Page 34 of A Divided Duty

“We’re not—I would tell you if we were—My father would—Since you sent us to the movies to get her to safety,” she said, each sentence fragment seeming to bring her closer to acceptance of the inevitable. “We’re not technically dating-dating. That would mean talking to her parents, and to my parents, and I don’t know which would be worse. Besides, we’re both still technically kids. We’re too young for a courtship.”

“There are so many rules to dating in Faerie, and I somehow managed to dodge learning any of them.” In the real world, that was the one point of etiquette that Amandine had never bothered teaching me. When I was younger, I’d assumed it was because she was embarrassed. Now, I understand that it was because she’d intended for me to be fully human long before those rules would have mattered for me.

In Titania’s world, changelings hadn’t been allowed to court or marry. We were basically living furniture, intended to serve our pureblooded betters for the entirety of our short, mortal lives. I’d learned some of the rules just by proximity to August, who had never been particularly interested in putting them to use: when I’d asked about it, she’d said that as soon as she started a household of her own, I’d have to handle the cooking, and she just wasn’t prepared for that. So I’d continued on in happy ignorance.

Now, watching Chelsea try to hold it together, I was incredibly glad of what I didn’t know. “Right now, I think it would involve talking to me and Tybalt, since she’s our ward until her service is fulfilled, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the two of you are going out, as long as you’re being careful. She’s still fragile.”

“No one knows that better than I do,” said Chelsea. “In some ways, we have a lot in common. We were both shut out of Faerie for a long time when we shouldn’t have been. Mine was because Dad didn’t know I existed, and hers was because she was lost in an infinite void. So maybe we’re not exactly the same, but it means we have a lot more to talk about than some people might expect. We have to find her.”

“And we will,” I said, firmly. “She was in this room. She didn’t leave this room. So we’ll figure out what happened, and we’ll go get her.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” I said, with more conviction than I necessarily felt. Promises matter. They matter everywhere, but they matter more in Faerie, where breaking a promise can come with magical consequences.

Chelsea didn’t fully relax, but she did look marginally less like she was going to throw up on my shoes.

Behind me, the door opened, and I turned to see Quentin stepping inside. He looked flustered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I was talking to Dean and his parents—his mom’s pissed, in case you were wondering, and she’s considering declaring offense against Luna, which would make all of Shadowed Hills an enemy of the Undersea; Dean’s trying to convince her that doing that would mean Chelsea and me got caught in the crossfire, and I think she’s listening to him, but I did not expect Duchess Torquill to cause this kind of trouble—and Tybalt came running up and just about ordered me to come here. I think he would have dragged me through the shadows if I hadn’t gone voluntarily.”

“He probably would have,” I said. “This is an emergency.”

He lifted his eyebrows in question.

I didn’t make him wait. “Raysel is missing.”

I don’t speak French. From the tone of his voice and the way he was gesturing, if I had, I would have been compelled to send him to his room for using that sort of language in the Queen’s knowe.

I blinked. “Wow, okay. You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”

“Every chance I get,” he said. “Where is she? Did she run away?”

“No,” said Chelsea. “She wouldn’t. Even if she thought you were going to hand her back to her parents, she wouldn’t. Not without saying goodbye to May, and to me.”

Quentin grimaced, and in that expression, I knew that he knew about Raysel and Chelsea’s relationship, and whatever strange form it had actually taken. “I’m sorry, Chels,” he said. “I should have thought of that. I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“Great,” I said. “First thing you can do: Chelsea, I need you to open a portal back to the courtyard where you found me, and take Quentin through. Then come back without him.”

“What?” squawked Quentin.

“I promise, I have a reason,” I said. “I’ll send her to get you in just a minute.”

Chelsea waved her hand, opening a portal onto the empty courtyard. Arden was probably getting ready to resume court by now; she and Nolan would both be back inside, leaving us to conduct my experiments without observation. She stepped through, and Quentin followed. A moment later, she stepped back and the portal closed, leaving him on the other side.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now I get more aggressive,” I said, pulling the horn knife from my belt and laying the blade lengthwise across my palm. “You may want to look away.”

Chelsea winced and did exactly that. “I wish you’d stop cutting your hands open,” she complained.

“I heal fast and I need to be able to get the blood to my mouth before the skin seals,” I said, pressing down on the knife and pulling it swiftly toward myself, slicing my palm open in one smooth motion. “It’s this or I start cutting my tongue, and I think that would be even more upsetting. Now hush.”

Blood welled up from the wound immediately, filling my cupped hand like some sort of perverse wellspring. I slipped the knife back into my belt—I could clean it later, and I didn’t have a lot of time—before raising my hand to my mouth and taking a large gulp. Hot red flooded my tongue, filled with the undertones of my own magic, and for a moment it came so sharply into focus that I could actually see the grass, green and growing on some distant hillside.

Then the moment passed, as they always did, and I closed my eyes in order to truly look at the room.