“If I see that little snake, I’m going to knock his smug teeth down his throat,” I grumbled.
“No, you won’t,” said the Luidaeg. “Believe me, once he’s himself again, the kid’s going to be just as upset as you are right now. Guess a world without you playing your normal merry havoc on everything around you is a world where he got to be the prejudiced little princeling my sister was aiming for when she brought him here in the first place. So at least we know she’d be happy here, if she weren’t missing the whole thing. Titania didn’t actually change history. If she had, I doubt we’d be having this conversation, since I’m not sure even getting rid of her sister justifies the thorn in her side that is you. She just made everyone think things had happened differently, and that means all the same pieces are in play.”
“I hate this,” moaned Raysel, and sat down on the little bench Father kept for his tools—and his daughters. She put her head in her hands. “I should have stayed asleep.”
“Why are we here?” I asked. “This is my mother’s tower.”
“Exactly,” said the Luidaeg. “The wards are set to admit family and people family allow, and no one else. If you let us all in, we’re safe.”
If I let them all in, I was dead as soon as my mother found out about it. Then again, that was already the case. “Sorry, Mom, decided I didn’t like being a lady’s maid anymore, so I went and helped the sea witch upset the natural order of things” wasn’t exactly the sort of excuse she was going to accept.
“Right,” I said.
“Before the Queen’s guard figures out where we went, if you don’t mind,” she added, with a slight edge to her tone.
“Right,” I repeated, and moved to open the back door. “As guests of the house, you are welcome in my company,” I said.
“Great,” said the Luidaeg, and tried to walk past me, only to bounce off the wards and fall down.
I blinked at her. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Well, it did!”
“I’ll go see what’s wrong,” I said, and tried to walk through the open door—only to bounce off exactly as she had.
I wasn’t on the tower wards.
TWENTY-TWO
I STOOD THERE, LOOKING BAFFLED and betrayed, as the Luidaeg got her feet back under her.
“Motherfucker,” she said, with fervor. “I should have thought of this.”
“Thought of what?” I asked.
“Have you ever gone anywhere alone that you can remember, or—let me amend that—have you gone anywhere alone in the last four months?”
“Of course,” I said. “I mean . . .” I trailed off, realizing I couldn’t actually remember a time when I’d left the tower without either August or Father by my side to make sure I got back safely. I paused for several seconds, blinking, then looked up at the Luidaeg. “No. I haven’t.”
“That’s what I thought. Remember, I said this wasn’t a real world, just something cast on top of the real world. Which means that really, you’re the daughter who chose her other parent in the divorce, and really, you’re the one she was more than willing to lose. She took you off the wards.” The Luidaeg sighed. “We can’t hide here.”
“Then where are we supposed to go?” asked Dean. “We can’t go to Goldengreen, we’ll never make it to Golden Shore with just Chelsea capable of covering that kind of distance, the Queen is looking for us, Toby’s wanted for murder, and half of us don’t exist!”
“I’m wanted too, now,” said Grianne. She didn’t sound particularly troubled. Rolling her shoulders in a shrug, she looked at me. “Quentin saw me grab Raysel. He knows I’m on your side.”
“This just gets better and better,” I said. “Okay. Where else can we go?”
“Unless we want to head for the Undersea, I’m not seeing a lot of choices,” said Ginevra. “And there’s no way most of you would survive the Shadow Roads long enough to get there. Toby would, normally, but right now, I’m a little loath to try it.”
“I don’t know this world the way people Titania bothered to enchant do, and that’s a good thing, because you don’t want me on the other side.” The Luidaeg looked to Etienne. “Tell me about Chelsea.”
He blinked. “I hardly think this is the time—”
“I don’t see where we’re going to have a better time. I know her story where I come from, and that’s the story she knows now too. Tell me your version.”
“I . . . My liege was having one of his moods, and I felt uneasy in his halls. I decided to go wandering in the human world for a time, and see what could be seen. I admit, I did think to perhaps dally with a mortal woman and fulfill my duty to Faerie, if I found her comely and she found me an acceptable lover.” His cheeks flushed red at the admission. “I remembered the tales I had from my own father, of mortal women when he was young. He made it sound like an endless parade of carnality, like the hint of otherworldliness I carried on my shoulders would be an irresistible attraction and they would fall over themselves to bed me.”
“But it wasn’t like that, was it,” asked the Luidaeg, with poisonous amusement. “Turns out, humans are people, and you can’t just crook your finger and make their clothes come flying off.”
“Indeed,” said Etienne, with some vestigial frustration in his voice. “The stories I’d always been told about the human world were untrue, and I began to sate my curiosity by spending time there, trying to learn the fact behind the fiction. I met Bridget in a coffee shop near the university campus, in Berkeley. She was clever and cutting, and before long, I was smitten. When she welcomed me to her bed, it felt not like I was blessing her house with magic, but like she was giving me a great and wonderous gift of which I might not be found worthy. Through her company, I came to learn still more of humanity—and I was not the only one learning. My Bess is what the humans call a ‘professor of folklore.’ She studies stories of our kind, and passes them on to human youngsters as they prepare for their adulthoods. By the time she found herself with child, she knew full well what I was, having worked it out some time before.”
He took a deep breath. “I still thought to be away with the babe in the night. I loved her mother very well, and had no desire to harm her so, but I knew my duty, and I knew why I had dallied with her in the beginning. Chelsea was an infant. She would never have known. I entered the nursery. I picked up my infant daughter. And the door opened, and Bridget was there, an iron pan in her hand, telling me our affairs were not so easily ended.
“We spoke honestly after that, for perhaps the first time, and while it took some time for trust to be reestablished, we found a new peace between us. I stayed by her side, attending to my duties in Shadowed Hills at night and returning to her during the day. We raised our girl together. I taught them both what I could, to keep Bridget safe and Chelsea concealed, and we prepared to run for Golden Shore on the day when concealment ceased to be possible. But Bridget loved her job, and I loved my liege, and we didn’t want to go. I began to watch for opportunities to have away with one of Simon’s daughters, in the hopes that they could cut our tangled knot in two.”