Page 24 of The Innocent Sleep

“I . . . see,” I said, still somewhat baffled.

“So we know what she does, and we know how she does it, if not her reasons why, and we hate her for it, because we can’t preserve our own past. When I get off shift tonight, I’ll get a pass to the Library and write down as much as I can of what you’ve told me in one of the books we keep there, to keep each other aware of the revisions. Titania can’t change the Libraries. We pass our notes through them. But be careful. Unless you think you can unmake this entire working, you need to stay unnoticed. She won’t like this.”

“No, I suppose she won’t.”

Garm stepped back. “Perhaps it’s time to approach the Duke,” he said. “Will you return here and speak with me?”

“If I can, but if I have that freedom to move, I think it best I go to the Library,” I said.

He nodded. “Very good, sir. I hope to see you again.” He turned, then, and took the last few steps to the receiving room door, where he knocked and glanced back at me. “Wait here,” he said, and slipped inside.

I was left alone.

It was the perfect opportunity to slip into shadow and run. If October was at her mother’s tower, she was safe—in body, if not in mind or heart—and I could reach her quickly. The thought of delaying even this little bit ached. Garm would understand.

The Duke, however, might not, and if I intended to steal October from the tower and flee with her into the Summerlands, I would need a place to go. I had found one unexpected ally in this hall. If I pushed my luck, I might yet find a second.

Several minutes passed. The door eased open again, and Garm appeared, peering somewhat anxiously out at me.

“He says it is his duty to receive a stranger, should one present themselves,” he said. “Pray, enter. But be warned—our Duke is in a melancholy mood this day.”

“Your Duke is yet Sylvester Torquill, is he not?”

“Yes, sir. He is.”

“Then I find the idea of his melancholy difficult to believe.” Sylvester had always been a violently passionate man, prone to rages and periods of irrational behavior rather than melancholic sulking.

Garm shrugged and pushed the door further open, gesturing me inside.

The receiving room of Shadowed Hills had both changed completely and not changed at all. The architecture remained as it had always been, overblown and grandiose, with a ceiling too high by half, and a floor wide enough to host a King’s ball. Sylvester as I knew him was so fond of inviting the entire duchy to his celebrations that even that vast expanse of space was sometimes crowded, bodies covering the black-and-white checkered floor in bright festival attire as music filled the air.

The atmosphere of the room, however, was something I had never seen before. There were no people, the attending court entirely absent, and shrouds of cobweb silk covered the windows, pale, glittering gray and undyed as they billowed in the faint breeze. No tapestries or paintings softened the stark whiteness of the walls, and in the absence of milling bodies, the checkerboard of the floor seemed less whimsical and more sterile, designed to confuse the eye and disorient anyone who approached.

At the far end of the room, in front of the tall doors that would open to the exterior promenade, a dais sat, holding a single high-backed chair. There was a man seated there, positioned in the shadows so that even my feline eyesight wouldn’t allow me to see his face. I hesitated. Perhaps claims of melancholy were truer than seemed possible. This was another world, after all. One where, near as I could tell, Luna had never entered Sylvester’s life.

Both Torquill brothers had placed great stock in family for as long as I had known them. A Sylvester with no family to call his own would be, almost of necessity, a sorry soul, and it seemed Titania’s ideas of creating a perfect world didn’t extend to supplying new loves to people whose old loves she had removed.

That was almost reassuring. There was a violation in the idea of waking to find someone I had not chosen in my bed that I didn’t want to contemplate. Garm approached the dais, and I followed, keeping my head high and my shoulders low, trying to avoid any sort of posture that could be interpreted as a threat.

The man on the chair shifted position and, in the movement, finally became clear. I stumbled, taken briefly aback by the picture he presented.

Etienne was someone I knew reasonably well, and Quentin someone I knew very well indeed, having lived with him for some time. Both of them had looked very much like themselves, save for the new arrogance in Quentin’s expression. In rewriting their lives, Titania had clearly not gone out of her way to be intentionally cruel. Sylvester, on the other hand . . .

The essentials of his person were unchanged. He was tall and fair-skinned, with the unnecessarily vivid coloring favored by the Daoine Sidhe: hair the color of a fox’s fur, and eyes the color of midsummer honey. The rest of him had been entirely remade. He looked as if he’d lost easily thirty pounds in the week since I’d last seen him, becoming almost gaunt. His hair was greasy and uncombed, his skin wan and waxen, his eyes shrouded by deep circles, as if he had abandoned even the idea of sleep. His clothing, while worn and threadbare, was at the very least clean. That was the best I could say for him.

He looked as if he hadn’t shaved for several days. To be fair, I hadn’t either, but I had been running and throwing myself off cliffs and fleeing from flesh-eating eel-people miles below the sea, while he had been safe in his duchy, surrounded by loyal courtiers and staff who would have been happy to assist him with the bare minimum in terms of hygiene and presentation. “I simply couldn’t be bothered” was a poor impression to present to any who might come seeking audience.

Sylvester lifted his head and looked at me without a drop of recognition. “I am told you come to my lands seeking for your missing wife,” he said. “I regret to inform you that no such woman has been sighted here.”

“She’s a great deal of trouble, my wife,” I said. “Very headstrong, very opinionated. I assure you, you would have made note of her presence. I apologize for troubling you, and appreciate the honor of your attention.”

Garm was looking at me, jerking his head very slightly toward Sylvester as he did.

Ah, yes. The etiquette of the Divided Courts has always been strange and frustrating, wasting time that needed not be wasted. I bowed, deeply—more deeply than the man as I knew him deserved, to be quite honest.

Sylvester waited until I straightened to speak again. “Have you a name, stranger?”

“Rand,” I said.