Page 73 of The Innocent Sleep

“She hurt you,” I said. I didn’t snarl. Every syllable was as crisp and perfect as any prince of the Divided Courts would have spoken it.

October didn’t appear to appreciate the effort. “I asked her to!”

“I did not give her consent to hurt you.” I shook Ginevra. She scrabbled frantically at my hand one more time, then went limp as a kitten, submitting. It was the best way to avoid me escalating this to a full dominance fight.

“You don’t get to give people consent to hurt me,” said October. “No one gets to give people consent to hurt me except for me. Not you, not my family, not the damned Queen of the Mists, not even Fair Titania. No one.”

“Yet here you stand, willing to remain wrapped up in an enchantment that denies you your identity, your history, your true family—everything you’ve worked so hard to build.” I shook Ginevra one more time, harder, before letting go, releasing her hair at the same time. She fell to the floor, clutching her throat and gasping. “I knew the spell was wrapped tight around you. I still expected you to fight.”

“I’m not a fighter,” said October. “It’s not fair to ask me to be.”

“No, I suppose it’s not,” I snarled.

I glanced dismissively down at Ginevra, then at October, and muttered, “But I still hoped you would,” before I turned and stalked away, heading back to the wall. This time, I didn’t stop when I got there, but kept on walking into shadow, letting the throne room and its complicated, conflicting emotions drop away, replaced by the familiar cold darkness of the Shadow Roads.

Then I stopped. Where was I going? Where did I have left to go? Back to the Court, to tell Raj I’d failed—or down to the Undersea, to face Patrick and Dianda and tell them the same? We had the Summer Roads key. We had October. We hadn’t failed at anything yet, even if she wanted to be stubborn and impossible and—

And herself. The same woman she had always been. How long did we fight before she could allow herself to believe that I might love her? How long after that did we delay, trading honesty for familiar hostility?

Too long.

Still, I needed to talk to someone, and I was running out of places to go. Shadowed Hills was no longer an option. May ached even more than I did to have things put back to normal—something I would have thought impossible had she not been my October’s Fetch and hence tied to her in ways we might never understand. Who . . .

I stopped, standing straighter and staring out into the blackness. Of course.

Dreamer’s Glass.

My run was lumbering and unsure at first, feet having trouble finding purchase in the shadows. As I settled more confidently into my choice of direction, it got easier, until I was racing as fast as I ever had toward my unseen destination.

The shadows let me off in an unfamiliar hall, the furniture all old, heavily carved and upholstered, and out of sync with what I would have expected from either Li Qin or January. I stepped out of the dark and took a vast breath of air, wiping the chill from my eyes as I looked for any sign that I was not alone.

There weren’t any. I was utterly and completely by myself, at least for the first few seconds. Then, without so much as a pop of displaced air, April appeared at my right elbow.

“Hello,” she said.

I flinched away, barely restraining the urge to take a swing. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if I’d done so; April’s “body” was an assortment of wood chips worked into the internal workings of a piece of computer equipment. The form I could see was made of light, a complex sort of illusion in its own right. I had never tried too hard to disbelieve her—it seemed rude—but I had no doubt that if I tried to strike her, my hand would simply pass right through the space where she appeared to be.

That was all well and good, but her mothers were the regents of this demesne, and wouldn’t take it well if I started hitting their daughter. She looked up at me with grave golden eyes, as solemn as she almost always seemed to be, and a ripple of static flowed across her image, distorting and briefly pixelating it.

“Tybalt,” she said, with neutral pleasure. “I was not expecting to see you today. Raj has been texting me about everything that has happened while I was offline. He is very anxious. I am attempting to calm him.”

“That’s all very good to hear, April, and I’m glad he can text you now,” I said. “He’s been lonely.”

“Yes,” said April. She frowned briefly. “He and Chelsea are both themselves. Dean and Quentin do not respond to messages. Neither does Helen, although Raj has asked me not to tell him that. He is very concerned about her, and would prefer not to know.”

Helen was Raj’s girlfriend, a Hob changeling. They met in Blind Michael’s lands after they were both abducted, and had been dating ever since. It was a casual arrangement, for so many reasons, not the least of which was my own relationship with October showing him what happened to Kings who loved too deeply outside the Court. Still, she was a pleasant girl, and good for him in her own way. Not being able to talk to her must have been deeply distressing for him.

“Excellent,” I said. “Will you pass a message to him, for me?”

April cocked her head, waiting.

“Tell him I know he has a number for Peter. Dean isn’t responding, but the Undersea is unaffected by Titania’s enchantments apart from the barrier keeping them below. Tell him to tell Peter I will be on Muir Beach at sunrise, if Captain Pete has found a way to reach the surface.”

April nodded. Then, switching focus in an instant, she asked, “Is that why you are here?”

I blinked at her, then bowed my head, looking down as I replied, “I had hoped to speak to your mothers. Arden indicated that both were present.”

“I am sure they will be very glad to see you,” said April. “Wait here, and I will verify.”