Page 10 of Sleep No More

“I am, aren’t I?” She preened a little, beaming. “Now come on. Let’s get you something to eat before your sister comes and drags you off again.”

Willingly, I followed her back into the knowe and through the halls to the kitchen, where Melly settled us in a safe nook with bowls of stew and loaves of fresh, steaming bread. Kerry said nothing until she’d seen me take several large bites, and then, voice mild, she asked, “Has Moving Day been very bad this year?”

I swallowed, hard. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because while we’re used to seeing you here after it’s through, you don’t normally look this worn-away before we’ve even reached the main event. They ask too much of you.”

I looked down at my stew. “I do only the duty Faerie asks of me.”

“D’you know how many people His Grace has minding the doors during the nights?” When I didn’t answer, Kerry huffed and said, “Six! In shifts! So no one has to do it alone, or for more than a few hours! And we have the space and staff to say yes once in a while, when they’re not running from someone who’s likely to take offense to us adopting their misfits.”

“You can’t take offense at someone leaving on Moving Day,” I said, blinking at her. “Oberon himself decreed—”

“Oberon also said purebloods weren’t allowed to kill each other, and look how often that happens,” Kerry countered. “Oberon isn’t here, and people pay less attention to his rules than they do to looking like they’re following his rules. Your parents do you no favors, sheltering you in that tower, letting you go along thinking the whole world is these two demesnes. The world is a lot crueler to changelings than it seems when you’re standing here, nice and safe and tucked away.”

“Not that safe,” I said sourly, thinking of Quentin’s hand against the small of my back, the way he’d tried to shove me down.

“Yes, that safe,” said Kerry. “Everyone here knows that if they hurt you, really hurt you, they’d have to answer to your father, and to the Duke. Maybe it’s unfashionable, but we’re an unfashionable Duchy. The Duke doesn’t much care about what’s in fashion. Outside the Duchy, it’s not like that.”

“I’ve heard some stories.”

“And if you think no one ever finds a way to claim offense against someone for running away, you haven’t believed near half of them as well as you should. Maybe they don’t claim it against the one who left. Maybe they claim it against their new liege. Maybe they claim it against someone who stayed behind. Maybe they go back fifty years and find something no one took offense to at the time it happened, then use that as a lever. Even here, we have to be careful.”

I thought of the family of Hamadryads from earlier, and felt sick. “What about Golden Shore?”

“They do things differently there, always have,” said Melly, coming over with two more bowls of stew. “People have tried to reclaim changelings who’ve made it past the borders, but none have succeeded.”

“Supposedly they still have shapeshifters there,” said Kerry, dropping her voice like she was sharing a delicious, dangerous secret.

I stared at her. “They would never.”

According to the old histories, many of Maeve’s lost children had been so bestial that they could change shapes between something decently presentable and something entirely animal. They couldn’t be trusted after their mother betrayed us, of course, and an exception to the Law had been made to allow for the removal of such undesirable elements from our society. Fae who bore animal aspects but cleaved to a single shape were fine, if distasteful; the King and Queen of Golden Shore were Ceryneian Hinds, Daoine Sidhe from the waist up, golden-furred deer from the waist down. They knew their place, and without forgetting it, they had managed to claim a crown. So long as they stayed safely in a single shape, they could be trusted.

Chrysanthe and Theron had built a haven for changelings on the Golden Shore—one that was apparently even more important than I had realized. Surely they wouldn’t risk that for the sake of saving a few wild animals who had never truly belonged to Faerie in the first place.

Melly put a hand on Kerry’s shoulder, frowning at the younger Hob. “Of course they would never, and decent ladies don’t speak of such things,” she said, firmly.

“I’m not a decent lady, Mama, I’m a changeling,” said Kerry, with a degree of cheek I would never have directed at my own parents, not even Father. “A decent lady would be courting and thinking of a household of her own, not sitting patiently and waiting for the day the Duke decides she has to move along to another knowe or take a changeling husband and do her duty.”

“Hush now,” said Melly, as she moved away. “His Grace has been better to us than we deserve, and we owe him the recognition of that fact.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Kerry meekly.

She watched Melly move away, then returned her attention to me. “They ask too much,” she said again. “Eventually, you’re going to be crushed under the weight of what they ask from you.”

“You’ve never spoken like this before,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“You’ve never seemed this likely to listen,” she countered, before sighing. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Moving Day has been . . . rough, this year, even with the six of us standing shifts. A lot of people seem to be fleeing Wild Strawberries. It makes me wonder what might have changed up there.”

“Maybe Father knows,” I said. “His patron would know if anything had changed, and she might have said something. I can ask him.”

Kerry blinked. “You think he would answer?”

“Father? Yes. Mother . . .” I hesitated. “Perhaps not.”

A murmur swept through the kitchen, sharp and strained and quickly quieted. Melly’s ladle clicked as she set it against the rim of her stew pot, metal meeting metal, stepping down from her stool once again. This time, she didn’t approach us but moved toward the door.

“How may I be of assistance, lady?” she asked, tone all deference.