Page 54 of The Innocent Sleep

Ginevra, who had never been to the knowe at Shadowed Hills before, was looking around with open curiosity as we approached, clearly trusting that I would catch her if she tripped. If not for Titania’s spell, that trust might have been misplaced—a cat who trips and falls is a cat who deserves to be reminded that things which fall will hit the floor. I kept my eyes on my destination—on Simon, who was the reason we were here.

“My brother has never had much skill at blood magic,” said Simon, as we approached. Sylvester shrugged, looking unbothered and unsurprised by this mild critique. “It’s odd, given that we’re twins and all, but he’s always been the better illusionist, when he reaches for magic at all—he much prefers a sword.”

“Better suited to a career in heroism,” said Sylvester. “You can’t slay a monster with an illusion, although you can sometimes trick them into running off the side of a cliff or something equally ridiculous. I was never the cleverness-and-trickery sort of hero. Brute force and stubbornness is much more my speed.”

“Whereas I studied the alchemical arts and the science of potion-making,” said Simon, taking up the conversation with smooth ease. It was a bit like falling backward through time, to when we had all been children in Londinium and the boys had been inclined to present a united front—when they weren’t trying to murder each other in the innocently malicious manner of young boys allowed to run half-wild around their parents’ estate, that was. “I can borrow someone else’s magic in a drop of their blood, and I can pick up the shape of someone’s descendant line from the smell off their skin.”

“Fascinating, although I’m not quite sure what that has to do with my presence,” I said.

“Who is your friend, Lord Rand?” asked Sylvester, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t recall seeing her in my halls before. Is this your missing lady wife, returned to us at last?”

It would have been a convenient falsehood. Sadly, Ginevra recoiled at the thought, a look of revulsion flashing across her face so quickly that she didn’t have a chance to compose herself, and I didn’t have a chance to claim the lie.

“Alas, no,” I said. “I have a ward, a boy, whose father has stopped his dancing, and whose education I am thus responsible for, but the search for my lady makes me unable to do my duty. This is Ginevra, the eldest daughter of one of my oldest friends, who stands as my ward’s teacher while I am unfit to guide him.”

Ginevra recovered her expression of neutrality and curtseyed, quickly. Her form could have been better, and she never lowered her eyes to the floor as was considered proper in the Divided Courts, but still, I was impressed.

“I was surprised to finally meet you last night at the celebration,” said Simon. “I had heard so much about this recurring guest in my brother’s halls, the tragic figure whose wife had vanished and who now dedicated himself to the search for her. Everyone was so sure you would wear out your welcome in no time at all, and then, somehow, half the knights seemed to find joy in your company, and encouraged Sir Etienne to continue extending your period of hospitality. Even that might not have worked, had he not been so occupied with the taking and training of a new squire.”

“The boy is rotten, Father,” said August, her voice petulant and shrill and every bit the spoiled child I would have expected from Amandine. Then she continued. “October was helping the staff while I searched for cake—for the both of us, I wasn’t being greedy, but you know they won’t let me help out of fear for what Mother will say—and he pushed her, for no good reason at all! She wasn’t antagonizing or taunting him, only trying to help, and he put his hands on her, and he pushed her!”

“Sir Etienne’s new squire?” asked Sylvester, voice taking on a dangerous growl.

Simon shot him a look. “Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about that, poppet. The boy is here on blind fosterage—”

“So unseal it and send him home,” she snapped.

“—at the request of my patron,” concluded Simon. “She was the one who brought him to my brother’s hall. It’s a great honor to harbor a foster for the Countess Winterrose, and a greater honor to have been chosen as teacher for one she’s taken a close interest in. She wanted him to grow up in a proper noble household, and wanted me close enough to watch over his education. He can’t be removed.”

“Then you tell him never to touch her again.” August slid off the dais and whirled to face her father, unflatteringly pale skirts swirling out around her legs. I had never liked her more than I did in that moment. “You tell him he’ll answer to me if he lays a finger on her. She’s my sister, and not for him to harm!”

“Until you leave to found your own household, she’s my daughter before she’s your sister,” said Simon. “And I say that my patron would object if we tried to dictate the behavior of her foundling.”

Sylvester, who had been looking increasingly uncomfortable throughout this exchange, sat up and cleared his throat. “What of my objections?” he asked. “The boy torments my niece in my knowe, in the Duchy I command, and I’m to sit back because the Countess Winterrose would prefer he not be disciplined? How does that make me a strong ruler? How does that leave me worthy of my place?”

“Brother—”

“No, Simon. I swallow enough crow for the sake of that woman. Five times I’ve courted to the cusp of marriage, and five times she’s stepped in and told the lady we’re not a fit match. Her interference in my life is an ink stain upon its pages, obscuring what was written there. I’ll speak to Sir Etienne. He’ll remind his squire that manners and civility to those below him are an essential part of knightly valor, and the boy will mend his ways.”

A silent “or else” hung in the air at the end of his sentence.

“And we’ve departed from the point,” said Simon, focusing on me once more. “My brother is very dear to me. I have surprisingly little living family, outside of my wife and daughters. My niece January chooses to remain in Briarholme, where the memory of her parents keeps her company. So I’m sure you understand why I was curious about a guest in my brother’s knowe who gave only the barest of explanations for his presence, and was frequently seen at the Library of Stars in the company of two of my brother’s knights.”

“We were allowed admittance,” I said. “The Library keeps its own rules, and we broke none of them.”

“I’m aware,” said Simon. “I asked the Librarian about you, and she said I didn’t have the secrets left to barter for yours. She’s never refused me before.”

I wondered privately what Mags would think of being told that this world’s revised history had her answering to Simon Torquill’s every whim. It was an almost-amusing image, if only for the amount of shouting that would surely follow.

“Still, I was unaware that it was unseemly for a man to visit a Library while on a quest.”

“It’s not, once,” said Simon. “Repeatedly, and with several knights sworn loyal to my brother, starts to seem odd. And then, when I finally met you, I couldn’t place your descendant line. You looked Daoine Sidhe, or perhaps Tuatha de Dannan—an odd example of either, to be sure, but within the bounds of possibility, especially if your parents had some long-concealed mortal ancestor whose appearance had managed to hold on throughout the generations. Some things will crop up, no matter how far removed from their origins.”

He glanced at August, with her pale red hair, and I knew he was thinking of the fact that she wasn’t technically related to him. August Torquill had been born purely Dóchas Sidhe, transformed by her mother while she was being carried. And despite that, the Torquill colors had held on, red hair and golden eyes, even if they’d been diluted by Amandine’s actions. August was his daughter in every way that mattered, and her hair remembered that.

“Then I found you in the forest,” Simon continued. “I thought it odd, at first, that the light should paint such perfect stripes upon your hair, and then we reached the manor and they remained, as if you’d forgotten to put them away. Now your friend is here, and carries the tinge of the same descendant line. Whatever type of fae you are, the two of you share it.”

I glanced at Ginevra, at her cream-colored hair that slowly darkened to orange near the tip, each strand ticked in a way that was uncommon outside of feline lineages, at her wide blue eyes, a shade not found even among the Roane but remarkably present in certain breeds of cat.