“M’sure I will.” It was getting progressively harder to keep my eyes open. I yawned, the taste of oysters still clinging to my back molars, and wished idly for something else to drink.
Arden was talking again, explaining some convoluted relationship between her brother and her best friend and several people whose names I didn’t quite catch, but I wasn’t really listening. I was already half-asleep, and increasingly unable to focus on what she was saying.
Then I realized she was talking pure nonsense, reciting what sounded like a piece of human poetry as she lulled me down into sleep.
And curse her for understanding the exhaustion that comes after iron exposure so ridiculously well, because it worked.
THIRTEEN
I WASN’T SURE HOW MUCH of the last day I’d spent asleep or unconscious, but I was sure it was more than I was happy about. In my defense, it had all been part of an effort to recover from some horrible experience or other, beginning with “losing too much blood” and ending in “iron poisoning,” and I never intended to do any of those things again. My eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut with something strong and sticky, and as I struggled to open them, I considered the virtues of just going back to sleep, since it was starting to feel inevitable. No one stabbed me when I was asleep.
They did take my knives and throw me into cells full of iron. Iron could cause hallucinations when enough of it built up in the bloodstream, and which was more believable? That I’d somehow been yanked out of the Queen’s dungeon by a pair of Tuatha in fool’s motley and dropped in a pumpkin field, or that I’d already absorbed so much iron that my brain was spinning any story it could come up with to convince me that things were going to be okay?
Things were not going to be okay. I did, however, need to pee, and going back to sleep wasn’t going to fix that. I finally forced my eyes open and sat up, my whole body feeling heavy and slightly disconnected, like my veins had been stuffed with cotton wool. I looked around the circular room.
One of the Tuatha was in the other bed, apparently sound asleep, body turned so I couldn’t see how long their hair was and know whether I was looking at Arden or Nolan. Not that it seemed to make all that much of a difference. I stood, wobbly-legged, and began shuffling around the room, looking for something resembling a chamber pot or garderobe. There were no doors, but there were a few pieces of furniture that could have been wardrobes, and sometimes those served a dual purpose.
My search came up empty. I was contemplating the logistics of trying to hang my rear end out the window, and whether I’d even be able to pee while I was dangling a hundred feet off the ground with no belt or rope, when a circle opened in the air and Nolan stepped through, answering the question of which Windermere was in the bed.
I squeaked, startled, and he shot me an amused look before stalking toward his sleeping sister, one hand firmly held behind his back. I recognized that stalk. It was the one August used on me when she thought I wasn’t looking and was about to do something entirely uncivilized that would never have been allowed if I hadn’t been her sister.
Indeed, when he reached Arden’s bedside, he pulled his hand out from behind his back, revealing a large green bullfrog. “Sister dear,” he said sweetly.
Arden made a grumbling noise.
“Sister dear, the queen wants to see us.”
I tensed. The queen? Oh, but we were on the Golden Shore, not in the Mists. He was referring to Queen Chrysanthe, who hadn’t thrown me in a dungeon any time recently. I forced myself to relax again, and just watched as Arden failed to respond, even when Nolan put a hand on her shoulder and rolled her onto her back.
Then he dropped the frog on her face.
Arden woke with a shriek that was less horror and more indignation as the frog, frightened and confused, launched itself out of the bed with one massive kick of its hind legs. Nolan was laughing like this was the funniest thing he had ever seen, bending over almost double as he clutched his stomach and howled.
Arden hit him with a pillow. He laughed even harder, shoulders shaking with the force of it.
“You’re disgusting,” said Arden, and all but thrust herself out of the bed, shoving her brother aside in the process. She stormed toward me, and as she got closer, I saw that at least half her fury was an exaggeration for Nolan’s benefit. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“It’s okay,” I said, relaxing.
“Been awake long?”
“No. Was just looking for the garderobe.”
“The . . . oh, wow, you grew up low-tech. We at least reached the fifteen hundreds before we decided to shut down progress. We do indoor plumbing here on the Golden Shore.”
“They have flush toilets at Shadowed Hills,” I said stiffly. “They also have enough space that using them doesn’t wake up everyone else in the tower. Mother couldn’t install those if she wanted to, we’d never sleep again.”
Arden paused. “That may be the best argument for disgusting, inconvenient archaic technology I’ve heard. But no, we don’t have one of those here. You need the bathroom?”
I nodded vigorously.
“So we don’t have one of those here, either. We just pop over to the royal knowe when we need to use the facilities, then come back here until we’re ready for people. I don’t know if they’ll be that considerate with you, given the situation—we may be going straight into dealing with everything that’s been building up. Are you ready for that?”
“It’s that, or I’m peeing on your floor,” I said tersely. “Please take me to a bathroom.”
“Your funeral,” said Arden, and sketched a circle in the air, gesturing me through.
The hall on the other side was comfortable and warm, all polished wood and slate flooring. The ceiling was high, with exposed beams supporting dangling chandeliers filled with domes of gleaming witch light. Wait, no—not witch light. There were holes in the domes, and as I watched, a pixie emerged from one of them, leaving it to go dark until another pixie darted inside and lit it up again.
I turned to blink at Arden as she stepped through after me.
“Chrysanthe has an agreement with the local hives,” she said. “They don’t attack the crops, she gives them housing and all the kitchen scraps they can handle. In exchange, they light the halls and hunt the bugs that might otherwise denude some of our more valuable crops. Means we can slap an ‘organic’ label on things, and charge the assholes in the Mists twice as much as we charge the non-assholes.”
“Oh,” I said, bemused by the idea of basing pricing on attitude. If a pureblood did it, it couldn’t be wrong, and surely they didn’t sell directly to any changelings.
“Here, this way,” she said, guiding me to an unlocked door.
On the other side was a large bathroom, complete with large bath and floor-to-ceiling mirror. I stopped dead, getting my first look at myself since Shadowed Hills.
If I’d ever looked worse in my life, I couldn’t remember when. My hair was matted with blood and a variety of indistinguishable flavors of filth, several of which I was happy not to know anything about. Completing the effect, a few yarrow twigs jutted out of the snarls at odd angles. Father’s illusions were gone, which meant I could see how much my normal pallor had converted to a waxen sallowness, and how deep the dark circles under my eyes were.