Page 37 of A Divided Duty

“I will,” I said. “I promise.” I bowed, shallow and stiff, and she waved me off, dismissing me.

That was all I’d been waiting for. I turned, hurrying toward the exit, Tybalt staying stubbornly beside me. The others trailed along behind, and when we reached the door I paused, digging out my keys and tossing them gently to Quentin, who plucked them out of the air with ease.

“Get the car home,” I said. “And then, please, stay there. I may need you later. You can take Dean back to Goldengreen first if you need to, but I want you to be where I can find you.”

Quentin looked at me, mulish. “I’m your squire. I’m supposed to be where you are.”

“Yes, most of the time,” I agreed. “But right now, I have actual reasons for wanting you at the house. And it’s not just because I’ll be taking Tybalt with me, and we need someone to help May with Miranda. Please?”

Quentin sighed, scrubbing at his face with the hand that wasn’t full of keys. “Invoking Miranda is mean,” he complained.

“But honest,” I said.

“Fine, then,” he said, and sighed. “I’ll drive Dean back to Goldengreen when he’s ready to go, and then I’ll go home so May can have a shower. And I’ll tell her where you are.”

“Best of squires,” I said, warmly. “Favorite son.”

“Only squire, now that Raj is busy being a king-in-training most of the time,” he said, sounding only faintly amused. “Only son.”

I ignored him, turning my attention to Chelsea. “Chels…”

“No,” she said, immediately. “Don’t even start.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to tell me I had to stay here so you could go off and rescue my girlfriend. Well, she’s my girlfriend, and I’m not staying here.”

“If she is where I think she is, she’s in a very dangerous place,” I said. “I need to not be worrying about you while I’m trying to get her back. She needs to not be worrying about you.”

Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. “That’s low, Daye.”

“Maybe so, but it’s what I’ve got,” I said. “I’ve been there before, I have a pretty decent idea of how to carry myself, and I’m not happy. I definitely don’t want any of you there.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I don’t care.” I shrugged. “I need to focus on getting Raysel back, not on worrying about whether or not you’re going to get lost forever in the space between here and the skerry.”

“I could just portal us there.”

“No, you couldn’t.” Chelsea shot Tybalt a scandalized look. He shrugged. “When your powers first manifested, they were so uncontrolled that you could cross borders that the Tuatha were not meant to cross. That was how you were able to penetrate deeper Faerie. Since they’ve stabilized, you haven’t shown any signs of still being able to do that. Can you? Do you truly trust your magic to rip a hole in the walls between worlds without bringing all creation crashing down upon our heads? Do you trust it with Raysel’s life?”

Chelsea wilted slightly. I understood her disappointment. She still had one of the widest documented ranges of any Tuatha de Dannan; she could open portals across hundreds of miles, while some Tuatha struggled to manage more than one or two. But once, she’d been strong enough to travel to places that had literally been sealed by Oberon himself. I’d been key in reducing her power to something that she could survive, rebalancing her blood to remove her mortality and allow the natural checks and balances of her Tuatha heritage to assert themselves. It had been the right thing to do. I still felt bad about it, watching her look down at the floor and try to accept the reality of her situation.

Glancing back up at me, she said, “And you’ll bring her back? You won’t hurt her?”

“She didn’t go intentionally, unless she’s been fooling us all really, really well for a long time now,” I said. “I just want to make sure she’ll be safe. I’m going to bring her home.”

“All right,” said Chelsea, subdued. She moved closer to Dean, who put an arm around her shoulders, comforting her.

Well, this sucked. I turned back to Tybalt. “We should go,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed, and took my arm.

Together, we left the knowe, leaving the kids behind.

It was barely dark outside, the sky still bordered in lines of glowing sunset fire. The thought of walking down the hill was suddenly overwhelming. I turned to Tybalt. “I gave Quentin the car keys.”

“I noticed,” he said. “Where are we going?”