Page 64 of Sleep No More

“Far as I know, not even she’s ever been reckless or sufficiently consumed by her own hubris to try, and if she wanted to, Mom and Dad were there to stop her,” said the Luidaeg. “Well, Mom’s still missing, and looks like Titania managed to sucker-punch Dad after he lost sight of her. She must have been planning this for a while, though. She moved fast.”

“Were you there? When she did this?”

“We all were, Toby,” said the Luidaeg wearily. “You, me, and your little cat, too. Everyone. And we all pissed her off, enough that apparently she went running to anchor her little shit bomb into the Heart before we could catch and contain her again. We don’t mess with the Heart of Faerie. The Rides used to chuck it a sacrifice every seven years or so, to try and heal the wound it suffered when it made the Three, but that’s about it. It just sits there, being a massive reality engine, not choosing anyone’s side. It doesn’t need to choose sides. It’s the Heart of Faerie.”

The brush was getting thicker and thicker around us, the air growing even cooler. I finally leaned over and took my jacket back from Ginevra, shrugging it on. I felt warmer and more secure almost instantly.

The Luidaeg glanced at me, knowingly. “I guess it makes sense that you’d be mired pretty deep in this bullshit,” she said. “Your line is susceptible to transformation, and stubborn as you are—and you are stubborn—this is a transformation, of a sort. You’ve been transformed into someone the real October never had the opportunity to be. I’m not sure why she would have wanted to, but I can see where she would have been able to survive, even as you. It’s just that survival isn’t all that matters, and she was able to thrive as herself. Now we just need to get her back.”

“What if I don’t want to be replaced?” I asked boldly.

The Luidaeg’s expression was surprisingly soft, and filled with sorrow. “Sorry, sweetheart, you’re not going to have a choice. If it’s Faerie or your happiness, I choose Faerie. I always choose Faerie. Even when it breaks my heart.” She turned to face front then, and I did the same.

We were approaching a massive wall of brambles, so tall it vanished into the darkness beyond the range of Grianne’s Merry Dancers. The Luidaeg cracked her neck and then her knuckles, eyes on the wall.

“If we want to stop a Ride, we need at least one of Titania’s actual kids to help us get the party started,” she said. “And it sounds like stopping the Ride is our first priority here. Takes a thief to catch a thief, takes a child of Titania to ruin Titania’s day. This spell you’re all under—it can’t cover the whole world.”

“No,” said Ginevra. “Like I said, it’s the Mists and the neighboring Kingdoms, no more, no less.”

“Can anyone inside it go past its borders?”

“No,” said Ginevra again, after a brief but suspicious pause.

“Didn’t think so. Okay. I know where two of Titania’s kids are, but only one of them’s likely to be in a place we can reach without some big bullshit that would probably attract too much attention. Toby, be glad you don’t remember where we’re going. You’d get way pissed at me if you did.”

I didn’t understand that, and so I didn’t say anything, hugging the leather jacket around myself and watching her warily instead.

The Luidaeg cocked her head and raised her hands, eyes on the wall of thorns the whole time. Then, in a voice like scales scything through clear water, low and carrying, she said, “You swore once, when we were children together, that no door of yours would ever be locked against me. You swore, and we were children of Maeve both, we understood how easily promises could be broken, and so we bound the bargain in blood, Mug Ruith, we pledged it to the stones. We’ve broken a thousand promises to one another since that day, but never this one. Now let. Me. In.”

With that last word, she lowered her hands in a sharp, decisive gesture. There was a sound like a sheet of paper being torn, and the briars parted, revealing another forest. It was all trees, same as this one, but the sky was subtly different, the shapes of the branches not quite the same. The air in the opening shimmered like a heat haze, and the Luidaeg was frowning as she looked back at the rest of us.

“This is where we hurry,” she said, and so we did, all of us, stepping quickly through the gap to the other side. I was the last one through. The briars slammed closed behind me, so fast that I felt the wind generated by their collision. I glanced back.

There was nothing there. Only the forest, stretching off into the distance. I blinked, facing front again. “Because that’s not ominous at all,” I muttered.

“This is my brother’s territory,” said the Luidaeg. “Or was, before he died. Ominous was very much his stock-in-trade. And right now, I’m glad you don’t remember most of what we’ve been through together, because I swear, I do not want to hear one little question about why I didn’t let you use this shortcut when you needed it. There are rules.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and so I just blinked at her as we continued making our way through the darkness.

Not as deep a darkness as it had been on the other side of the briar wall, however: here, the moon overhead cast almost as much light as Grianne’s Merry Dancers, gilding everything in silver and making it easier for me to keep my footing. We continued to work our way through the trees, which were plentiful but not tightly packed, almost like they’d been cultivated that way. The four of us stayed close together, the Luidaeg in the lead, unwilling to risk being separated.

The air was warmer than it had been in the other forest, warmer and sweeter, too, with a faint hint of distant bonfires. People lived there, which was more than I could say for the place where this journey started. I wasn’t sure I’d want to meet them.

No sooner had that thought formed than a hunting horn rang out through the woods, loud and sharp and far closer than I liked. I froze, legs refusing to carry me any farther. Grianne dropped into a defensive posture. Ginevra snarled, showing sharp white teeth. And the Luidaeg smiled.

“I knew it wouldn’t take long for my sister-in-law to notice she had guests,” she said. “Hold your ground, everyone. We should have an escort in a moment.”

I did as she asked. I couldn’t really have done anything else, not with that horn freezing me in place. It rang again, and terror washed over me, cold and bright and bitter, filling my mouth with the metallic taste of my own adrenaline. I had never heard that horn before, but I knew it all the same. It had been starring in my nightmares since I was just a child. That horn was the last thing naughty changelings ever heard.

Hoofbeats began to make themselves known under the ringing, loud and getting louder by the second as the horses pounded through the wood toward us. I had a bare moment to consider how foolish it was to ride horses in a forest this dense, and then we were surrounded. A dozen massive horses poured out of the dark to circle us, their hooves tearing divots out of the earth, their nostrils flaring as they snorted and tossed their heads. Their riders were built to scale, each easily twice as large as I was, wearing mismatched armor that bristled with spikes and patches. They didn’t look like a cohesive force. They looked like a nightmare.

Every one of them was armed, swords and spears and weapons I didn’t recognize but could all too easily picture doing serious and even fatal damage. The Luidaeg was unbowed. She crossed her arms, looking at the rider in what seemed to be the lead of their formation.

“Took you long enough,” she said, dismissively. “All right, you caught us. Fair game, tag, we’re it. Now take us to my brother.

“Take us to Blind Michael.”

I didn’t hear what she said after that, if anything. I was too busy fainting.