“I’m sorry, but no,” said Li Qin.
“And you got Toby to release me anyway?”
“The luck said I should.”
“Oberon keep and bless your luck, most beautiful of wives,” said January firmly, before turning to me. “Toby . . .” she began, apologetically.
I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next. What I’d done might have been the right thing, but I still felt sick to my stomach, and the taste of blood was harsh and sticky in the back of my mouth. I hated this. This was . . . this was wrong. Titania’s Faerie was a paradise, one she had planted and cultivated for all of us, even the least among us, even me.
“I can’t do that again,” I said. My fingers still ached with the cold, which was unusual; that, and the pounding in my head, might be the longest-lasting injuries I had ever sustained. “I’m sorry, if that’s what you want to ask of me, I can’t.”
“We can get by without my memories for now,” said Li Qin. “April will tell us what I need to know.”
“I will,” said April, suddenly beside her. She was bouncing back and forth between her mothers like a bird in a cage, first here, then there, never ceasing to move.
“Toby, no,” said January. “I didn’t want to ask you to do more for us than you already had. I wanted to say . . . thank you. Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t have said which of those phrases hit me harder: the forbidden thanks or the apology. My cousin was not my liege; pureblood or no, it was an insult even to a mere changeling for her to imply that I somehow owed her fealty for doing only what had been asked of me. And yet, her face, her voice, her eyes . . . they weren’t offering the insult that her words would normally imply. They offered genuine gratitude, admiration, and even friendship.
How could she, a pureblood, a noble, be looking at me like that?
I gaped at her.
She shook her head. “I know the things I said to you were unforgivable, but they weren’t me. I would never—okay, so that version of me would, I guess, and that’s a shitty thing that I’m going to have to learn to live with—but this version is the real version, and I would never act like you were somehow my inferior.” April appeared next to her again, sliding her arms around January’s shoulders, and January put a hand on her wrist, steadying them both. They already looked like a family. They looked like they had never been apart. Li Qin seemed a little subdued, watching them, this unit that she was currently standing just outside of and couldn’t enter without the memories I didn’t have the strength to unlock yet.
If I could ever unlock them at all. I’d spilled so much blood, there was no way Mother wasn’t going to catch the smell of it somehow. She would lock me in the tower for a decade as punishment for allowing myself to be cajoled into doing blood magic, and while I wanted to think that would be a good thing, I couldn’t. Not now.
Because if January’s memories were true, mine might be too. And if my memories were true, Li Qin wasn’t the only one who’d been compelled to forget a spouse for some reason.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad, that I’d seen myself married to a beast. He clearly cared for me, and didn’t resent me for the low station of my birth. Who else would be willing to see themselves tethered to a changeling, in defiance of all Titania’s laws?
If those laws existed at all. Oh, I didn’t like to think about it. It made the pounding in my head even worse. Still, if they were true memories, and that man existed somewhere for me to find, I couldn’t allow myself to be locked in the tower. I turned to Sir Etienne, intending to tell him as much, only to find him looking at me with blazing eyes, jaw set in a hard line.
“I still need your help, and you promised you would hear my reasons if I did this for you,” he said. “I did as you asked, for all that I should not be required to barter my services with a changeling to have what’s rightly mine, and now you owe me.”
“I do,” I agreed. “Only my head hurts really badly right now, and Countess ap . . . O’Leary has just recovered her memories. Must we do this now?”
“She’s awake and talking and, if what you say is true, freed from the burden of an unkindly intended spell,” said Sir Etienne. He waved my concerns away as if they were nothing at all. “Once I return you to your uncle’s halls, I will have no excuse to extract you again. Your mother will return soon, according to your father’s understanding of her movements, and while I’ve promised not to tell her you were doing blood magic, she’s not going to let me take you on a field trip. You have to do this now. I’ve waited long enough. She’s waited long enough.”
Even if he hadn’t mentioned his daughter before, the brightness in his eyes would have told me he wasn’t talking about any “she” currently in this room.
Reluctantly, and extremely aware of how soon even the scant freedom of movement that Moving Day afforded me would end, I nodded.
“All right, Sir Etienne,” I said. “I still don’t know if I’ll be able to help, but I promised you I would listen. If you truly think it within my power, I will go with you now, and I will do my best.” I glanced back to January, who was moving cautiously toward Li Qin, like she was approaching an easily startled animal. “Countess? Duchess? Do you mind if we take our leave of you?”
If Li Qin forbade Etienne to take me, I could stay there long enough to eat a proper meal and sleep off this headache. She outranked him. He’d have no choice but to wait.
Please tell him you mind, I thought, hoping that maybe Shyi Shuai had mind-reading magic I’d never heard of or something. If you tell him you mind, I’ll try to take the spell off you once my head stops pounding.
“Not at all,” said Li Qin, staring at January, who had started cautiously stroking her hair with one hand. “We are very grateful for everything October has been able to do for us today, and hope she’ll be up for a return visit sometime soon. I can do without my memory for a time. I might eventually prefer to have it returned to me.”
“She will be happy to return and aid a pureblood household,” said Sir Etienne, before I could reply. “We appreciate your hospitality. October, come.”
He grabbed my wrist with one hand, etching a circle in the air with the other. The portal that opened showed a sunlit mortal street—the one he’d disappeared to before. He snapped his fingers, and a human disguise bloomed around him, blunting his ears, softening his face, and toning down the metallic brightness of his eyes.
Without another word, he dragged me into the portal and we were gone, leaving Dreamer’s Glass behind us.
NINE
MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF the place on the other side of the portal was correct: I knew it as soon as Sir Etienne pulled me through, even though I had never been there before. We were in the mortal world. The air smelled like woodsmoke, leaf mold, and something chemical and strange that I neither recognized nor cared for. Metal boxes I recognized as “cars” from the magazines Kerry would sometimes smuggle into the kitchens at Shadowed Hills lined the streets, and the sidewalks were cracked by tree roots and long stretches of disrepair.
Sir Etienne didn’t let go of my wrist as he started striding down the street toward one of the low, squarish houses, pulling me in his wake. The house he was aiming for had a small porch and a wide front window masked by gauzy curtains. A light was on inside, but the illumination provided no details through the fabric.