Page 58 of The Innocent Sleep

He frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“This world, the world you believe in, doesn’t exist. Titania has enchanted the entire kingdom to create a false reality in which she rules over everything, unchallenged and without equal, and in so doing, has removed certain ‘undesirable’ aspects from her creation. Including the Cait Sidhe. You asked how many of my kind escaped, when you spoke to me before. Well, the answer is an easy one. All of us, because there was never any massacre, never any purge of the shapeshifting lines. I don’t know where the others are, but the Cait Sidhe are safe and well in the Court of Cats, and we had free run of the world until four months ago, when Titania wove her spell.”

Simon stared at me.

“You must have noticed something, starting four months ago,” I said, trying to play on the bemusement I saw in his eyes, where I could so easily have seen nothing more than enraged denial. “A change to the way magic works, perhaps, or a new linearity to your days. You have to know, on some level, that this isn’t really the way things are meant to be.”

“Do you really have a wife?” asked August, pushing herself in front of her father.

“I do.”

“And did you really lose her?”

“Four months ago,” I said. “Cait Sidhe can see through illusions, given time, and those intended to modify our minds have trouble taking hold for any length of time unless the caster is focusing very specifically on their target. In this case, the Cait Sidhe were all herded up and swept aside, and so some of us were able to shrug off the changes. I lost my wife and remembered her in almost the same moment, and I’ll have her back, or Faerie will burn.”

August shied back, clearly unsettled. I focused on Simon.

“Now,” I said. “Why are you here? You’ve caught us. I’m sure your mistress hasn’t demanded our heads this quickly.” If she had, I would need to fight them, despite the pain it would cause October. I couldn’t sit idly by and allow myself to be killed to avoid upsetting her.

“Etienne lost October,” blurted August.

I went still as I blinked, very slowly. If they had retained any memory of the Cait Sidhe, they would have recognized that expression for a dangerous thing.

“What?” I asked.

“After she did the favor for Duchess Zhou in Dreamer’s Glass, he took her to do an errand for him,” said Simon, scowling. “I’ll be having words with my brother about the way he trains his knights. Three acts of disloyalty in a single day is three too many to disregard.”

“Hey!” protested Garm. “Grianne and I did nothing wrong. There’s no rule saying Cait Sidhe have to be reported to the duke. I checked.”

“There’s no rule only because their escape and existence were unthinkable,” said Simon. “Regardless. Etienne took October into the mortal world, and in the process of completing the task he set for her, she managed to get knocked through an open transport window. He doesn’t know where she ended up.”

I crossed the room at a speed he couldn’t possibly have matched, grabbing the front of his shirt and jerking him toward me. “You mean he really lost her?” I demanded.

Simon didn’t get angry, only looked at me, expression infinitely weary. “I should never have let her go,” he said.

I released him, pushing him back against the door as I stalked back to where I’d been standing. “No, you shouldn’t,” I said. “She’s defenseless out there. This world Titania’s created made sure of that. You got everything you ever used to want, and October lost it all. If she’s been hurt, if anything has happened to her, I won’t forgive you.”

“There have been rumors recently,” said Simon. “Mutterings that perhaps the Summer Queen was too hasty when she decided we should require changelings to serve the noble households, that having them around ties us too closely to the mortal world.”

“Living in the Summerlands ties us too closely to the mortal world,” I snapped. “If we want to be untethered from humanity, we need to return to deeper Faerie.”

“My mistress has hinted that we might be looking at precisely that, after Moving Day is past,” said Simon. “Once we’re free to go back to where we belong, we won’t . . . we won’t need the changelings anymore.”

He sounded utterly miserable. August looked at him as if he’d just grown a second head, or revealed himself to secretly be an evil wizard, slinging spells from an impenetrable tower.

“Only hinted, never outright stated,” said Simon hurriedly. “She never said anything was going to happen to the changelings, she never said we’d be leaving them behind—”

“But it’s a possibility,” I said. Titania was sure she’d be able to complete the ritual and make her spell eternal on Moving Day, at which point she, not Oberon, would command power over all of Faerie. She’d be able to open the doors he’d locked, and take the fae away from the human world forever, into a Faerie she alone controlled. One where her version of history overwrote all others.

The best way that ended for the changelings was being left behind, cut off from Faerie and losing all hope of access to anything beyond the Summerlands. The worst . . .

Intentional or not, Titania had created a world built on blood. The slaughters her loyal followers remembered carrying out would have been brutal, violent conflicts. Compared to pruning entire descendant lines from the Tree, what was the killing of a few thousand changelings, who were always destined to die?

I looked at Simon. The man looked all but sick with worry, and I knew that he had taken the more-charitable interpretation of the false Eira’s words, hearing abandonment where I heard murder. From the horror on August’s face, she heard the same threats I did, and took them just as seriously.

“You let her go to Dreamer’s Glass because you wanted to see if she knew how to handle herself outside of your immediate custody,” I said, slowly. “You wanted to know if she’d be able to survive without you.”

“We’ve always sheltered her,” he said. “Amandine did her duty, and I was glad of it, because I wanted the chance to be a father again, and August doted on her from the moment she was born, so it was easy to keep her close and safe. This knowe and our tower have been her world, and my brother would never allow any real harm to come to her. I’m not sure we’ve given October a realistic view of her position. She knows how dangerous the world is for changelings. I’ve never been entirely sure she understood.”