Page 51 of The Innocent Sleep

My heart sank. “Was she so cold to you, then?” I asked, with careful gentleness.

“No. Not cold. Just . . . trained?” He looked at me, frustration clear in his eyes. “She knew what was expected of her, and she didn’t slip from the script she’d been given. I doubt she knows how.”

“They crush the questions out of changelings one ‘know your place’ at a time,” said one of the women, her arm around the shoulders of a clearly exhausted changeling girl.

“Where did she tell you to root yourselves?”

“In the briars beyond a pixie-infested swamp. She said no one claimed them as their land, and so we wouldn’t be troubled if we slept there.”

“She spoke the truth, in that that land belongs only to the duke, and he doesn’t stir himself enough to care,” I said. “I can help you there. The pixies should be preoccupied with Moving Day, and we’ll likely reach our destination without issue. But you look dead on your feet. How far did you walk tonight?”

“Only about fifteen miles overland,” said Eion.

“And is this something you do often?”

“No! Never!”

“Then I’ll thank you to omit the ‘only,’” I said crisply, and the girls, neither of whom had reached their majority, giggled at my choice of words. “Come along, before I have to carry you.”

I started to walk, and they followed, slow and listless after their long journey. Fifteen miles wasn’t much in a motor vehicle, or via the Shadow Roads, but on foot at night, with two teenage girls unaccustomed to such exertion? It was all but impossible. Asking them to go farther before dawn was a cruelty.

Especially when the ground began to shift and soften underfoot, earth giving way to mud at swamp’s edge. I gritted my teeth and kept going, until I was wading through muck to my ankles. The Hamadryads, who fed their vegetable sides through the soles of their feet, looked far happier to be wading through what was effectively a nourishing soup than I was, and I tried to focus on their pleasure, not the amount of washing I would need to do when this was over.

The ground began to harden again as we approached the mounded shape of a blackberry tangle. There, surrounded on all sides by thorny briars, was a circular clearing of the type that could easily be made by two enterprising young women with a heavy board to stand on, over the course of many years. The bushes were still fruiting, heavy berries hanging low for easy collection, and the girls fell upon them with a cry of gladness. Eion met my eyes and nodded, expression grave.

“We’ll get to Golden Shore, and I’ll see you there, my friend,” he said. “With your lady beside you.”

“I appreciate your faith,” I said, and bowed to the girls, who looked at me with mouths full of blackberries and hands dripping purple juice, and were lovely. They were all lovely, this family of five fleeing for their lives from the system Titania had created.

This had to stop.

The sky was getting lighter overhead as the Summerlands’ excuse for dawn approached, sun cusping higher behind the clouds. It would never fully appear, of course; twilight was the best this realm would do. But it marked the passage of time, and I had no more cause to hide. Turning, I leapt for the shadows caught among the berry briars, shifting to feline form as I did. I heard one of the girls gasp.

Then all was darkness, and the dark held me close as I ran the short distance back to the tower. I stopped when I felt the wards press back against me, dropping back into the field, and approached with caution.

Voices on the road to the manor caught my attention. I turned, and saw August and October walking away from me, heading toward Shadowed Hills. August appeared to be teasing her sister, who was arguing toothlessly. It would have seemed a dear, domestic scene if I hadn’t been fully aware of just how false it was.

It was also a good thing. With Amandine in Silences and Simon off attending whatever fete Evening had organized for the occasion, them being out meant the tower was well deserted, and I wouldn’t need to worry about unfortunate encounters. I could search for signs that October was truly being treated well to my heart’s content. Heart hammering, I approached the ward line.

As every time before, it ignored the feline where it would not ignore the man, and I was able to approach the wall. This time, however, no one appeared to throw fallen apples or wave a broom at me as I hopped up, and after a moment of steadying my thoughts to clear away any thought of hostility or harm, I was able to jump down into the rear garden.

The scent of herbs engulfed me, underscored on every side by the more delicate, more-welcome scent of October. It seemed she had touched every leaf, every inch of ground, and for a moment, it was as if I could have rolled in the essence of her. I took several greedy, steadying breaths, then padded onward to the door.

The wards here were still strong. I looked around, finally spotting a small, high window into the kitchen. It was made of the sort of thick glass that fell out of favor in the human world several hundred years ago, the kind that could be wiped spotless and yet never seem quite clean. The frame was rowan wood, which meant it was mildly magic-repellent, and would probably represent a hole in the wards.

Perfect wards may seem like an aspirational goal, but they’re actually a terrible idea. Much like the dome Titania had used to seal off the Undersea, they let nothing in or out, and people have died because their knowes caught fire and the wards were too complete to recognize that a person who was actively burning wasn’t attacking them. Small holes are a necessity. They’re just most often left with an eye to also evading any intruder larger than a pixie.

Quick and cautious, I jumped onto the water barrel against the wall, and from there to the windowsill, rubbing myself against the glass. It didn’t budge, but I felt the absence of the wards like a breath of fresh air in a crowded room. Fine, then; there were other ways to do this, and I wasn’t worried about being caught. Adjusting my position to keep myself from falling, I shifted back into human form and pressed harder against the window, nearly overbalancing in the process. Not my most dignified moment.

I put one foot down on the water barrel and pushed harder still. The window didn’t budge. Either it opened outward, or it was locked. I looked around. This was a garden. There would have to be something I could . . .

Ah-ha. A large rock by the side of the garden path would do me quite nicely. I picked it up, testing the heft of it with a careful bounce before I whipped it at the window as hard as I possibly could. Neither Amandine nor Simon had any particular material tilt to their magic; the glass was unlikely to be reinforced, and just the fear of what would happen to someone who threw rocks at a Firstborn’s home would likely keep it unbroken.

The rock flew straight and true and smashed clear through with a loud shattering sound followed by a clatter as it continued onward to the kitchen floor. I shifted back to feline form and repeated my leap from water barrel to windowsill, this time picking my way through the broken glass to the interior of the tower.

Moving with caution, for all that I knew myself alone, I slunk through the darkened kitchen to the front room, then up the stairs toward the bedchambers. If they were abusing October in any way, this was where I would find the evidence. There would be no legal consequences if they were, but it would determine how I treated August and Simon in the days ahead of us.

October’s room was on the second floor, one level below her sister’s, and was every bit as large. The linens were clean, and the urge to curl up on the bed and sleep in the scent of her was even stronger than the urge to roll in the garden had been. I searched the whole place but found no sign that she had been bleeding, or that harm had come to her, or to our child. There was nothing to indicate that she was anything but a well-cared-for second daughter of the house—or that she had any idea of who she truly was. They might intend for her to serve her sister’s household someday, but they hadn’t turned her into Cinderella for the sake of that ideal.