“You turned a changeling fully fae?” asked August.
If I hadn’t known her as well as I did, it would have been easy to interpret her tone as disgust. As it was, I could hear the amazement, buried under a layer of confusion so thick it pressed the joy out of everything. She’d always been like that, capable of making the best things in the world sound like the worst.
“No. I couldn’t, because somebody else already had. She thought she was a changeling, and she wore an illusion so intricately woven that she looked like a changeling, but when I looked at her blood, there was no humanity there. She was already a pureblooded Tuatha de Dannan. There was nothing in her for me to change.”
“So what did you do?” asked Ginevra.
“I pulled the illusion down.” It sounded so simple when I said it like that, as if it hadn’t been painful and complicated and ended with me knocked through a hole in the world. I paused. “I know Nolan went to speak with Sir Etienne. Do we know whether Chelsea’s okay?”
“I’m sure her father would have arrived to tell us about it by now, if she wasn’t.”
“So October stopped an illusion from making a pureblood girl look like a changeling?” asked August.
“More than that; if January is anything to go by, October will have unlocked her memories of the real Faerie,” said Ginevra, watching me closely. “Chelsea should remember the same reality Tybalt and I and the other royal cats do.”
“The one April comes from,” I said slowly. “The other Faerie.”
“Exactly.”
August slid herself in front of me again, posture and expression screaming challenge as she got closer to Ginevra than necessary, their noses virtually touching. “Do they also remember this one?”
Ginevra blinked, expression clouding. “What?”
“Do they also remember this reality? The one we’re living in? The one we’re a part of right now?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she admitted. “This reality never took root with us, and so I don’t know the specific ways it was designed to differ. April didn’t get these memories either. And January was too busy being ecstatic about being released to go into detail about what she did or didn’t remember.”
“And you want my sister—my sister—to let you do this to her. To make her join your messed-up fringe reality that may or may not exist. How do we know you’re not the ones under the spell, while we’re the ones who are normal? October isn’t trained. She doesn’t fully understand her own magic. She could be doing something to scramble these people’s minds, thinking she’s helping them.”
“I—” said Ginevra.
August wasn’t finished. “These people you’re talking about, they consented, right? That’s what you’re saying, that they agreed to let this happen?”
“They did,” I said, putting a hand on her arm to hold her back before she could get any further up in Ginevra’s face. “They asked me.”
“There you go, then! My sister isn’t asking.”
Ginevra glanced at me, almost frantic for me to disagree.
If there were sides to be chosen, I would always take my sister’s side. “She’s right,” I said. “I didn’t ask, and it wouldn’t matter if I had, because I can’t pull the spell off myself anyway. I already tried. I couldn’t get a grasp on it to start breaking the strands.” I held up my hands, flexing them as if to demonstrate how hard it would be to use them to grab something intangible that was wrapped all the way around me. “So whatever this is, I’m not going to get out of it any time soon.”
Ginevra looked horrified. No complexities, no subtleties: just outright horror, as if this was a complication she’d never seen coming.
August glared at her as she took my arm and moved to lead me away, away from Uncle Sylvester’s knights and the impossible Cait Sidhe and our shamefaced father. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
Whatever this other Faerie looked like, it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t the world I knew. And even if I had to spend the rest of my life there on the Golden Shore, it would be worth it, as long as I didn’t have to do it alone.
We were almost to the doors when they opened, the two Daoine Sidhe who had been standing guard stepping into the room.
“Dinner is prepared, and their Majesties request the honor of your presence in the Gull Ballroom,” said one of them.
“That isn’t actually a request,” said the other.
FIFTEEN
THE GULL BALLROOM WAS as large as the throne room, and decorated in much the same color scheme, but with carved birds and salmon in place of the fruits and flowers. Several large round tables had been set up throughout the room, while service stations were set up against two of the walls. A long stage dominated the third wall, supporting the high table. At least that part of the layout was familiar. Theron and Chrysanthe were seated there, with Arden and Nolan Windermere settled to Chrysanthe’s left. The presence of the siblings was briefly a surprise, but only briefly; even in exile, they were the rightful heirs to the Mists, and it made sense that they’d be shown some measure of respect.
All the other tables had at least a few open seats, although many were already occupied, by people wearing a variety of styles ranging from court formal to “just came in from the fields.” Servers moved through the crowd, and I realized with a start that less than half of them were changelings, while more than half the people seated at the tables were. Purebloods and changelings took rolls from the same basket of bread, and drank from cups that had been filled out of the same jug. I struggled not to gawk as our Daoine escorts led us across the floor toward the only obviously open table.
Well. Mostly open. Tybalt was seated there, his seemingly omnipresent scowl firmly on his face. He looked over as we approached, but didn’t rise to pull out our chairs, or make any other moves to help us get settled.
Normally, I would have been honored beyond measure to be seated between my father and sister. We were rarely in a position to dine at the same table, even in our tower; Mother insisted I eat in the kitchen when we were all at home together, saying that as a changeling, it was vital for me to remain aware of my place.
Apparently, on the Golden Shore, my place was directly before the royal family.
But with Tybalt glaring from across the table and Father too ashamed to meet my eyes, it was difficult to take pleasure in this rare honor. I unfolded my napkin and placed it across my lap, trying to focus on the minutiae of the moment. August elbowed me lightly. I looked up at her.
“I think that’s the food,” she said, gesturing toward a Satyr pushing a silver serving cart. A variety of entrees were presented there. He would pause at each table he passed, asking the people sitting there which meal they wanted. Each time a plate was removed, an identical one would appear in its place, meaning no one was ever denied their first choice.
Another server approached our table, a jug of spiced tea in hand. As she filled our glasses, I leaned toward her and asked, “Is it like this every night?”
“Oh, no, miss,” she said. “This is a fancy night, as we’ve fancy people visiting. A King and Queen of another demesne, our Lord and Lady say. So while we’re not full formal, we are a bit nicer than we might otherwise be.”