Page 68 of Be the Serpent

“I’m sorry, you have to.” She glared at me. I put up my hands. “If it were just you, you know I’d let you stay and face the all-dangerous, all-terrible Queen of Faerie by my side. Having an indestructible wingman is invaluable. But it’s not just you.”

“Quentin has the training to—”

“It’s not about Quentin.”

She continued glaring. I kept my hands up.

“We agreed, as a family, to give Raysel a safe place to rest and recover and see a damn therapist,” I said. “We agreed. That means you, too. Well, Muir Woods is about to be really, really unsafe for anyone who isn’t actively involved in this plan.” It was going to be unsafe for us, too, but I didn’t want to think about that any harder than I absolutely had to, because the only other person who might be able to play my part in this plan was August, and she was unavailable for a lot of reasons. They started with “She’s in Saltmist right now,” and from there escalated through a long series of patently obvious explanations of why I shouldn’t ask my semi-estranged half-sister to come up here and risk her life for reasons that really boiled down to “Somebody has to, and I don’t want to do it.”

May maintained her glare for another few seconds, then sighed and let it go. “And what happens if you take her into your service and then immediately get yourself killed?” she asked. “Or turned into a giant turtle or something else completely inconvenient?”

“I guess you get to deal with the Torquills trying to claim she’s released, because I’m not there to argue, and that’s when you get to force a ruling on the legal status of Fetches in Faerie. Either you’re my daughter in the eyes of the crown, and you inherit all my debts and assets, or you’re my sister, and you have the right to stand in for me on rights of insult. And either way, Tybalt will be there to help you, and as my husband, he also has a right to claim the remainder of Raysel’s service. Just get her home, and safe, and away from all this nonsense.”

“Tybalt,” said May thoughtfully. “You haven’t spoken to him about this yet, have you?”

“He’s in the Court of Cats, making sure they understand the situation.” He’d already been gone longer than I’d expected him to be. I guess the situation was reasonably difficult to explain. “Raj?”

“Was called back before we sat down for dinner,” she said. “The Court needed him, and he’s not his uncle; he doesn’t have that kind of leeway to delegate.”

“He’s also not technically in charge yet.” I sighed, rubbing my face with one hand. “I’m hoping Quentin will be less furious about this if I tell him he can go home with Dean for the duration.”

“The lady hopes in vain,” said May, voice flat. “He’s going to eat your face off.”

“Maybe, but not literally.” Her threat reminded me of the tray of sandwiches which Nolan had ostentatiously dropped off for me before he took off to notify the first group of courtiers that the knowe was being abandoned. Cassandra was really serious about me needing to eat as many of them as I could stomach. That raised some worrisome questions about just how much blood I was going to be losing today, since I could bleed myself nearly dry without suffering any long-term consequences. How much blood did she expect me to regenerate?

And it didn’t really matter, because my stomach seemed happy to receive as many sandwiches as I was willing to give it. They were pleasantly bland, cucumber and cream cheese and chicken and the occasional sharp bite of watercress. Nothing that could put a strain on an already-damaged system.

It would have been a lot more worrisome if we hadn’t been standing on the verge of a terrible idea that was nonetheless the best option we had.

“Go home,” I said. “Show Raysel her room, reassure her that we’re really not going to send her back to Shadowed Hills, and order sushi. Jazz likes sushi.”

“Does Raysel like sushi?”

“I don’t know if she’s ever had it before.”

May’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s right, she had a formless void and then she had the kitchens at Shadowed Hills! She’s probably never had anything good! Even if she’s not down for sushi, we can get her teriyaki and tempura and blow her sheltered little mind!”

“Just don’t blow it so completely that we have to give her back to her parents,” I said.

May made a noncommittal noise and watched me eat the rest of the sandwich in my hand, waiting for me to swallow before she leaned over and yanked me into a fierce hug.

“I know this is Stacy, and I know how much you want it to be Stacy, how much you want it to somehow be all right again,” she said, voice low, mouth close to my ear. “I know how much you want to save her. But Toby . . . ” She pushed me out to arm’s length, looking at me gravely. “Don’t you dare die. I love her as much as you do, but I love you more. You’re my sister and my family, and I need you to come home. So you come home.”

I pulled away, blinking. “I was planning to. You seem more concerned about this one than I’m used to.”

“Yeah, because I’ve met the Lady of Flowers before.” May looked at me, lips a hard line, eyes worried. “Long memory, on a Fetch. Long, long memory. Longer on a night-haunt. She was never a terror, but she was a tyrant. And if you were in her way, if you inconvenienced her . . . So many of the people I remember being came to us because of Titania. And some of them came while they were still alive, in the days before Oberon bound us not to harm the living. You need to be so careful with her. She doesn’t care who she destroys, as long as she gets what she wants.”

“I understand,” I said.

May started to speak, then paused and said, “I’ll let you take this one. I’m going to get Raysel and call Danny for a ride back to the house. Please make sure someone calls me when this is all over.”

She walked briskly out of the room. I blinked after her and reached for another sandwich.

Behind me, a smooth voice said, “Imagine my surprise when I arrived here expecting to find you with the Queen, only to be informed that the knowe was about to be evacuated, and all those not required for the successful completion of a mythical ‘plan’ were being bound to leave.”

“Sorry.” I turned to face Tybalt, a sandwich in my hand and an apologetic look on my face. “We didn’t have time to call and make sure you knew the plan, but I figured you’d catch on once you got here, as long as we hadn’t completely emptied the place out. How were things in the Court of Cats?”

“Hmmm? Oh, all is well among the Court. You know how the felines fare.” He waved a hand, airily dismissing my concerns. “What is this plan?”