Page 37 of The Innocent Sleep

“Yes.”

“In four months.”

“Yes,” she said again, and offered me the book she still held. “This should help us figure out the structure of Titania’s spell, and what she’s hoping to achieve.”

“We know what she’s hoping to achieve,” I said. “She wants to rule our world.”

“She’s always wanted that,” said Magdaleana.

“So now we get to stop her,” said May.

Garm and Grianne were watching us, her with bafflement, him with growing excitement. “You can count us in,” he said. “I don’t have anything specifically against Titania, but the Gwragen who takes down the Mother of Illusions—he’ll be a legend. No one will ever try to challenge him.”

“You’re not getting a title out of this, you know,” said Magdaleana, sounding mildly amused.

“Happier Duke, though,” said Grianne. We all looked at her. She shrugged. “I listen. Man wants a family. Simon’s not enough. Had a wife? Doesn’t know. Get her back.”

“I don’t think there was a single complete sentence in there, and that still felt like a speech,” said May.

“She’s right,” I said. “We’ll all be happier if we make this go away. Some people may prefer this world, but those are people I’d rather not know. Dianda is going to raise an army in the Undersea if we don’t resolve this quickly, you know she is. They won’t be able to get through the barrier, but they’ll be standing by, armed and angry, for when it drops.”

“Fun times,” said Magdaleana.

“Who’s Dianda?” asked Garm.

“Duchess of Saltmist, the neighboring Undersea demesne,” I said. “She’s a very nice woman, as long as you don’t annoy her in some way, and she’s married to Simon Torquill.”

Garm blinked. “What does Amandine think of that?”

“Not much, as the marriage happened following his divorce from her. She’s never been what I would term a very good spouse. The Amandine I know is alone, left by her husband and both her daughters. Simon and August chose life in the Undersea over the risk of coming back into contact with her. October stayed on land, for me.”

“I’ve done some interviews with people who’ve come to visit the Library since the change, to document the differences,” said Magdaleana. “I don’t dare go outside, for fear the illusion will catch me as well; it can’t get past the Library doors as currently cast, but that’s a dubious sort of safety, and I don’t want to risk it.”

“And?” I asked.

“You mentioned the role of changelings in this world,” she said, a little more hesitantly, watching me with the suddenly wary air of someone who had remembered that they were in the presence of a predator. “Titania can’t unseal deeper Faerie without Oberon’s aid, and those doors are still locked, which makes me suspect that when she cast her spell, she knew she couldn’t wrap him up as tightly as she needed, and so she shoved him away somewhere to keep him from interfering. She’s still smart enough to know that with the fae confined to the Summerlands and Earth, contact with humans is unavoidable.”

“There are also many changelings she’s actively forbidden to harm,” I said. “Even with her tendency to tuck people away and keep them out of her path, she couldn’t put them all in safe places and expect them to stay there. She had to integrate the changelings somehow.”

“Yes, and she’s historically been resistant to doing her own labor. Half her descendant lines are rumored to have come about because she wanted children who could serve in her household. Most of them chose Oberon when they came of age, to escape the mother who’d treated them like servants since they were born. Having a class of people who are inherently seen as ‘lesser’ and could be exploited that way without an easy escape would have seemed like a benefit to her.”

“Not only that, but it feeds into Oberon’s Law’s loophole about murder,” I said grimly. When I’d been younger, the fact that Oberon’s Law prevented purebloods from killing one another but treated changelings as if they were humans, with no protection and no punishment if one should die, had made perfect sense to me. They were temporary creatures, here to go, and the Divided Courts had based so much of their culture upon the Changeling’s Choice, which forced discretion by ensuring that every fae parent knew they might be required to kill their own child. Changelings were expendable.

Then I’d gotten to know some of them properly, as people, even before October, and I had seen the Law for the cruel joke it really was. The Divided Courts called us beasts, while they sanctioned murder in their homes for the sake of convenience.

“How so?” asked Garm.

“Someone you’re allowed to kill without consequence must be considered less than yourself, or else how could that ever be permitted?” I looked back to Magdaleana. “I have the feeling you’re about to tell me something I will truly dislike about this world.”

“I am. Titania’s Law, as you call it, requires the households of all titled purebloods to sire or bear changeling children, to maintain the population and keep ‘proper’ fae from dirtying their hands. Some of the less-ethical nobles get around this by focusing on the word ‘household.’ They say, ‘Oh, it’s not me who has to do it, it’s any member of my house,’ and they push the task off on their courtiers—or their knights. Anyone they can convince to take the burden on their behalf. But regardless of who their fae parent is, those changelings aren’t allowed to marry or to start households of their own. They’re expected to serve from birth to death, and if they reach their majority without a place—if the house where they were born doesn’t need them, or there’s no other household looking to take them in—they can be given to anyone who’ll have them. As of right now, this world has been moving forward for little enough time that I don’t think anyone’s been seriously hurt, but that’s going to change.”

“And it’s a loophole Titania can use to avoid her bindings,” said May. “She’s not allowed to hurt a member of our family or a descendant of Maeve. I never heard anyone mention her being required to intervene if someone else was about to do harm to someone in those categories.”

“Create a world that puts the majority of changelings into harm’s way, then sit back and let it unfold the way it would naturally,” I said, bleakly. “She’s put the nameless Queen back on her throne, and that woman hates changelings. Always has. I doubt any changes to her history would have changed her mind on that. With Devin gone, there’s nowhere for them to go.”

“Wait,” said Garm, suddenly alert. “What happened to Devin?”

I turned to blink at him, trying to make that question make sense. I couldn’t do it. “What do you mean?” I asked, finally.