Page 66 of Sleep No More

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry, but I don’t know who you are or why you’re hanging onto me right now.”

She let me go and stumbled back, staring at me. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?!” She shook her head, face twisting with confusion and dismay. “No. No-no-no you do not get to stand there and tell me you don’t know me either. I waited for you!”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to calm her down before her shouting attracted the people at the fire. “I really don’t—let’s start from the beginning, all right? My name’s October. You are . . . ?”

“Rayseline. Everyone calls me ‘Raysel,” she said, more slowly. “You really don’t know me?”

“I’m sorry, but no, I don’t. Why should I know you?”

“My father is your liege,” she said. “You—when they woke me up after I was elf-shot, you claimed offense against me so I could get out of Shadowed Hills. I’m supposed to be serving your household for a year. You don’t remember any of that?”

“No,” I said, swallowing the urge to tell her to stop lying. I didn’t have a liege, but based on the rest of what she’d said, she was talking about my Uncle Sylvester. Who didn’t have any children.

“Four months ago. I was in my new room at your house, and then I was here, and no one knew who I was, and no one knew how I could get out of here, and you’re supposed to be the hero! You’re supposed to save me!” She started crying again, putting her hands over her face this time, and said, voice muffled by her palms, “You were supposed to save me.”

I just stared at her, not sure how I was supposed to respond to this. I’d never seen this girl before in my life. She was a sobbing stranger in a monster’s private playground, and no one could have blamed me if I’d turned and run away.

No one but me, and since I’d go with myself anywhere I went, I was the person I couldn’t afford to upset that badly.

Cautious, as if I were approaching a wild animal, I moved toward her. “Hey,” I said, keeping my own voice soft and level. “Hey, I’m sorry I don’t know who you are, but the people I’m with, they’re trying to find a way to fix that. They’re trying to figure out how we can put Faerie back the way it was before.”

Four months. The same thing Ginevra had said. If my reality had really only existed for four months, that explained why my early memories were so . . . flat, for lack of a better term. They really were just outlines, placeholders to support the weight of the world Titania was trying to construct.

Raysel raised her head, sniffling as she looked at me. “Really?”

“Really,” I said. I glanced around. Titania must have put her here for a reason. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. “Are you . . . Firstborn?”

“What? No!” She recoiled, staring at me again. “I’m Sylvester and Luna Torquill’s daughter. Not that she knows that.”

“She who?”

“My mother.” She said the word with absolute disdain, like she couldn’t think of anything worse.

I blinked. “Your mother? Is she here?”

“She is. Blind Michael’s her father. She spends most of her time in her private rose garden, and I think she’s happier there than she ever was at home with her family.” Raysel frowned, petulant and angry. “This is a version of her who never ran away from home, and I guess it’s easier to be happy when you live in a walled garden your whole life and never realize what you might be missing.”

Her words, innocent as they were, still stung, and it was all I could do not to wince. “Okay,” I said. “Well, I think the Luidaeg is asking Blind Michael for help getting out of here and back to the Summerlands. Do you want to come with us?”

She nodded, immediate and vigorous.

“Is there anyone else here who’s going to want to come with us?”

She stopped nodding and, instead of petulant, looked briefly guilty. “What I said before, how no one knows who I am, that wasn’t altogether true,” she said. “There’s one other person here who knows me. But he and I aren’t friends, and it’s not like he knows the way out of here any better than I do.”

I blinked. “Okay. Where do I find this person?”

“Blind Michael divides his people into Riders and Ridden,” she said. “The children become one or the other when he hosts a Wild Hunt, but he doesn’t have one of those until tomorrow night, so right now, there’s lots of children just running around, and we’ve been hiding among them. I don’t know what’s going to happen after his Ride.” She shuddered. “The children who sleep in his stables, they . . . they change. We haven’t changed, because we’ve been staying away from the stables and gathering our own food. Follow me.”

She started to move then, heading quickly off into the dark and leaving me to follow. I did, as quietly as I could. We had managed not to attract any attention from the fire while Raysel had her little meltdown, but I couldn’t imagine the Luidaeg would be thrilled to hear that I was running off with strange girls who insisted I was supposed to save them.

Or maybe she’d be delighted, since that sort of behavior seemed to fit with the person she thought I was. A person who married beasts and made friends with little girls of living light, who transformed changelings into pure fae out of some weird sense of justice. A person at least two people had called a hero.

I wasn’t sure I could be her, even if I wanted to be. I wasn’t sure I could learn how.