Page 78 of Sleep No More

“Oh,” said Raysel, sounding crestfallen.

I barely knew her, but I wanted to hug her when she sounded like that, like her heart was breaking under the weight of everything she couldn’t carry.

I was still fighting the impulse when the air opened again and Etienne’s arm appeared, gesturing frantically for us to come through. He didn’t step through himself, which was a little unnerving, but the scent of his magic was distinctive enough that I waved for the others to follow me as I stepped into his portal.

It led to the dim hall behind the receiving room, the one people used when they wanted to leave Uncle Sylvester’s presence without being seen. Chelsea was waiting there by her father’s side. She squeaked and embraced me when she saw us coming through, holding me as tightly as I had wanted to hold Raysel. And much like I assumed Raysel would have, I blinked at her, too bewildered to pull away.

“Uh, hi?” I said.

“Oh, sorry!” She let go, stepping back, and I realized she was properly dressed now, having traded her mortal clothes for a dark blue linen gown. Not noble attire, but suitable for a junior daughter of the household. I wondered, briefly, how Etienne was explaining her sudden appearance. Grown children don’t normally appear out of nowhere, especially not grown pureblood children.

“I forgot this is only the second time you’ve met me,” she said, abashed. “I’m used to you knowing me a lot better than—Dean!” I was forgotten as she saw the boy behind me, and she all but threw herself in his direction, wrapping her arms around him and holding on for dear life.

Dean, for his part, hugged her back just as tightly, nodding when she murmured something in her ear.

“You know each other?” I asked.

“He’s one of my best friends,” said Chelsea. “Has been for a while now. I was so scared when no one knew who you were, Dean!”

“Yeah, well, apparently the Undersea was too much trouble to include in this draft of reality, so it got sealed off when everything changed, and that made me impossible, so I got chucked into Blind Michael’s lands.”

“Island of the Misfit Toys much,” said Chelsea. She looked past him to Raysel and grimaced, just a little. “Oh, and you found Rayseline.”

“I’m sorry, have we met?” asked Raysel.

“We don’t have time for the full dance of reunions every time we run into someone new,” said the Luidaeg. “Sorry if that makes me a party-pooper, but I’d rather win than be polite. Etienne, we asked you to take us to the Duke. Why are we not with the Duke?”

“The Lady Amandine is meeting with him at the moment,” said Etienne. “I needed to get you out of sight, but I felt bringing you into her presence would be unwise.”

I glanced to the Luidaeg. “I could disenchant her . . .”

She shook her head. “No, kid. You wouldn’t care for the results.”

Some of the things people had said about my family and my relationships with them were trying to come together to form a picture I really didn’t care for. I scowled at her. “Why not?”

“Because she’s never going to forgive you for choosing Simon in the divorce,” she said, bluntly. “It’s not about the fact that he’s not related to you by blood, or the fact that she tried—and failed—to turn you mortal before you could fall into Faerie. It’s the fact that Amy never learned to share her toys. You were hers. Deciding you didn’t want to be hers anymore was an unforgivable crime against her. Right now, she doesn’t know that happened. Right now, she probably thinks less fondly of you than you do of her, but she isn’t actively angry with you. Take the illusion off, and that goes away.”

“Take the illusion off, I definitely lose my family,” I concluded dryly.

“Take the illusion off, lose the family Titania made up for you, to torture you—and, to a degree, to torture Simon, even if neither of you really understands it’s happening.” The Luidaeg’s expression was grim. “I’ve seen you both work way too long and hard to find a way to be happy in the real world, I’m not losing you to this one. Also, you can’t break the spell on more than a few people in one go, and I’m not letting you incapacitate yourself for Amy.”

She said my mother’s name with such sincere loathing that I blinked, briefly taken aback. I was used to people speaking of Amandine in hushed, awed tones, like she was the greatest gift Oberon had ever given to Faerie. But the Luidaeg talked about her like she was a nuisance, and the Luidaeg couldn’t lie. It was . . . disorienting, to say the least.

Etienne sniffed, drawing our attention back to him.

“To make matters worse, our fair Queen of the Mists has sent her guard to find you,” he said. “His Grace was able to assure them in all honesty that we were not harboring any fugitives from the Queen’s justice within Shadowed Hills, and he managed to avoid promising to notify them if you returned home. They’re also quite interested in speaking to your father and sister, but they have gone and disappeared for some reason . . .”

He trailed off, clearly hoping one of us would jump in with their location.

“We left them with our traveling companions,” said Ginevra, apologetically. “I doubt Tybalt will have been idle while we were journeying. They could be virtually anywhere by now. I just hope he had the sense not to take them to the Undersea. I doubt Duchess Lorden would take kindly to seeing members of her family enthralled so, and they have no mechanism for breaking the enchantment in the deeps.”

“I’m going to pretend that statement made any sense to me at all,” I said, with forced cheer. “We split the party in Golden Shore, Etienne. We had to. I couldn’t stand the thought of traveling with the King of Cats, and I wasn’t dragging August into danger.”

“No, just charging into it headlong,” said Etienne. He sighed. “This will be the last time you can come here, you understand. If you’re caught . . .”

“If I’m caught, I’m likely to be executed, because I made the horrible mistake of being a changeling alone in the city during the period where custom and etiquette says I should have been safe,” I said. Chelsea looked guilty. “No, Chelsea, I don’t blame you for lashing out. I blame the culture we’ve all been complicit in, that I never really stopped to think about too hard, for leaving me unable to defend myself—either practically, since I was never allowed to learn how, or legally. Those men assaulted me. Those men harmed me. But I killed one of them trying to stay alive, and so I’m the criminal. Yes, he’s dead, and yes, I agree that there should be some justice for him, but we have blood-workers! They could watch my memory and know I acted in self-defense! I’m not going to let the Queen’s men take me, because self-defense isn’t going to matter to them, and it should. I should be able to say ‘He stabbed me in the stomach, I was just trying to defend myself.’”

“And she finds some of her self-respect where Titania hid it in the couch cushions,” said the Luidaeg dryly. “Good for you, Toby.”