Seanan McGuire - Late Eclipses

“Yeah,” I said, looking from her to Walther. He was smiling like the sun. “Has either of you ever been to Goldengreen?”

“WILL OCTOBER DAYE, COUNTESS of Goldengreen, knight errant of Shadowed Hills, please stand forth?”

The herald’s voice was cold. I swallowed as I rose and approached the throne, trying to chase the dryness from my throat. My shoes pinched my feet, making me stumble. It could’ve been worse. I could’ve been wearing heels.

It had been almost three weeks since we ran Oleander to ground: three weeks of sleepless days and anxious nights spent waiting to see what was coming next. Oleander was Simon’s constant companion. If she was there, he should’ve been there, too. But the days passed, and Simon never appeared.

There was no sign of Rayseline. Sylvester looked, but his heart wasn’t really in it—he didn’t want to fight his own daughter, and I couldn’t blame him. It was a fight I was happy to delay, because I was sure that if we found her, we’d find Simon; snakes den together. I wondered if he knew what he’d created when he set out to break his niece. Oleander certainly hadn’t. She’d been surprised as she died, amazed that something she’d helped to craft could really be that unreservedly, killingly cruel.

That’s the thing about children: they pay attention, and they learn. Raysel learned coldness, cruelty, and how to kill. Teaching her those lessons may have been the most foolish thing Oleander ever did, and more than ever, I was glad she’d paid for what she’d done. Sylvester and Luna didn’t deserve this.

Neither did Rayseline. She was an innocent when Oleander took her, and she’d never had a chance to come all the way home. Now she never would. It wasn’t really a surprise when Saltmist sent a herald to announce the formal dissolution of the diplomatic marriage between Rayseline and Connor. Marrying one of your dignitaries to a madwoman was one thing; marrying him to a murderess was something else entirely.

The Queen has never been a patient woman, and the wolves were at Sylvester’s door long before I made my visit to the Luidaeg or moved Lily’s subjects into the deserted front hall of Goldengreen. Sylvester did his best to shield me from the trouble she was causing him. I heard, instead, that Connor was going to be resuming his diplomatic post within the Duchy, that Luna’s health was improving steadily, and that May and Quentin had broken six vases and a crystal ball trying to play hockey in the solarium.

And then one day, I heard that Luna was out of bed.

Jin called Walther a godsend. He was a chemist, not a healer, but his understanding of plants and poisons made it possible for her to take proper care of Luna until Acacia could get there. He told Jin what Luna needed, and Jin made it happen, pulling Luna back from the edge of whatever abyss she’d been facing. Her stolen Kitsune skin was gone, but she would recover. Somehow, watching Sylvester cry as he folded her back into his arms, I thought her recovery was the only thing that mattered.

Sylvester found me in the Garden of Glass Roses two days after Luna woke up. I was plucking the petals from a frosted pink rose and dropping them to the path, listening to the crystalline chimes they made when they landed. He sat beside me, tucking his hands between his knees in an almost guilty posture.

“Hey,” I said, putting the flower down.

“The Queen’s guard was here today,” he said. “She knows you’re here, Toby. She’s not … the Queen is not a stupid woman, and she knows we’re hiding you.” He paused. “She’s known for a while.”

“I’d be more surprised if she didn’t.” I wasn’t frightened anymore—just numb. Everything ends. Lily’s people were safe in Goldengreen. I’d done what I needed to do. “Are they still here? I can go with them.”

“No. We sent them away.”

“What, then?” I leaned back on my hands. I hadn’t expected him to let me go quietly, but I didn’t see much else he could do. She was the Queen of the Mists, and he, for all that he’d been a hero, was just a Duke. She’d take me eventually, unless—a thought hit me, and I froze, eyes widening. “You’re not planning to go to war, are you?”

Sylvester shook his head. “Not quite. We’ve admitted that you’re here. She’s not willing to lay siege to Shadowed Hills; we’re too well-defended, and she knows most of the Kingdom would come to my aid, not hers.”

“The man who would be King?” I said lightly.

“I should hope not.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to wait.” He smiled, but his jaw was set in the hard line that I’d long since come to recognize as a sign that he wouldn’t budge. “And then we’re going to go to her and find out how far she’s willing to push this little game.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.” He stood, kissing my forehead before turning and walking away. I watched him go. He was a hero once, and it’s the nature of heroes to throw themselves headlong into impossible odds, believing that somehow they’ll come through them alive. The problem is that it’s also in the nature of heroes to die, and I had no way of being sure that Sylvester didn’t plan to do exactly that. I should know how heroes are. Somewhere along the way, I became one.

I was still mad at him. I still loved him. I didn’t know what to do about that. So I didn’t do anything, and every day, Karen came to me and kept me dreaming for as long as she could, guiding me through fanciful landscapes and showing me her siblings’ dreams. There’s something to be said for having an oneiromancer in the family. Her visits, intangible as they were, helped me feel like I wasn’t quite as trapped as I actually was. They probably reassured Mitch and Stacy, too. That was a nice bonus.

May came to my rooms eight days after I sat with Sylvester in the garden. She was carrying an armload of clothes I recognized from our apartment. Her selections confused me. Normally my Fetch—former Fetch, these days, even if neither of us is sure exactly what she is now—goes out of her way to dress me in bright colors and fabrics. These were simple, bordering on sedate: a knee-length black cotton skirt, the matching blazer, and a burgundy silk shirt. There were even nylons. She must have stopped at a store before coming to the knowe, because I knew I didn’t have those at home.

I looked at the clothes, then at her. “What’s all this?”

“Clothing.” She held up a pair of black dress flats with the price tag still attached.

“I got that far,” I said. “Why do I need these clothes?”

“Because it’s time to go to Court.”

It took a moment to realize she meant the Queen’s Court, not the Court at Shadowed Hills. It was time, in other words, to face the music and deal with everything that had happened. There was still a death sentence hanging over my head. I’d have to face it sometime, and “sometime” was apparently “now.”

The night was cold when we drove into San Francisco. Mist hung heavy all the way around the coast, blurring the shape of the land. The narrow beam of a lighthouse lamp swept through the distance, trying to warn any ships stupid enough to be out sailing that they were about to have a final, fatal encounter with the shore. It wasn’t the sort of night you want to be outside on, no matter what species you are.

We parked in the shadow of a crumbling tenement that miraculously had a parking lot large enough for all eleven of our cars. Magic comes in handy for a lot of things, not the least of which is finding parking on a Saturday night in San Francisco. It was a short walk from there to the beach. Sylvester and May paced on either side of me, prodding me whenever I slowed down. I was as anxious to get this over with as they were, but that didn’t make it easier to walk to my own execution.