Page 43 of The Innocent Sleep

“But only if you wait,” she continued. “Test the bounds too much, press Titania too far before the time is right to take your chance, and she may modify the illusion. She may recast the roles she’s prepared for them to play. For now, she sets your lost ones within a loving family, showing them what their lives could have been if they’d been spared the undercurrent of destiny and heroics that has always pulled them in its wake. Give her reason, and they could be thrown like jewels into the sea, for the current to take where it will. There are other places the inconvenient may be deposited.”

“Is that a threat?” asked Patrick.

“Oh, Pat, my Pat, you know I would never threaten you.” Mary dropped Dianda’s hands and turned to face him. “I don’t speak for Titania. I can only speak for what the water shows me, and it says she’s done away with the Seers, made them a forbidden shadow of Maeve’s hand, washed them from the foundations of her Faerie. No Roane, no Peri, no one who might cast their eye ahead and say what yet might be. She’d make a world with no destinies, and while I can see the kindness in that—too many die cold deaths on the road to what’s been destined, never realizing that the words they heard were not for them, but for another who fit the bill of fate as cleanly—she does it not out of mercy, but out of meanness. She thinks she can prevent what she feels is near, can stop the old bills coming due. Oberon bound her not to harm the children of Amandine’s line, and so she’s harmed them not, even the ones who claim that place upon a technicality—the Fetch shines in the Library of Stars, the disowned, beloved, re-adopted daughter swims with the rookery deep below the waters, and the child without a name grows in safety, existence concealed by the same illusion that denies any knowledge of conception. She harms them not.”

“She’s harming Simon,” said Patrick, staunchly. “Handing him back to a woman who hurt him so badly that he came to us terrified of the touch of a friendly hand, unable to believe that he was worthy of love, or care, or anything but paying for what he’d done—”

“Not the real woman. A shadow of same. Even Titania cannot wake her sleeping child, nor reach her where she presently sleeps, on the Road of Thorns,” said Mary. “Amandine’s crime was neglect, and while those wounds also run deep and grow infected, they were inflicted far less intentionally. If we interfere too soon, we lose them all.”

There was a finality in that statement that I didn’t care for, and my breath caught like a stone in my throat, impossible to swallow around. Ginevra moved closer to my side, offering comfort through her presence. There was nothing she could say. Here we were, leagues and leagues below the sea, being lectured on patience by a Roane woman who seemed to weave in and out of lucidity with every other word, and there were no easy answers. Moving Day was yet almost four months distant.

Could we keep the Court alive for four months? Could I retain my sanity for four months? Could Eion protect his children for four months? Such were the questions we suddenly had to grapple with, and not a one of them was pleasant to consider.

Dianda took a very deep breath, visibly steadying herself. “The Roane have always advised the Undersea well, when they have cause. We listen.”

“My first crown came about because a Roane maiden by the name of Naia came before the Court of Londinium and warned us of the coming plague,” I said, and was proud when my voice failed to shake. “It pained her to stand before the Court, and she did it anyway, and I listened. For her word, I killed my father and made myself a King. For her word, my life was set on the path it has followed ever since. If the Roane caution patience now, I will listen. I have no real choice.”

“You always have a choice. A future Seen is not a future set, or nothing could ever change.” Mary looked at me kindly. “I know this hurts you. I know how much you want to run to her, and I wish I could promise you the happy ending you deserve. But there are miles to go, and you’ll be back to Babylon before it’s finished, down to the bottom of the sea and out to Miles’ Cross. Everything repeats.”

“We just came here to tell you what we’d learned so far,” said Ginevra, sounding anxious. “And so I could meet the Lordens properly, since I’m working with Tybalt on the land side of things.”

“Will you be patient, Pat?” asked Mary, with more fierceness than I’d heard from her yet.

He startled a bit, taking a half-step back. “I don’t want to be. But as I’ve found no way out of the water yet, I suppose I don’t have a choice.”

“If you’re persistent, you’ll find a way to dry land,” said Mary. “Disaster will follow. You improve nothing by rushing in. You endanger everything you hope to save. You have to be a patient fisherman, my Pat. You have to hold the line to set the hook properly. Moving Day is when things come to fruition. Can you survive so long as that?”

“Our son . . .” said Pat, pleadingly.

“I cannot see him, nor know where now he stands, but he is safe,” said Mary. “He may be hungry or afraid, but he is safe.”

“You really want to count on my patience?” asked Dianda. “Our son. Our husband. Our stepdaughter. They’re all missing. Even if we know where their bodies are, they’re not really there.”

“No, and you have no way to free them.” Mary cocked her head. “Even Amphitrite can’t unmake a working of Titania’s own hands. Even my own First, wherever she is now, can’t release them. You’ll need to find her, of course.”

“Titania?” I asked.

“No, my First. She can guide you through stopping her stepmother, once she’s free to do so.” She waved a hand, like she was suggesting something simple. “She’s a keyhole yearning for a key. Find the key and you’ll find your way to her. She can’t break the spell, but she has other uses. To unbind the world, you must find an oathbreaker, an unmaker. She’ll be the one to undo what’s been done.”

“October,” I said.

Mary looked at me, a brief smile playing on her lips.

“Yes,” she said. “If you can stay your hand long enough for her to come to herself, she might come back to you. Moving Day is the time to move, in more ways than one. On Moving Day, she’ll leave the safety of the nest, and you may enter in her absence, to see the things I know your heart yearns to see. After that, if you’re clever and careful and don’t frighten her away, you’ll have a chance to bring her home. Speak to those she calls family if you see the chance, but not until then, or events begin too soon, and you will fail. On Moving Day, it all comes together, or it all falls apart. Will you wait?”

I knew the answer I wanted to give. It burned in my breast and clouded my senses, leaving no room for anything else. And yet somehow, miraculously, when I opened my mouth, it was another word that fell out.

“Yes,” I said, and the course was set.

TWELVE

GINEVRA WAITED UNTIL WE got back to the Court of Cats to comment on what she’d seen.

“Does that happen often?” she asked.

“The prophetess of the deep surfacing to spill pearls of perplexity across the floor?” I shook my head. “No. I haven’t heard a Roane Seer speak so much of the future in centuries. I never thought to hear it again.”

“But we have to wait.”