Page 59 of The Innocent Sleep

“So you sent her away, with no one she knew to stand beside her, to test her ability to survive. Just her, alone, in an unfamiliar place.”

“I meant no harm.”

Oddly enough, I believed him. No version of Simon I had ever known would intentionally and avoidably allow harm to come to his children. If he said he’d been sending October on a small, manageable adventure for her own sake, then that was exactly what he’d been doing. Whether it had worked out that way or not.

If he’d truly known October—the real one, not the polite house pet Titania had tried to mold her into—he would have understood that there was no chance a “small, manageable” adventure would stay that way. Once she got involved, the chaos would spiral out of anyone’s control, and she would be left standing there, holding a brick from the foundation, utterly baffled as to how everything had fallen apart.

But he didn’t know her. He knew four months of sharing the tower with her, and a lifetime of false memories—memories that didn’t seem to have been enough to change who anyone else essentially was, so couldn’t actually have transformed her on any essential level.

Or so I had to tell myself, to stay calm. To stay sane.

“I know,” I said, and watched as he sagged with relief. “But now you’re here. Why?”

“Etienne is . . . He’s not here,” said Simon. “He’s gone looking for October, but there’s no telling how long that might take. I need to be out there. I need to be looking for my little girl. Please.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If I tell my brother to reopen the Shadow Roads, can you find her? Can you take me to October?”

“Us,” said August.

Simon and I both turned to look at her.

“Take us to October,” she clarified.

“August, darling, you must understand—”

“That you sent my sister away as some sort of trial run for taking her away from me forever? That you thought I’d be okay with leaving her behind and heading into deeper Faerie because Titania said so? She’s mine.” She glared at him. “She’s my sister, and my best friend, and one day when I start a household, she’s going to be there with me, because that’s how this is supposed to work. You don’t put her in danger. You don’t have the right. So yes, take us to October, because I’m not leaving you alone with her. Maybe not ever again.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I’ll need Ginevra.”

“Yes?” echoed Simon.

“Yes, if you reopen the Shadow Roads, I’ll take you to find October. Both of you. But as I can only carry one passenger at a time, I’ll need assistance to do so.”

“Not like we could have kept her confined once the Roads were open,” said Simon, with a strangled sound that could have been a laugh. He turned to the door, hitting his fist against it four times. Then he looked back to me. “It will be done.”

“Then we’ll go,” I said.

“Why are you so interested in my daughter?”

I looked at him coolly. “I’ve just told you the world you know is an illusion and a lie, built atop a messier, less-convenient reality. I told you that none of this was real. Do you truly need to ask me why I’m so interested in October? I’ve never known you to be anything other than clever, Simon. To refuse to see what I’m not saying smacks of foolishness, and I won’t play along.”

“I would never have approved—”

“What? Her union with a ‘beast’? In my world, your approval was neither sought nor required, although she did choose the path you protected during the ceremony, and you led her to meet me at the altar. We were wed by the sea witch, in sight of Oberon himself, and you approved of me then. You knew I would protect her to the ends of the world and back again, and I intend to do precisely that.” I smiled at him, allowing my incisors to sharpen and show. “There is nothing I won’t do to protect her.”

August scowled at me, unintimidated. “You married my sister? Did I give you permission to do that? I feel like I would remember, even if it was in another world.”

I raised an eyebrow, looking at her. Contradicting her seemed unwise, as did lying to her, but if her relationship with October was as close as she claimed, I couldn’t afford to alienate her. “I did, in fact, marry your sister. And as I have not divorced her, and Oberon did not appear to dissolve our union, I am still married to your sister, whether she remembers me or no.”

The air shivered around me then, and I felt the Shadow Roads reopen all around me a bare second before a skinny teenager came barreling out of them and into the cell, nearly slamming into August in the process. She yelped in surprise, flinching away. I leaned over, catching Raj by the collar before he could run himself into a wall.

He hung in my hand like a startled kitten, eyes searching my face for signs that I was in trouble. “Uncle, I’m sorry to leave the Court, but you didn’t come back, and I felt the Roads shift, but they wouldn’t let me into Shadowed Hills. I was afraid something might have happened after you—something might have happened.”

“After I what?”

Raj went still in that way unique to young things who think they may have said too much and gotten themselves into trouble. Glancing back and forth like he was looking for a rescue from the situation, he said, “Nothing.”