss. Even for me, it had been a hard day. But the false Queen didn’t have many allies left. Rhys—I wasn’t sure of the title for a deposed puppet King, other than maybe “loser”—was still asleep in Silences. Her guards worked for Arden now, who treated them better than her nameless predecessor ever had. Her courtiers were scattered throughout the Kingdom, retreating to their home demesnes in disgrace. It would be a long time before any of them could gather enough influence to win themselves a place in Arden’s Court. Really, Dugan had been the only logical person to have been helping her.

The signs had been there all along. The scent of cinnamon and cardamom; the involvement of secrets that were meant to be kept at the royal level, which his time with the false Queen could easily have revealed to him. Gillian’s description of Jocelyn’s supposed “boyfriend” only confirmed what I’d already been virtually certain of.

“Almost there,” murmured Tybalt. “Brace yourself.”

I did, snuggling closer still, and held my breath as we burst into the warmth and light of the mortal world. The scent of redwood trees assailed my nose; we were in Muir Woods. I took a deep, whooping breath, cracking the ice on my lashes as I opened my eyes and beheld a strip of late afternoon sky framed by redwood branches. In the distance, someone laughed, a warm, comfortable sound. The sound of tourists in a state park, who saw no reason to worry that anything might go wrong.

I blinked. There was no weight of a don’t-look-here on us, and I hadn’t been wearing a human disguise while I was at the Luidaeg’s. “Oh. Shit.”

Tybalt blinked in turn. “What do you—”

“Illusions. Now.” His eyes widened in understanding. He didn’t quite drop me, but he put me down with more vigor than was technically necessary, both of us grabbing for the strands of shadow running through the air. His gestures were more refined than mine, elegance in motion, like he was dancing. I, on the other hand, was a magical wrecking ball, grabbing at whatever power I could find and yanking it down over myself like a shroud.

The smell of cut grass and bloody copper rose around me, twining and tangling with Tybalt’s musk and pennyroyal. A verbal spell would have risked attracting too much attention: the sun wasn’t down yet, and while the path where we’d emerged wasn’t on the main thoroughfare—thank Oberon—Muir Woods is a popular tourist attraction. The place was probably thronging with mortals who’d have serious questions about why our ears were pointy and our eyes were funny if they happened to come around the right corner at the wrong time.

The spell crashed down to cover me, knocking more ice loose without chasing the freeze from my skin. I gasped, as much from the strain of casting a silent illusion as from the shock of its presence. Shaking the shreds of magic from my fingers, I turned to Tybalt.

He was watching me with what I could only call fond indulgence, his features blunted and his eyes dimmed by the illusion he had designed for himself. “I will never tire of watching you do that,” he said.

“What? Panic?”

“No. Enchant yourself in my presence. It is a small vulnerability, but as it’s what our circumstances allow to us, I shall accept it for the gift that it is.”

“Weirdo,” I said fondly. Then I sobered. “We need to get to Arden.”

“Indeed, we do,” he said, and offered me his arm. Together, newly apparently human and no more out of place than any other tourists, we stepped out of our isolated corner of the park and started down the path toward the far wall.

Muir Woods is what so much of California used to be: lush and green and virtually untouched by human hands. The paths that wind through the ancient trees have been designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, allowing humans to see the redwoods without necessarily damaging them. When a sequoia falls, downed by time or rot or forest fire, it’s allowed to stay where it lands, slowly rotting and feeding the living world around it. Everything smells of good green growth, of running water, of the sea. If the entire mortal world were like Muir Woods, we would have no need for the Summerlands. We could just stay in the trees and be happy.

Of course, the entire mortal world was like Muir Woods, once, and look where that got us.

The humans I’d been worried about running into strolled along the main boardwalk, some in couples, others in family groups. A small child pointed in awe at a bright yellow banana slug while a park employee watched unobtrusively off to one side, ready to step in if the animal were put into danger. A woman pushed an older man in a wheelchair. Several people pushed strollers. The only unusual thing about me and Tybalt was the way I had my hand resting on the crook of his elbow, rather than tucked into his hand.