A Red Rose Chain

TWO

FAE TEND TO BE nocturnal by nature. That’s probably the only thing that’s really protecting us from being discovered—or rather, rediscovered—by humanity. We used to show ourselves a lot more, which explains all those fairy tales and folk stories and popular ballads about the merry, merry greenwood ho. We also used to steal livestock and “borrow” human women to raise our children. And we used to find ourselves burnt and stabbed and killed with iron on a regular basis, because while our worlds may have been meant to coexist, they were never intended to do it peacefully.

So yes, not being chased by angry mobs is a benefit of the nocturnal lifestyle. The other nice thing about it is the people, or rather, the lack thereof. We didn’t bother spinning human disguises for ourselves before we got in the car: there was no one around to see us. The normally ninety-minute drive from Marin to Muir Woods only took about an hour. Quentin spent the whole time complaining about the fact that I wouldn’t let him change the radio, while Tybalt spent it staring through the windshield, fingers clenched white-knuckled against the dash. It should probably have been reassuring that there was something that scared him, apart from my tendency to rush headlong into certain doom. Instead, Tybalt’s reaction to cars just reminded me of how much older he was than me, and left me feeling uneasy and off-balance.

Danny had left us in the parking lot in Marin where I’d stowed my car and he’d stowed his cab. “It’s not that I don’t like the new Queen an’ all, but every time I go with you to visit royalty, somebody winds up dead or exiled or whatever,” he’d said, with disturbingly accurate logic. “I figure if I just go on home, you won’t have to worry about it.”

“I’ll call you later,” I’d promised, and endured his clumsily patting me on the shoulder before he turned and lumbered back to his cab. Bridge Trolls can’t be physically demonstrative with most denizens of Faerie. There’s too much of a chance that they’ll accidentally break us.

There were no cars visible in the parking lot at Muir Woods when we arrived. There could have been anything from junkers to horse-drawn carriages hidden under illusions and complicated don’t-look-here spells, but since most of those also come with mild aversions and “please don’t park on top of me” suggestions, I didn’t worry overly much as I steered my car into a parking space and killed the engine.

“All right, everybody out,” I said.

Tybalt didn’t have to be told twice. He practically kicked his door open, retreating to the edge of the parking lot while he waited for me and Quentin to follow him. Quentin snickered, but there was no malice in the sound. He was just amused, and he knew he was safe enough that he could get away with expressing it. It felt good to know he was that relaxed. Not many Crown Princes get to grow up feeling like they’re allowed to be happy. Not in Faerie, anyway.

The thought reminded me of something. I glanced at Quentin as we got out of the car and walked toward Tybalt. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t you have a birthday coming up?”

“I’ll be eighteen on Lughnasa,” he said.

“Is there anything you wanted to do for your birthday this year? Eighteen’s a pretty big deal. We could have a party. May loves parties.”

“Eighteen’s a big deal for humans, maybe,” said Quentin. He grinned, the light from the lamps around the parking lot throwing gold highlights off his dark bronze hair. He’d looked like a dandelion when we first met, all pale yellow fluff with no real substance. Now he was taller than I was, and finally starting to fill out. It was unnerving. My squire wasn’t supposed to grow up. “Ask me again when I come of age.”

“So we hold off on the grand bacchanal until you turn thirty. Got it.” I looked back to Tybalt, allowing my face to relax into a wide, only slightly mocking smile. “You know, you’re going to have to get used to riding in cars eventually. I’m never going to learn how to teleport, and that means I’m going to keep driving everywhere.”

“Must you taunt me so cruelly?” Tybalt asked.

“Yes, I must,” I said, and offered him my hand. He took it, tucking it gently into the crook of his arm. It was an old-fashioned way to walk, but it made him happy, and I was all in favor of things that made Tybalt happy. He shook his head, still feigning offense at my comments about the car, and started walking toward the woods. Quentin followed close behind us, for once not ranging wildly ahead. Fighting a bunch of disoriented fae dogs and cleaning up the signs of the struggle had tired him out, at least for the moment. Knowing Quentin, he would bounce back soon. In the meantime, I got to keep everyone where I could see them.

The trees loomed around us like sentinels, filled with dancing lights as pixies soared from tree to tree and Will o’ Wisps danced above the water. I wondered idly what the human rangers who ostensibly controlled the park thought of the changes that had occurred over the course of the past seven months. Knowes—better known as “hollow hills” in the human world, which has had a long time to forget the proper names for fae things—have a tendency to weaken the walls between the Summerlands and the mortal worlds when they stand open. Not to the point where monsters can slip easily through, but in more of a “pixies in the backyard, strange whispers in the water, Dryads in the trees” sort of way. Fae communities grow up around them, because we know we’re safe there. We can always run for the Summerlands if things turn sour.

Up until seven months ago, no one knew that there was still a knowe in Muir Woods. I’d known that there had been a knowe there, once upon a time, but I had assumed it was one of the lost ones, so old and so weakened that it had become nothing more than a shallow scrape in the space between worlds. It turned out the knowe was perfectly healthy and structurally sound. It was just waiting for its actual owner to come back and give it permission to open. Enter Arden Windermere, daughter of Gilad Windermere, rightful Queen in the Mists. She had been in hiding since before I was born, choosing safety and obscurity over the dangers inherent in taking the throne.

We would never have found her if the woman who’d been holding the throne of the Mists hadn’t been a psycho bitch who decided to banish me from the Kingdom for the crime of asking her to stop selling drugs that killed changelings. That didn’t sit well with me, or with my allies, and we’d ended up asking some pointed questions about how a woman with no Tuatha blood could be the rightful heir of a Tuatha de Dannan king. One thing led to another, and we’d managed to find Arden, talked her into retaking her Kingdom, and brought her back to the knowe that had been patiently waiting for more than a century for her to come home.

We walked down the carefully-maintained paths through the flat part of the park, across streams and over tiny ponds that still made my skin crawl if I looked at them too closely—I don’t like water much, and I don’t like pools of standing water at all—and began to climb the hiking trail that wound its slow way up the side of the hill. Tybalt let go of my arm as the path narrowed, taking up a position directly behind me. He’d learned the hard way that if he let me out of his sight when we were checking in with the nobility, I’d probably find a way to dump myself in a mud puddle, cover myself in blood, or otherwise render myself completely unpresentable. To be fair, I never did it on purpose. It was just a talent of mine.

The path leveled off, and we stepped into the small clearing that preceded the entry to Arden’s knowe. The doors in the big redwood that served as the knowe’s tie to the mortal world stood open, like they were welcoming us home. Many knowes require complicated rituals or motions to get in. Not this one. This was the royal seat of the Mists, and its doors were never closed to the people of the Kingdom. The pixies clustered in the trees here so thickly that they illuminated the area like so many pastel Christmas lights. Guards in Arden’s livery stood to either side of the doors. I waved. One of them—a diminutive Glastig with hair the color of walnut shells—waved back.

“Evening, October. Quentin. Your Highness.” She bobbed her head to Tybalt, which was as close as any member of the Divided Courts would come to bowing to a Cait Sidhe. The fact that she called him by his title at all said a great deal about relations between Arden’s Court and the Court of Cats. “The Queen’s expecting you, and said that we were to send you right on in when you arrived.”

“Evening, Lowri,” I said, with a quick smile. It was safe for Arden’s guards to stand outside like this: given the strength of the illusions hiding the knowe, they were probably rendered invisible to searching eyes just through proximity. “Where did Madden go with the Mauthe Doog?”

“You mean the big black dogs that pop in and out of view like bad special effects?” asked Lowri, her faint Welsh accent making the question sound even more surreal than it probably should have. The other guard—a Coblynau I didn’t know by name—put a hand over his mouth, concealing a smile.

“Those are the ones,” I confirmed.

“He took them home to meet his siblings,” said Lowri. “Said some of them need proper medical care that’s based on dogs, not on people. He looked awfully sad about it, too, and said that if you asked, we were to tell you he didn’t blame you, since you didn’t know any better.”

I winced. There was something especially unsettling about being chastised, even secondhand, by someone who was essentially a dog. The Cu Sidhe liked to cultivate a simpler way of life, eschewing the complexities of fae politics and human manners. That doesn’t mean they’re rude or stupid: Madden couldn’t have been Arden’s seneschal if he wasn’t a smart guy. It just means they don’t hold grudges or go on vendettas, or host dinner parties that require knowing when to use multiple forks.

“We shall make it up to him later,” said Tybalt.

“Yes, we will,” I said. “Is Arden inside?”

Lowri wrinkled her nose at the informality, which was funny, considering that when we’d met, Lowri had been working in the private guard of the false Queen, who had called Arden things that were far worse than her actual name. “As she said to send you in, I believe that is a fair guess, yes.”

“Cool. See you in a bit.” I waved to the other guard and walked inside, with Quentin and Tybalt following.

Arden’s knowe was a redwood wonderland, perfectly suited to the woods outside. The floor and walls in the entry hall were all paneled in the stuff, and the smell of it suffused the air. Elaborate carved panels on the walls sketched out the history of the Kingdom of the Mists all the way up to the present day, and while new panels seemed to have been added every time we came to visit, none of the old panels seemed to have disappeared. I made a mental note to ask Arden whether the hall was getting longer, or whether it just somehow knew which panels it was safe to hide when I was looking. Either option seemed reasonable. The knowes are alive, and while they may not think like people do, they have opinions about things, and will generally do what they feel best.

The hallway let out on the throne room, where Arden was sitting on her throne, wearing the same purple-and-silver velvet gown that I’d seen through her teleport window, playing with her mobile phone. She looked up at the sound of our footsteps. Then she smiled and unfolded herself from her seat, standing. “Hey. Did you have any trouble getting here?”

“None,” I reported.

“Cool,” she said, and tossed her phone onto the cushion on her throne.

Arden Windermere might not sound much like a queen, but she certainly looked the part, especially these days, now that she had a proper staff of handmaids and clothiers to help her present the appropriate image to her people. She was tall, slim, and elegant in her carriage, standing a few inches taller than Tybalt, who was in turn a few inches taller than me. Her purple-black hair was pulled into a high chignon, secured with loops of amethyst, and her jewelry was all silver, accenting the vibrant colors of her mismatched eyes: one vivid blue, the other liquid mercury. She could easily have walked among the kings and queens of our past, as long as she kept her mouth closed. Not that I’m one to criticize the speech of others, but when Arden talked, it was more Haight Street than High Court.

Maybe that was a good thing. A lot of the problems faced by the fae nobility come from the collisions between our world and the human world. Arden had spent most of her life in the human world. While she wasn’t going to broker a lasting peace or anything, she at least understood what I and her other changeling vassals were talking about when we brought human problems to her attention.

Now that she was standing, it was time to observe the niceties. I curtsied, dipping as low as practice and training allowed. Quentin bowed with equal depth and solemnity. Tybalt inclined his head, but otherwise stayed upright. That wasn’t as disrespectful as it looked. As a King of Cats, he was technically Arden’s equal, and it would have been inappropriate for him to bow to her. He was already showing her a great honor by following the rules of her knowe, and not insisting that she treat him as visiting royalty.

Quentin was also visiting royalty, being the Crown Prince of the Westlands and all, but that wasn’t something we talked about much. Arden knew—High King Aethlin and High Queen Maida had been the ones who came and validated her claim to the throne of the Mists—but as Quentin was technically untitled while he was in fosterage, she didn’t let it affect her reactions to him. Quentin’s rank was secret from most of Faerie, and it needed to stay that way if he was going to stay safe.

“You may rise,” said Arden, sounding faintly bemused, like she still didn’t understand the point of all this bowing. At least she wasn’t trying to make us stop anymore. Centuries of training don’t die out that quickly.

“Lowri told us Madden took the Mauthe Doog home,” I said, as I straightened. “Will he be back tonight? I’d like to apologize for not realizing what was going on quicker.”

“He should be,” said Arden. “You did well tonight. The Mists appreciate your service.”

There are some pretty strong taboos in Faerie against saying the words “thank you,” which has made us all incredibly good at talking our way around our gratitude. “It was sort of fun, in a ‘big angry black dogs trying to kill us’ kind of way. I’m just sorry we didn’t figure out that they weren’t hostile sooner. We could have saved the rest of them. As it stands, I don’t know whether any managed to teleport away.”

“Madden will look for them,” said Arden. “How many died?”

“Two,” said Quentin. “It might be a good idea to tell Madden to go back over there before tomorrow night, to make sure none of them were wounded and went to ground. But I don’t think any of them were. They were all pretty dedicated to attacking us.”

“I listened for the sound of pups hidden in the high grass,” added Tybalt. “No such sounds came to me. I believe we found them all.”

“That’s good,” said Arden. “They were becoming a nuisance.”

“They just needed someone to tell them they weren’t alone,” I said. That wasn’t an uncommon situation, in Faerie. For every Court like Arden’s, which welcomed changelings and shapeshifters as well as the more “courtly” members of the fae, there were three Courts like the former Queen’s. She had run a very formal house. No changelings unless they were servants; no shapeshifters, because she didn’t allow animals around her nice things. The Mists had been losing good people since that woman took the throne, driven away by her insistence on a form of courtliness that had no bearing on the modern world. Arden was starting to get some of those people back, but it was going to take a long time before the Kingdom had fully recovered.

“They’re not alone now,” Arden said. “Madden and his family will take good care of them until we can figure out a permanent place—and Mauthe Doog used to be popular companions among the Tuatha de Dannan. I may be able to settle them here at my Court, depending on how well they remember their time with my people.”

“That would be excellent,” I said. Tybalt made a face. I laughed and elbowed him lightly in the side. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get a puppy.”

“I should certainly hope not,” he said stiffly.

“Actually, while you’re both here, there was something I was hoping to talk to you about.”

Arden’s words were casual, but if there was one thing I’d learned in my years of dealing with the nobility, it was that nothing that included the phrase “I was hoping to talk to you” was ever as casual as it seemed. Tybalt and I exchanged a look. Quentin winced, looking wary.

She was my Queen. Tybalt belonged to a different political structure and Quentin was going to outrank her someday. Swallowing my sigh, I turned to face her, and said, “Yes, Your Highness?”

To my surprise, Arden groaned. “You know, sometimes being the Queen isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I don’t want to give you an order or send you on a quest or make your lives harder, I swear. I just want to ask you a favor, and have you really think about it before you answer either way. I don’t want you to say ‘yes’ and hate me, and I don’t want you to say ‘no’ before you’ve heard me out. All right?”

“All right,” I said, more slowly. “What’s up?”

“I would like you to consider choosing Muir Woods as the site of your wedding,” said Arden.

I stared at her. Tybalt stared at her. Arden reddened.

“I know, I know, we need a better name for this place, but I feel silly saying ‘the Court of Windermere,’ which is what my father called it, and I can’t go the easy route and call it ‘Mists,’ because this whole Kingdom is the Mists and right, sorry. Babbling. I don’t do it often, but when I do, I can win valuable prizes.” Arden shook her head. “Look. October, you’re a hero of the realm. You mean something to people around here.”

“Yeah, I mean they’re about to get in trouble,” I said.

Arden ignored me. That was probably a good choice on her part. “And Tybalt, you’re a King of Cats. Do you know how long it’s been since a titled member of the Divided Courts has married into the Court of Cats? It’s incredibly unifying, and that makes it incredibly important. I know you were probably considering Shadowed Hills for the ceremony, but I’d like you to please give some serious thought to doing it here.”

Apparently taking our stunned silence for criticism, she put her hands up in what was probably meant to be a reassuring stance. “I promise you, we have the space—you haven’t seen the entire knowe. I haven’t seen the entire knowe. The more we clean it out, the more rooms we find. The staff here is superb, and they’re itching for more opportunities to prove themselves. The Yule Ball went off without a hitch, in part because my staff was so eager to show off how amazing they can be.”

“Yes, but that was a ball,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “We sort of have road maps for those things. Like, we know where to put the refreshment table, what kind of band to hire, and how many guests we’re expected to invite. Our wedding is a whole different can of worms.” And complicated as hell, for many of the reasons Arden had already mentioned. Tybalt being royalty meant we were at risk of having it turn into a state wedding, which could result in six hundred guests, a cake the size of a small car, and me spending what should have been the happiest day of my life hyperventilating in a closet. I don’t like big parties. The idea of being the center of one . . . thanks, but no thanks.

“I know,” said Arden. “I just want you to think about it, all right? Like I said, I know Shadowed Hills is your first choice, but I think you could be really happy here.”

“We will consider your most generous offer,” said Tybalt, before I could say anything I was going to regret. I shot him a grateful look. He inclined his chin, very slightly, and said nothing.

Shadowed Hills is the Duchy I’m sworn to serve, and my oaths are held by Duke Sylvester Torquill, who has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. He was the one who gave me the Changeling’s Choice, back when I was seven years old and still standing balanced on the knife’s edge between the fae and mortal worlds. He was the first pureblood to take a chance on me, allowing me into his court and even making sure I got knighted when I earned it. For years, he was the closest thing I had to a father. I still loved him like one. I couldn’t stop.

Not even when it turned out he’d been lying to me the whole time, and that he’d been taking care of me in part because his brother had been married to my mother since before I was born, which technically made Simon my stepfather. Simon Torquill was also the man who’d kidnapped Sylvester’s wife and daughter, and turned me into a fish for fourteen years, effectively destroying my relationship with my own daughter. Why hadn’t Sylvester told me any of this?

Because he had promised my mother that he wouldn’t. He had put his promise to a woman who had all but abandoned me ahead of his relationship with me, and he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give me a good reason why. I hadn’t spoken to Sylvester in three months. As far as I was aware, he still didn’t know Tybalt and I were engaged, and I was happy to keep it that way.

I don’t trust easily. Abuse that trust, and I don’t see why I should keep giving it to you. Sylvester had more credit with me than most people—he’d been building it for decades—and I loved him very much. Probably always would. I just needed some time before I’d be able to deal with him again.

Arden smiled, looking relieved that she hadn’t just been shot down cold. “Excellent. Is there anything else I can do for you tonight? The kitchen’s still open, if you’re hungry after all your hard work.”

“I could eat,” said Quentin.

“October would greatly appreciate a sandwich,” said Tybalt. “Or perhaps a banquet that you happen to have lying around going uneaten.”

I shot him a mock-glare. “Stop trying to feed me.”

“Stop trying to starve yourself to death for no apparent reason, and I will consider it,” he replied.

Arden laughed. “Well, since you put it that way—” she began.

A commotion from the entryway cut her off. Arden turned, amusement giving way to confusion and then alarm. The rest of us turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Lowri and the other guard from the entryway staggered into view, bent under the weight of the big red-and-white–haired figure they held between them. Madden was limp, his feet dragging behind him like a dead man’s.

“Madden!” cried Arden, shoving me out of the way as she flung herself across the throne room to reach her seneschal. She grabbed his head, lifting it so that she could stare into his face. His eyes were closed, and if he felt her hands against his skin, he didn’t react to them. He didn’t react at all. “Madden? Wake up!”

“He was dropped through a portal into the clearing, Highness,” said Lowri. Her voice shook as she spoke, her accent growing stronger in her dismay. “Whoever left him for us, their magic came and went too quickly. We didn’t have time to recognize it.”

“Why won’t he wake up?” moaned Arden. She didn’t look like a Queen in that moment: she looked like an ordinary woman, on the verge of a breakdown over the thought that her best and oldest friend had been hurt. “Madden, please. Please wake up, Madden, please.”

“He won’t,” said Tybalt. He strode over to Arden, pushing her aside as he bent to pull Madden’s jacket open. Quentin and I followed him, although we didn’t touch Arden. He could get away with a certain amount of manhandling the Queen, since she had no authority over him. Quentin and I weren’t so lucky. Arden was our friend and all, but that wouldn’t stop her from getting pissed if we touched her while she was already distraught.

Tybalt felt around inside Madden’s jacket, Arden looking on in wide-eyed dismay, until he hissed with displeasure and pulled out a short, almost stubby-looking arrow. The tip was damp with blood, but only the tip; the arrow had done little more than scratch Madden’s skin, based on how much blood was there. The smell of it hit me as I was walking toward him. I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.

Blood knows everything. Blood is where memory is stored, and where magic lives . . . and when someone is poisoned or enchanted, the blood knows that, too.

“As I suspected,” said Tybalt sadly. He turned the arrow in his hand, careful to avoid the point. The shaft was fletched in deep pine green and silver—the same shade of silver that appeared on the arms of the Kingdom of the Mists, in fact. That was odd. There are only so many colors in the world. Some duplication is unavoidable, but people mostly try to avoid using the colors that have been claimed by neighboring Kingdoms when they can possibly help it. There’s just too much chance of winding up with an angry monarch on your tail, questioning your fashion choices.

“Elf-shot,” I said, voice muffled by my fingers.

Arden’s face, which had been teetering on the edge of despair, crumbled. It was like watching a bottomless pit open in what had been a perfectly happy woman. “What?” she asked, eyes flicking to me. “No. It can’t be elf-shot. No. I’m . . . I am the queen. I became queen so that my people would be safe. Madden is my people. He’s my best people. I mean, he’s my best friend. He can’t be elf-shot. I won’t allow it.” Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart felt like it broke a little too, in sympathy.

Elf-shot is either one of Faerie’s crueler weapons or one of Faerie’s kinder weapons, depending on how you look at it, and how you feel about hundred-year naps. It allows the purebloods to wage war without killing each other, since killing a pureblood is a violation of Oberon’s Law. Killing changelings doesn’t violate the Law, naturally, and just as naturally, elf-shot is fatal to us, because who cares if some mongrel foot soldier dies on the battlefield?

I care. And everyone I know who’s effectively lost a friend or loved one to elf-shot cares. A century is a long time, even for a pureblood.

Maybe my reasons for hating the stuff are more personal than I like to admit. Elf-shot killed Connor, who was my lover and my friend and an important part of my life. Elf-shot forced my mother to shift my blood away from human and toward fae, disrupting the fragile balance I had managed to build for myself and sending me into what has sometimes seemed like an inevitable spiral toward the pureblood side of my heritage. And it was elf-shot that forced me to turn my little girl human, taking her away from me forever. So yeah, I hate it. I figure I’m allowed.

Arden was shaking her head, eyes still fixed on my face. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Why would someone use elf-shot on Madden? He’s . . . he’s the best. He’s the sweetest person in the world. No one wants to hurt him.”

“Unless, through hurting him, they might hurt you,” said Tybalt gently. Arden whipped around to stare at him. “You know as well as I do that the throne carries a heavier cost than we would choose, if it were up to us. So often, that cost is borne by the ones we care for.”

“Green and silver are the colors of the Kingdom of Silences,” said Quentin.

We all turned to stare at him—even Arden, who had started to cry. Quentin was undaunted.

“Silences is the Kingdom to the north of us, right? Their colors used to be green and red, to symbolize the evergreen forests and the roses they grow there, but when they lost the War of Silences, the Queen of the Mists—I mean the one who wasn’t really Queen, Your Highness, it’s just that we never got a real name for her, so I don’t have anything else to call her—took the red away from them. She said they no longer had the right to claim the blood of those who had died in the name of their false cause, and that they should always know who the superior Kingdom was. That’s why she made them match the silver in the arms of the Mists.” Quentin bit his lip before continuing, “I mean, I’m just saying. Those are their colors.”

“Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed. Silences wasn’t just the Kingdom to the north. It was the only Kingdom whose monarch had been chosen by the Mists, after the War of Silences had left their ruling family broken and their surviving heirs, if any, scattered. It had been a Tylwyth Teg demesne before that. But the man who had been given the throne had been a Baron in the Mists before he became a King.

And he was Tuatha de Dannan.

“If Silences was behind this attack . . .” I began.

“No,” interrupted Arden, shaking her head. She was still crying, and her face was pale. “No, no, no. I remember that war. Nolan and I were still just kids when it happened. We were in hiding, but we still knew about the war. People died. Not just on the battlefield. Poisonings and assassinations and all the things I walked away from the throne to escape. I promised my brother that we would never, ever get involved with anything like that.”

I looked at her, seeing not a Queen, but a frightened bookstore clerk who had managed to wind up way over her head. I even felt a little guilty about that. If Arden was in over her head, I was one of the people who had put her there. “We don’t know for sure that it was Silences.”

“Yes, we do,” said a weary voice from the entryway. I turned. An unfamiliar Cu Sidhe woman was standing there, her red-and-white hair pulled into low pigtails on either side of her face. She was wearing a green linen peasant blouse over jeans—all she needed was a flower crown and some wire-framed glasses and she would have looked like she had just stepped out of the Summer of Love. She held up a parchment scroll. “They left this so they could be sure we’d understand their message. I don’t blame the guard for missing it. I had to sniff my way around the whole clearing before I located the admission of their crime.”

“Um, hi,” I said. “You are . . . ?”

“My name is Faoiltiarna. You may call me ‘Tia,’ as that will probably be easier on you.” The woman looked at me solemnly, her eyes large and liquid and filled with the sorrow that only dogs seem to have access to. “Madden is my brother. He was snatched from the yard of our home. We knew it must be an act of violence brought against him for his association with Queen Windermere. Cowards have always struck at brave rulers through their canines.”

Arden put her hand over her mouth again, and didn’t say anything. She seemed to have frozen under the pressure, which wasn’t the most useful reaction out of a monarch. I tried to swallow my anger. Inexperienced Queens can’t be expected to get everything perfect right out the gate. Her reign had consisted of one rebellion where she didn’t have to do much, a lot of cleaning, and a couple of parties. It wasn’t surprising that she was overwhelmed now.

“Can I see that?” I asked, taking a step toward Tia and holding out my hand.

“Certainly,” she said. She dropped the scroll into my palm, her sorrowful gaze flicking to Madden, who still hung motionless between the guards who had carried him inside. “My poor brother. He’ll have a good long sleep, and when he wakes up, we’ll be waiting to tell him about everything that’s changed in the world. May he slumber here?” She looked back to Arden. “Our mother told us when we followed her to the Mists that King Gilad had a chamber for sleepers such as this. It would be best if Madden could sleep in safety, with no need to fear the march of progress.”

“We haven’t finished opening the knowe, but if that room is here, we’ll find it,” said Lowri. Her voice was calm and even; of everyone in this room, she had the most experience serving in a royal court. “If Queen Windermere consents, we can place him in his own room while we search. He’ll be comfortable there.”

Queen Windermere wasn’t consenting. Queen Windermere wasn’t saying anything at all. She was still just standing there, frozen and silent.

I swallowed a sigh and unrolled the parchment, careful to avoid paper cuts. There was no guarantee that whoever had left us the message would be enough of a dick to poison it, but there was also no guarantee that they wouldn’t. Better safe than joining Madden in a century of sleep.

I skimmed the parchment, reading it twice over before I said, “The Kingdom of Silences is declaring war on the Kingdom of the Mists, in answer to our most treacherous and unkind act of treason. They want to depose Arden and return the ‘rightful Queen’ to the throne—their words, not mine. As per tradition, we have three days to give our final answer, or they attack.”

“What rightful Queen?” asked Quentin.

“Who do you think?” I held the parchment out toward him. They didn’t name their chosen monarch—of course they didn’t, no one ever had; no one had ever known her name—but they called her “our fair lady of the Mists” and “the Siren of the West.” It was pretty clear they intended to put the former Queen back in the position she’d held for more than a century, just like it was clear that we needed to stop them.

“But High King Sollys confirmed Queen Windermere’s claim to the throne,” said Quentin, sounding confused. “That means she’s legitimate.”

“He also confirmed the nameless usurper’s claim,” I said. “That means she can try to take it back. Your Highness, we’re not going to—” I turned toward the spot where Arden had been standing, and stopped. The smell of blackberry flowers and redwood bark was hanging in the air and the guards were staring, open-mouthed, at nothing.

The Queen was gone.