“No one said you had to like anything, dear sister,” said the woman who stepped out from behind the nearest pillar, looking at us with a sneer on her perfect face. I shrank down inside my dress, trying to keep her attention from landing on me. To no avail: her eyes raked over the both of us, taking our measure and finding us more than wanting.
Eira Rosynhwyr was a familiar sight, of course; she’d been my father’s patron and employer since long before I was born, and her largess was much of how we were able to maintain such a comfortable lifestyle while living isolated in Mother’s tower. She was tall and elegant, with skin like ivory and opal black hair that gleamed from within with impossible glints of rainbow color. No one else could compete with her for beauty or for grace, not even Mother, who had often complained about how Father went and swore himself in service to someone even more beautiful than she. It was the kind of beauty that hurt the heart, especially mine, and I had trouble looking at her directly even when she wasn’t angry with me.
She was wearing a gown as botanical as the Luidaeg’s, made of tier upon tier of rose petals, arranged to perfectly outline her flawless curves. The bottom of the dress was hidden by the fog, but I knew without doubt that it was tasteful and perfectly designed.
She walked slowly toward us, scowl shifting into a smile as she approached the Luidaeg. “Hello, little sister,” she purred.
“I’m older than my sister by the span of years,” said the Luidaeg, voice gone stiff. “But as you are not my sister, I will not grant you the courtesy of her name, nor address you as such. You are a pale recreation painted by a woman who never knew her own daughter half so well as she believed, or a quarter so well as she should have, and you have no purpose here.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve been told of your charming belief that this world isn’t real, as if reality and Faerie have ever been more than kissing cousins,” said Eira, running her fingers along the curve of the Luidaeg’s cheek. “Does it matter who decides what’s real, as long as we’re united in believing it?”
“But we’re not,” I protested. “We never have been! The Cait Sidhe can see through illusions, and they know—”
“The cats are dead,” she snapped. “The strays you’ve found in these past few days are no proof otherwise. They’re an aberration, a remnant of an older Faerie that we have moved well beyond. We are better than those days of beasts and bloodshed, and soon enough, we’ll be beyond changelings also. The human world has nothing more to offer us.”
“Titania’s Ride isn’t about the Ride at all,” said the Luidaeg, sounding suddenly horrified. “It’s never been about the Ride. It’s about the route.”
“The what?” I asked.
Eira smirked. “At last, you understand what the wise already knew. I only wanted to see for myself that you were my so-superior sister in the flesh, and not some pale impersonation. Now that I’ve had what I require, I’m quite done with you, and you can be put away until you’re needed.” She stepped back, waggling her fingers in a wave.
The fog that had been swirling around our knees surged upward in a sudden wave, wrapping tight around our bodies and dragging us downward.
When it cleared, we were once again in the Queen’s dungeons, the air heavy with the taint of iron and rotting yarrow. Raysel and Dean were on the floor nearby, having apparently been flung unceremoniously into the cell by hostile, animate fog, just like we had. The Luidaeg slumped. I dropped to my knees.
“Toby!”
The sound of my name brought my head back up, in time to see my sister rise from the far corner and race, half-stumbling, across the uneven floor to my side. She knelt in front of me, running her hands over my face and shoulders like she was reassuring herself of my survival. Finally, she pulled back.
I made a choking sound and wrapped my arms around her, holding her as tightly as I could.
“So, you finally got caught,” said another familiar voice, this one far less well beloved. “Where is Ginevra?”
“The guards took her; she was injured in our arrest, but they bandaged her wounds, at least.”
“If she dies . . .”
“If she dies, you’ll still know better than to pick a fight with me, kitty-cat,” said the Luidaeg, in a tone that left no room for argument. “Now. How many of us have they taken?”
“It’s an ‘us’ now, is it?” asked Tybalt, with no hint of amusement. “Myself, clearly. Sylvester’s knight. The renegade Torquills.”
“Father’s here?” I asked, sniffling as I pulled away from August enough to see her face.
She nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the corner where she’d been when we arrived. I could dimly make out another shape there, huddled in the gloom. “He is,” she said. “He’s . . . not well at the moment.”
“The amount of iron in here would do that to anyone,” I said, moving to stand and go to him.
She closed her hands around my upper arms, dragging me back down. I turned to blink at her. She shook her head. “No, it’s not the iron,” she said. “He’s not well.”
I blinked again. “Is he hurt?”
“They took us in Muir Woods,” said Tybalt, voice rough. “We had gone there to meet with our allies from the Undersea. Your father believed his best friend to have died in the earthquake, not gone below the waves to marry a mermaid and shelter in the deeps. He was overjoyed and, in his joy, embraced the man.”
I turned to frown at him. “Why should that render him unwell?”
Raysel and Dean stood and moved off to the side, looking like they didn’t know what they were supposed to do or whether they were allowed to speak. Tybalt was looking at me like I was both the best and worst thing he’d ever seen in his life, and he couldn’t decide which of those feelings was going to win out.
“Patrick forgot that Simon still labored under the memories of another world, and met an embrace from his husband with a kiss, which Simon was not prepared for,” he said. “He reacted with shock and shame, and in the interests of avoiding a diplomatic incident, your sister unbound his memory. It was the only way to quell Dianda’s wrath.”
“That woman has a lot of wrath to go around,” said the Luidaeg.
“Even so,” agreed Tybalt gravely. “Your father has handled the revelation of the true world . . . poorly.”
“But he knows us?” I asked. “He remembers August, and myself, and who he is? Nothing was lost by restoring his memory?” I had confirmed the persistence of our fictional lives twice, and still wanted to hear it said aloud. Maybe I was belaboring the point. I was just too afraid of what might be lost to care.
“He was a happy man before I did this to him,” said August fiercely. “He loved our mother and his patron, and he was content to spend his life in service to our family. Now he’s lost. He knows himself, but believes his place is beneath the sea, and weeps for things he did willingly and with joy in service to his ladies! How can you not see this for harm?”
“Because you gave back what was taken from him against his will,” I said. This time, I was the one who gripped her arms. “August, you can do it. You can see and snap the threads. You can release my memory!”