Page 71 of The Innocent Sleep

October tensed, but didn’t turn her face from the floor.

“Not your child born, I assume, Simon?” asked Theron.

Ginevra elbowed me, and I realized I’d been growling again. Theron knew full well that October was a changeling: all he accomplished by asking the question was making her feel small and unwanted here, and I didn’t like it. Still, I composed myself. Regicide is more my wife’s speed than my own, and killing him might have upset her.

“To my honorable wife, after a trip to the human world to fulfill her obligation to Fair Titania,” said Simon. “Legally, she’s as much my child as August has ever been. If you ask my heart, it will answer you the same. She’s mine, and I claim her in all regards.”

“So you don’t regret your wife’s decision to follow Titania’s command?” asked Theron.

Simon paused, and when he answered, his voice was slow and deliberate. “I was sorry when Amandine was ordered to lie with someone she didn’t love. Commanding the creation of children is cruel, commanding the creation of children solely for their service is worse, but it seems to me that commanding a conception out of obligation rather than love is also cruel, if not as strongly so. How could it be anything other than wrong, when every step is couched in cruelty?”

“Let the girl stand,” said Chrysanthe, glancing at me and clearly seeing how close I was to losing what little control I had remaining over my temper. “She’s still recovering from everything she’s been through. You may rise, October.”

October straightened, eyes still downcast, and Chrysanthe took the opportunity to look at her closely, taking her measure.

“Mmm, ‘girl’ is a bit dismissive, I think, upon seeing her better,” said Chrysanthe. “Woman, then, but still allowed to stand up straight in our presence. You may look at us, October. We don’t demand that you avert your eyes.”

October glanced up, and I saw the startled confusion in her eyes before she managed to compose herself. “Forgive me, Majesty, but how is it that my father and sister are here?”

“Ah. That is a tale, and not theirs alone; they came with companions, who we have ignored for too long already.” Chrysanthe waved a hand, airily indicating the rest of us.

And October turned and looked directly at me for the first time in months, and there wasn’t a single scrap of recognition in her eyes until she got to her uncle’s knights. Them, she clearly knew, while Ginevra and I were strangers to her. I had already known that we would be. Why, then, was that expression so painful to behold?

“October,” said Garm, dryly amused.

October hesitated, then turned to study the rest of us. She looked at me so intently that I started to step toward her, summoned by her regard. Ginevra put her hand on my arm, reminding me of our situation. I stopped, but I didn’t take my eyes from my wife. I felt like I had been starving, and seeing her, so close I could smell the cut-grass and copper scent of her skin, was like putting me in front of a feast and commanding me not to eat.

Then Ginevra moved forward, and I matched her. Garm and Grianne did the same, all four of us stepping slowly toward October, saying nothing, only closing the distance between us. It may not have been the best decision we could have made; October looked alarmed, like she didn’t know what to do with the situation.

August stepped in front of her sister, glaring with a force I would never have expected from her. She looked ready to fight me with her bare hands. I almost believed, in that moment, that she could hold her own.

“We came here with you,” she said. “We listened to your wild stories and we let you convince us to come, even though it really, really sucked. Now you’re looking at my sister like you want to hurt her. You’re going to stop that right now, or we’re leaving.”

“How were you intending to do that?” I asked. My voice came out rougher than I expected, vocal cords caught halfway between feline and human, warping the shape of my words. “It took both of us to bring you here. Garm would never have been able to make the journey if not for Grianne. How do you plan to escape our company?”

“Their Majesties have their snatchers,” said August. “There have been rumors about them for as long as I can remember, and now we know those rumors are true. I’m sure they would be happy to take us back to Shadowed Hills, in exchange for a pledge of silence. The Golden Shore needs to keep its secrets.”

“Charming as it is to sit here and listen to you coordinate a somewhat ill-considered blackmail plan against us, I’m afraid we need to be seeing to the banquet now that our guests of honor have arrived,” said Theron. “I’ll send one of those ‘snatchers,’ as you so quaintly put it, to collect you when it’s time to eat. Please try not to get any blood on the floor.” He rose, offering his arm to Chrysanthe. She took it, and together they walked out of the room, not looking back.

“August,” said October, warningly.

“We’ll leave if we want to leave,” said August, eyes remaining fixed on me. “And if you don’t stop looking at my sister like that, we will want to leave.”

“August!” snapped October. August turned to look at her. October glared. “I can’t go back with you.”

“But . . . We came here to . . . Of course you can,” said August. She sounded genuinely lost. “Mother doesn’t know what’s happened, but she won’t be angry. None of it was your fault. It’s still Moving Day, and we’d be traveling by Tuatha, so there’s no chance we’d be stopped. Of course you can come home. Where else would you go?”

October turned to Simon, expression pleading.

He sighed. “August,” he said gently. “What your sister has been accused of is a serious crime.”

“But she didn’t do it!” she said. “She can’t have done it! She doesn’t know how to fight, much less how to kill someone! They’re—they’re confused, and they’re pointing fingers because she was an unclaimed changeling in the wrong place at the right time, and they want it to be her. But she didn’t do it.”

“Stupid girl,” I growled, before consciously deciding to speak. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to rage. “She disappeared from a sealed holding cell belonging to the Queen of the Mists. You really think it matters whether she committed the crime they’ve accused her of? They’ll have her tied to the Tree in the blinking of an eye. Escaping was disrespectful to their precious pureblood authority.”

“Tybalt,” chided Ginevra.

That was the last straw. I shrugged her hand off of my arm and stalked away from them, turning my back on the argumentative August and the woman who looked so much like my wife, who would hopefully be my wife again in the near future, but was currently a stranger dressed in her face. I had known it would be unsettling to see her so. I hadn’t realized it would be quite so enraging. None of the anger I was feeling was for her, and yet. I didn’t want to frighten her.