Page 71 of Sleep No More

Raysel nodded. “She doesn’t remember ever leaving. Doesn’t remember Shadowed Hills, or my father, or me. So I’d say she’s probably pretty tangled up in Titania’s spell.”

“But breaking the spell on the rosebush doesn’t get us another ally, and it runs the risk of damaging Toby, which, I don’t think Tybalt could actually kill me, but I’m pretty sure he’d try, and I don’t want to kill him if I don’t have to.”

I blinked slowly. Unlike Ginevra, the Luidaeg hadn’t ever refrained from alluding to who Tybalt was to me, even if she hadn’t mentioned it outright, and I could admit to myself that pretending I didn’t know why he was so invested in my well-being was getting old. I was also very tired and in a lot of pain after unwinding two of Titania’s enchantments. “Please don’t inspire Tybalt to kill you,” I said. “What are we supposed to do now?”

The Luidaeg hesitated, looking at me as I leaned on Ginevra, then down at Anthony, sleeping in her arms, and finally over her shoulder at the still-weeping Acacia.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “But with Titania’s false Michael unmasked, and Acacia aware of what’s really going on, I’d be willing to bet that we just took a bunch of the horses Titania was counting on out of the equation. She’s going to need to regroup, and that might be enough to delay the start of her Ride.”

“What is a Ride?” I asked. “We throw that word around a lot, but no one ever explains it.”

“That’s because it doesn’t always mean the same thing. When the Queens Ride, it’s to carry sacrifices to the Heart of Faerie. They used to go down the oldest and longest roads once every seven years, and come back with their company reduced by one, until fair Titania grew jealous of her sister, and asked her oldest daughter to find a way to break the Ride. So she did, and Maeve was lost to us, and the sacrifices stopped. When my brother Rode, it was intentional mockery of the Queens, to spite Titania for having failed to control her children, to shame our mother for being unwilling to help him. There are other Rides, but in the end, a Ride, a true Ride, is always a sacrifice.” She looked at me levelly. “Someone always pays.”

“And tomorrow night, Moving Day, Halloween night, Titania Rides,” said Ginevra grimly. “We don’t know who her sacrifice is going to be. We know some of the people it’s not, but that isn’t as useful right now.”

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“Because my father bound her before she did all this,” said the Luidaeg. “She can’t directly harm you, or any of the Brown children, or anyone you consider family. She’s also forbidden to hurt the children of Maeve.”

“But that’s not right,” protested Dean. I had almost forgotten he was standing there. “I’m her brother. That makes me her family, and throwing me here sure as hell hurt me! My mother must be terrified, and Quentin—”

“You’re thinking like a young thing,” said the Luidaeg. “I know you’re only a few decades old—”

“I’m twenty-two,” he interjected stiffly.

“—but you need to try to think like a pureblood, one who’s been around for centuries. I’ve seen empires rise and fall. I’ve seen mountains born. A few months in isolation is nothing. By the standards of the older fae, Titania has done you no harm at all. Illusions aren’t harm. They’re cruel and they’re wicked but they aren’t considered harm. Father would never have thought to forbid her the use of her own magic. I’m not sure he could. As long as she raised no hand and dealt no injuries, she hasn’t broken her bindings.”

Dean’s face screwed up in disgust. “That’s just . . . You’re just twisting things around until they say what you want them to say!”

“Welcome to Faerie, kid,” she said, dryly.

“Hold on,” I said. “Dean, you’ve said twice that you were my brother. What do you mean by that?”

“I mean your father married my parents after he divorced Amandine,” said Dean. “You chose him in the divorce, and that makes you my sister, sort of. Which is weird only because I was already dating your squire, and he thinks of you as his mom, but we just don’t think about that more than we absolutely have to.”

I blinked at him slowly. The idea of Father divorcing my mother was unbelievable, and one more reason not to accept their version of Faerie as the superior one. But increasingly, I was starting to think I didn’t really have a choice. There were too many people like Raysel and Dean, people who couldn’t exist in Titania’s Faerie and had been pushed into the corners to get them out of the way. This wasn’t stable.

It wasn’t going to last, even if I tried to hold on to it with both hands.

“So we’re family,” I said, and looked back to the Luidaeg. “We’re family, but not by blood, and if there was a marriage, Titania unmade it when she rewrote the world. And right now, I don’t remember any of this, which means I don’t think of him as family. Would your father’s binding still protect him if Titania wanted to use him as her sacrifice?”

The Luidaeg frowned, deeply. “I don’t know,” she said, after a moment to consider. “I want to say yes, but I think that’s more me trying to find a bright spot in all this than anything real. ‘Maybe’ is about the best I can do without treading uncomfortably close to telling a lie.”

“Would a member of Toby’s family be a powerful-enough sacrifice to achieve what Titania’s trying to do?” asked Ginevra.

“Depends on who it is,” said the Luidaeg. “I know where most of them are, and they’re as safe as they can be, under the circumstances.”

Ginevra’s eyes abruptly widened, pupils narrowing at the same time, until they were black slashes down the centers of her irises, almost invisible. “Tybalt,” she said. “She could go for him.”

“She could, but I doubt she’s going to want to bribe the Heart with someone she considers a beast,” said the Luidaeg. “Toby’s dead on her feet, and she needs to eat something that isn’t blood. If we let her keel over, we may as well give up. None of the rest of us can break my wicked stepmother’s spells.”

I shoved the remaining garnets into my jacket pocket, abruptly remembering they existed. “So we’re going to rest here?” I asked, glancing around at our admittedly unsettling surroundings.

“Yes,” said Acacia, rising from her chair and moving to join us. Grianne was close behind her, Merry Dancers bobbing by her side. “I have access to my late husband’s halls, and while you may not remember it, Sir Daye, you are always welcome here.”

The name meant nothing to me, but she looked at me as she spoke it, and so it wasn’t hard to guess who she meant. “Cool,” I said. I could ask more questions, but more and more, I was coming to understand that the questions would never actually end. “I think I could really use a nap. I think we all could.”

The Luidaeg nodded, and for a little while, the time for confusing conversations and questions with answers I didn’t understand was over. Acacia waved the Riders back to their firelight celebrations, and they went with surprisingly little reluctance, apparently willing to accept anything as long as one of their lieges told them it was all right. The Luidaeg carried Anthony, and Ginevra half-carried me, while Dean and Raysel followed close behind us, unwilling to let me out of their sight.