Page 23 of The Innocent Sleep

The small hope that had kindled in my chest, that October would have somehow been spared from this illusionary world, if only to make it hurt her more, guttered out and died. Garm would surely have seen her, and if he could see the spell his world was under, he’d have noticed its absence in a changeling as quickly as he’d noticed it in a stranger. Still, it was an interesting interaction between his magic and Titania’s, and unlike her reasonably clever confinement of the Cait Sidhe, it felt likely to be a genuine loophole in her spell.

Meaning it might be something I could use.

To my profound relief, Garm didn’t object to my statement or attempt to argue with me. He only blinked once, very slowly, as if I had stated something patently impossible, before he nodded. “That makes sense,” he said.

“It does?”

“It does. The Gwragen know perfectly well that our world has been revised multiple times over the course of its history. It’s why we depend so heavily upon the Libraries, which are outside the bounds of any such revisions. The books they contain will always tell true, even as the world is remade in necessary ways. But why are you exempt from the great remaking?”

“Why are you so unbothered by the idea that I might be?”

“We have tales of such as you, and they always begin the same way: ‘One day came a stranger to the hall.’” Garm shrugged. “I suppose I’m not disturbed because I’ve always hoped to one day stumble into a story.”

“You’re very calm.”

“A personal failing of mine.” His eyes, for all his calm affect, were bright, and he was watching me intently. If I tried to move in a way he didn’t care for, he’d set off the alarm immediately. “You’ve come to see our Duke. Are you about to undertake some great quest or act of heroism?”

“I’m not a hero, although I married one, and I had thought my questing days were long behind me,” I said. My own mind was racing, trying to come up with every interaction I’d ever had with the other version of this man. In our world, Garm had been Etienne’s squire after October, and had joined Sylvester’s guard once he was knighted; he was known to be a dour, suspicious man, and while he had been uncertain of October’s loyalties at times, he had always been willing to assist her on his liege’s orders. He was loyal. That was what mattered more than anything else, and as I watched him with lasting wariness, I wondered who held that loyalty in this world.

“I have, however, come to see your Duke,” I said. “There has been a recent ‘remaking,’ as you term it, and my wife and I have been separated. I am hoping to locate her and make certain of her safety.”

“Why would the Fair Titania have separated you from your wife?” asked Garm, with some concern. But then, if the Gwragen were aware that Titania could occasionally remake the world to suit herself, they would naturally worry that those remakings might part them from their own loved ones.

“I’m not sure,” I said, which was only partially true—hurting October had been much of the point of this spell, after all. “I believe in part it may be because neither of us is in fashion in this new iteration of Faerie. My lady is a changeling, fae-born but human-sired, and I am . . . not entirely as you may assume upon looking at me.”

“You bear no illusions,” said Garm. “I would see them if you did, even though I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what they were. You are what you appear to be.”

“Have shapeshifters been so thoroughly eliminated from Faerie that the obvious answer becomes unthinkable?” I asked.

Garm frowned. “A shapeshifter would have no cause to wander courtless, sir. You make jest of me.”

“I assure you, I do not,” I said, and loosened my control over my appearance, allowing my teeth to sharpen and my pupils to narrow to their more natural shape. Garm gasped, and I knew the stripes had come back to my hair. Such small things can seem so very dramatic when unexpected.

“How . . . ?”

“As I said, shapeshifting,” I said. “My lady is a changeling, and I am Cait Sidhe, and my people have been swept away and locked in our own spaces, forbidden the rest of Faerie.”

“But the Cait Sidhe . . . Oh, revisions,” said Garm. “The Library would know—I’ll get a pass as soon as I can, and go consult the books. You can’t be here, sir. It’s not safe.”

“How is it unsafe?” I asked, pulling my feline attributes back beneath the surface, where they couldn’t be easily seen. “Have we been made illegal?”

“Extinct, more like. The great purging was conducted centuries ago, after Maeve betrayed all of Faerie. The changing kinds were eliminated, for they couldn’t be trusted. No cats have walked our Courts since then.”

“What a lovely world Titania’s made,” I said, hot venom in my voice. “How delightful. How happy her people must be, to go about their days and know they’ve killed innocents for the peace that they enjoy. Only there’s no blood on their hands, not yet, for my Faerie existed a week ago, and I lived happily with my family, and the Cait Sidhe came and went as they chose. Now they’re locked in the Courts, and only the royal cats may pass, and our kittens risk starvation so Titania can play house with other people’s lives.”

Garm paled. “You seem angry.”

“I’m furious.”

“Good.”

That gave me pause. “Good?”

“Good.” He leaned forward, tone turning conspiratorial. “The Gwragen have always known that the world changes when we’re not looking, but we can track those changes by consulting the Library. We know Titania remakes the world to suit her, and we know she doesn’t realize we can see it, or she’d take that understanding away from us. We would vanish, as has every other descendant line to have crossed her. We don’t want to vanish. Nefyn worked too hard to raise us from our cradles to vanish simply because we managed to offend Titania. Yet every time she changes the world, she changes us to suit her.”

“How is it that you can have a tradition of knowing this if she remakes you when she changes the world?” I asked.

“Because a world has to make sense,” he said, firmly. “It has to hang together, or it’s nothing but a rough idea, worth pursuing, perhaps, but not capable of standing on its own. She puts us down in her new Faerie, and leaves us mostly as we are, because we exist and thus have our own internal logic, and then the illusion does the rest. It fills in all the places she didn’t think of. I’m an only child. If she decided, the next time she changed things, that I should have a sister, she would tell the world to give me a sister, and then the illusion would weave our childhood and our relationship to one another entirely on its own. A weaker illusionist can’t give their workings so much freedom. Titania can.”