Page 80 of Night and Silence

I could fix that. Loving a man several hundred years older than me has meant adjusting to a little anachronism in my daily life, but he still knew how to hold hands. I tangled my fingers into his, and he glanced at me, first startled, then smiling.

“Your hands are cold,” he said.

“Yours aren’t.”

“The shadows have learned to love me in their own way. I apologize that they may never feel so very generous toward you.”

“I’m not Cait Sidhe.” I shrugged as we walked, as fast as we dared, toward the wooden stairway that would take us to the path toward Arden’s knowe. “I’m okay with the idea that the shadows won’t love me, as long as you do.”

“The act that could strip away my love for you has never yet been committed, nor is its commission a thing I have any cause to fear,” said Tybalt.

I snorted. “Now you sound like a romance novel again.”

“Sometimes it is the best of ways to sound.” He glanced at me. “My recent absence has been . . . ”

“I know why you were gone.”

“Your knowing doesn’t change the fact that I’ve allowed precious hours to slip by without spending them in your company. I am ashamed of how afraid I am. Still, I am afraid. It seems I should have shaken this concern away, as I have shaken off so many others, but . . .” He shook his head. “My people. Raj. You. It has been a very long time since I feared failure for any reason other than the damage to my pride. Your mother showed me that I am vulnerable, and I did not much care for the feeling.”

I squeezed his hand. It was the only thing I could think of. I did wonder whether our appearance in the mortal areas of the park, where we would have to walk quietly and without attracting attention to reach the knowe, had been due to the road ending or due to some possibly subconscious desire on his part. Sometimes it seemed like our lives never left much room for serious conversation that didn’t include someone trying to kill one or both of us. Quentin and May were awake; Gillian was safe with the Luidaeg; the false Queen was in custody. This might be the last real pause we got.

But Dugan was still out there somewhere, and Arden didn’t know about him, or how dangerous he could potentially be. We could walk slowly enough to be overlooked. We could steal a few minutes to talk about our feelings. Anything more than that was for later, when our enemies had, however temporarily, been subdued.

Sometimes I really miss the days when my biggest concern was whether I’d be able to afford fresh milk for my coffee. Then I consider the gains I’ve made—my home, my friends, my weird and chosen family—and I remember that the past is only rosy because of all the blood that was in my eyes.

“Something will have to change,” he said softly. “I fear it might be me.”

We had reached the stairway. We climbed it in silence, still holding onto each other, until we reached the hard-packed dirt trail that ran around the edge of the basin containing the tallest of the trees. Side by side, we walked to the base of an ancient redwood whose roots had carved a series of natural “steps” out of the hill. After that, it was a simple matter to wait for the mortals around us to pass. Once we had a clear moment, I dropped Tybalt’s hand and started upward.

As we walked, I wove my hands in and out of the air, tugging on it, teasing it, making it clear who I was and where I was going. Some knowes, like Shadowed Hills, require complicated rituals to find the door. Others, like the false Queen’s fading home, only need people to make it past the repulsion charms and general environmental unpleasantness. Arden’s knowe split the difference. She didn’t want humans wandering in unwittingly—obviously—but she also didn’t want to be inaccessible to her subjects. There were several approaches, some easier than others, and all of them required a certain series of gestures or syllables to tell the boundary that you were approaching with the queen’s own approval.

The world shivered around me, illusions adjusting themselves to show me what I needed to see. Glowing mushrooms appeared among the underbrush, and some of the banana slugs took on an even brighter glow, the consequence of eating both the fungus and the leaves dusted with pixie sweat. A flock of pixies swirled by overhead, wings chiming. I waved at them.

Behind me, Tybalt snorted. “I fully expect a battalion of them to appear at our wedding to hold your veil and demand shares of the cake.”

“It’s cute how you think I’m going to wear a veil,” I countered, and he laughed.

That sound was more encouraging than anything else could have been. It put a spring into my step, and in what felt like no time at all, I was cresting the top of the hill. The doors to Arden’s knowe were standing open, flanked as always by two guards in her livery—including, I was pleased to see, Lowri.

She waved when she saw us. I hurried across the clearing, waiting until I was close enough to talk to her without shouting before I said, “Tell me everything you can about Dugan Harrow.”

Lowri blinked. “I . . . what?”

“Dugan. Do you remember him?”

“Um, yes.” Her chuckle was dark and caustic. “I don’t know about you, but I tend to remember it when people try to stab my liege with iron knives. I was part of the band that arrested him and threw him into Her Maj—I mean, the false Queen’s dungeons.”

It occurred to me that I had no idea what the group noun for a bunch of guards was supposed to be. That had never seemed like a hole in my education before. “Was he one of you?”

“Him? No.” Her nose wrinkled. “The false Queen didn’t want her guards to be knighted. Most nobles, they can’t wait to show off this bunch of wee titled fools they have carrying swords in their name, but her? She was happier if we served only at her convenience and couldn’t go running off somewhere else even if we’d wanted to. He was never the type who wanted to get his hands dirty, but even if he had been, she’d never have allowed him to join the guard, because he came with a title. He’d never have needed her enough for her to believe his loyalty.”

“What was his title?”

“Baron.” She wrinkled her nose. “No land, no manners, but oh, he could lord it over us like anything—begging your pardon.” The last was a hasty addition as she finally seemed to register that the man behind me, in his jeans and plain green shirt, was Tybalt. “Not everyone with a title is terrible. Please don’t assume I meant yourself.”

“I try never to assume anything other than praise is a reference to me,” he said mildly. “It prevents misunderstandings.”

I rolled my eyes but kept my focus on Lowri. “So he was a jerk.”