Seanan McGuire - Once Broken Faith

“Going to go with ‘Your Highness,’” I said cautiously.

“Sometimes she gets informal and shortens it to ‘Highness,’” said Arden. “I’m a crown to her, not a person. She doesn’t know what I like to read, or care about how I made a living while I wasn’t in charge. My time among the humans, it’s like . . . it’s like she thinks it’s some weird kind of zoological expedition. I went out, I watched them, and then I came back home where I belonged. And she’s the best of them! She’s just about the only person who even bothers to pay attention to things like how uncomfortable I get when Court goes for more than six hours. I’m not threatening to run again, I’m not , but I don’t know how long I can do this without someone around here who can call me on my bullshit.”

“I’m calling you on your bullshit right now,” I said. “I really don’t want to plummet to my death today.”

“You’ll get better.”

“I’m still not a fan of plummeting.”

Arden sighed. “We’re not friends, Toby. Maybe we can figure out a way we can be. Maybe we can’t. You’re always going to be the woman who hauled me back into this world.”

“And barring death, dismemberment, or abdication, you’re always going to be the queen,” I said. “I get it.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to go from a life where things aren’t perfect, but you’re always surrounded by people who care about you, to being alone? Even when I’m surrounded, I’m alone .”

I went cold. “I think I have a better idea than you know,” I said.

In 1995, I was engaged to a human man named Cliff Marks. He and I had a two-year-old daughter. I was working as a private investigator, mostly taking on fae clients who wouldn’t realize how little training I’d actually had. I had friends. I had a family. I had a future planned out, stretching ahead of us like a road to peace and prosperity. And I lost it all in a single moment, when Simon Torquill—my liege lord’s brother, my mother’s husband, and technically my stepfather—transformed me into a fish and left me in the Japanese Tea Gardens to be forgotten. He’d been trying to save my life. I’d remained there for fourteen years. Not long, by pureblood standards. Not even that long by changeling standards. But for humans like Cliff? For little girls like Gillian, who didn’t even know she had fae heritage? It was forever. They had never taken me back.

Maybe the life I had now was better than the one I would’ve had if not for that day. There was no way of knowing, and honestly, it wasn’t a question I liked to dwell on. I’d found a new family for myself, and I was happy. But before I was happy, I’d been very, very miserable.

“Then you should understand why I have to do this,” said Arden. “I’ve been patient. I kept thinking he’d tell me to go ahead, that he’d say, you know, Master Davies is a citizen of the Mists who was traveling to Silences on official business, and if it was okay for him to wake up the citizens of Silences, he should be allowed to do the same at home before we start talking about bottling up and hiding his cure. But he didn’t say that, and I can’t wait any longer.”

I took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out. “All right,” I said finally. “Lead on.”

As long as I kept my eyes on the back of Arden’s head, I didn’t have to think about how high up we were, or how close I was to falling every time I took a step. For all that she’d spent most of her life in the mortal world, she moved along the impossibly long walkway without hesitation or visible distress. Being a teleporter probably had something to do with that. If she fell, she could open a portal and land in her own bed, cushioned by feather pillows, entirely unbruised. I didn’t have that sort of safety net.

We reached the next tower in surprisingly short order. Arden opened the door and held it while I stepped through. Moving past me, she offered a strained smile, said, “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” and started up another stairway, identical to the one we’d left behind.

I swallowed my first response. Just to be safe, I also swallowed my second response, and followed her up the stairs. They terminated at a landing barely wider than one of the steps. She knocked.

“It’s open!” called Walther.

Arden took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and opened the door.

The tower room where Madden and Nolan slept couldn’t have been farther from the basement King Rhys had used to store the elf-shot victims in Silences. It was round, airy, and circular, with wide windows set in the walls between the beds, open to allow the night air to flow through. Walther had apparently been serious about his “no magic” rule; there were no witch-lights or charmed lanterns. Instead, he’d set up several halogen camping lights around the edges of the room, creating the odd impression that we’d just stepped onto a film set. That was the only reason to light the place so unforgivingly.

There were eight beds arrayed like the spokes of a wheel. Only two were occupied, one by a burly man with white hair streaked in carnal red, the other by a man whose blackberry-dark locks and olive skin betrayed him as Arden’s brother. Madden, who’d been asleep for less than two months, was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. This was still his time. Nolan had been asleep a lot longer. He was dressed like he was planning to roll out of bed and head for a Great Gatsby -themed party, down to his suspenders and polished shoes. He’d been elf-shot in the 1930s. His nap was nearly over. I still understood why Arden felt like she couldn’t wait any longer, especially now that Madden had joined him. She needed her support system. I couldn’t imagine going a hundred years without mine.

Walther was standing between the two beds, spinning a fine rosy liquid in a wine snifter like he was a sommelier and we were here to enjoy a pleasant dinner while surrounded by coma patients. He turned at the sound of the door opening, and looked relieved at the sight of me. That was a fun change. “Toby,” he said. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come.”

“Why, because this might technically be an act of treason against the High King, and hence a good way to wind up locked in gaol for the next, oh, twenty years?” I shrugged like it was no big thing as I strolled into the room and sat down on one of the empty beds. It wasn’t as soft as it had looked from a distance, more like a bier than a bower. I blinked. “Wow. Orthopedic?”

“It wouldn’t do to have your sleepers wake up in need of a chiropractor,” said Walther, with a tight smile. I smiled back, trying to look sympathetic and encouraging at the same time. He was in a tough spot. If he refused Arden—who was, after all, the Queen of the Kingdom he was currently living in—he could wind up banished. Not the end of the world, but he’d been working for a while to get tenure at UC Berkeley, and a change of address would mean starting all over again. If he didn’t refuse her, he could be pissing off the man in charge of the entire continent. No wonder he’d wanted me present. I was his security blanket.

Walther was originally from the Kingdom of Silences to the north, overlapping the human state of Oregon. His aunt and uncle were the rightful rulers of the place, and he’d been raised, along with his sister Marlis, under the expectation that he’d eventually become one of their court alchemists. Only there’d been a war, and his family had lost the throne for a hundred years. During that time, Walther had fled to avoid elf-shot or enslavement—the two fates that befell the rest of his family—and had eventually become a chemistry teacher. The work suited him. He would probably never have gone back to Silences if I hadn’t dragged him.