“Why did you follow me?” Arden’s voice was tense and tight. I didn’t need to see her face to know that she was a flight risk. Maybe she always would be. “Get out of here.”
“We came to bring you back to your court, Your Highness,” I said, stressing her title so hard that it became a weapon. “I understand that this is all sort of overwhelming for you, but it’s overwhelming for everybody. Lowri is trying to hold things down—she’s doing the ‘temporary seneschal’ thing, in the absence of better options—but we need you there. We need you deciding how the Mists will respond.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, an edge of hysterical laughter in her words that set my teeth on edge. If she panicked, if she ran . . . “I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t do this.”
“Begging your pardon, Queen Windermere, but none of us know what we are doing when we begin,” said Tybalt. “It is the role of each monarch to find their way, and the way of their people, even when the world seems set against them. We have no choice.”
“But see, I do have a choice,” said Arden. “I could abdicate. I could step down. This could all be someone else’s problem, and the people I care about would stop being hurt.”
“Once.” The word was cold, heavy with fury, and it took me a moment to realize that I was the one who had spoken it.
“What?” Arden sounded confused. “What do you mean?”
“I said, once.” I took a step toward the narrow sliver of light that hung in the basement air. I could see Arden’s face when I moved. She was framed by darkness, by the two pieces of the illusion that protected her little bolt-hole here in the bookstore basement. It was just magic painted on canvas, but it had kept her hidden for years, before I came and dragged her out of her chosen obscurity.
I had wanted to feel guilty about it when it happened, but I had had no real choice: the Kingdom had needed her. And she had accepted it. She had taken her oaths before the High King of the Westlands, and she had addressed her people. She had promised to do better. She’d promised. Faerie isn’t fair, but we take our promises very seriously.
“You get to make that threat once,” I said, taking another step forward. “You get to play that card once. You get to imply that your throne, your people, your Kingdom are somehow less important than your personal comfort once, and you just got your shot. Boo-hoo, Madden is asleep. That sucks. I’m going to miss him until he wakes up. But he will wake up, because the people that attacked him used elf-shot. They did that for a reason. They did it because they wanted to scare you. You’re really going to let them win?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Arden spat. The smell of blackberry flowers and redwood bark began to gather in the basement air.
I lunged forward, wrenching the two sides of the illusion apart and revealing the small, shabby apartment where our Queen had spent so many years. Arden, still in her fancy royal gown, gaped at me. I grabbed her hands before she had a chance to move, pinning her in place. She couldn’t open a portal without moving them. She was trapped.
“You’re not going anywhere without me, Your Highness,” I snapped. “If you open a portal, you’re taking me through, or you’re not going. This isn’t a conversation that you get to run away from.”
“Unhand me,” she said, and her voice was frozen anger and Arctic command. It was the voice of a Queen.
“If you’re running away, you’re not the Queen in the Mists anymore,” I said. “I don’t have to listen to some random bookstore clerk who doesn’t want to do her thrice-damned job because it turns out that being in charge is sometimes difficult. If you’re not running away, then yeah, I’m probably going to get punished for touching you without permission. I’m cool with that. Do whatever. But don’t run, Arden. Don’t do this to your people, and don’t do it to yourself. We deserve better. You deserve better. The Mists deserve better.”
Arden stared at me for a moment, eyes wide and shocked. Then, weakly, she tugged against my hands, and said, “You can let go now.” The commanding tone was gone, replaced by resignation and shame.
“You won’t run?” I asked.
“I won’t run.”
I let go.
Arden took a step back, wrapping her arms around herself so that her hands were pinned against her body, where I couldn’t grab them again. That was all right. I had never seen her open a teleport gate without using her hands. I knew she was capable of it—I had borrowed her magic once, to save both of our lives—but most people fall into patterns with their spells and find it difficult to deviate. By hiding her hands, Arden was promising she wasn’t going to run.
“I can’t do this, Toby,” she said, looking down at the floor. Her shoulders slumped, making her the perfect picture of defeat. “When you told me I had to . . . that I had to come and be Queen, I thought you were kidding at first, and then I thought maybe I could do it. Maybe I could finally live up to my father. I know he has to be disappointed in me. So I tried. Isn’t that enough?”
“Maybe in the mortal world,” I said. “That isn’t how things work for us, and you know it. You’re Queen in the Mists. The High King accepted you. The knowe of your father opened for you. You’re stuck with the job, Arden. It’s yours until you die, or you have kids to pass it off to. That’s how this works.”
“What’s more, you knew that when you accepted the crown,” said Tybalt, voice pitched low. “None of us who are raised in the halls of power can come to adulthood ignorant of what we will one day be expected to become. You were not an innocent. You were not tricked. You were a princess born, and have aged into what you were always meant to be.”
I noticed that he didn’t use the word “grown.” Arden still hadn’t grown fully into her position—if she had, we wouldn’t have been standing in the basement of a human business, trying to convince her to come home. She was still growing. I just hoped we’d all survive long enough for her to finish the process. “We don’t have anyone else,” I said. “The false Queen was a vindictive bitch before we knocked her off your father’s throne and put you in her place. If she gets this Kingdom back, everyone who moved against her is going to be in a lot of trouble. And the changelings . . . oak and ash, the changelings. She never defended us. She never raised a hand to welcome us into Faerie. But at least for most of us, she never stood against us the way she did right after she took the throne. Power mellowed her. We were allowed to exist. You really think she’s going to stay that understanding after the way I helped you take your throne?”
“She will also be set against the Court of Cats, of that I am sure,” said Tybalt. “She cannot raise a hand to me directly, but there are things she could do, if she came back to power. Purebloods have always been fond of controlling mortal legislation. There could be culls of the feral cat colonies, restrictions placed upon the humans who claim to own us, even closures of local shelters and rescue organizations. She could easily destroy my Court, all without crossing the lines that Oberon once drew.”
I glanced at him, startled. What he was saying made sense—so much sense that I had no doubt it was true—but I had never considered it before. Sometimes I can get so wrapped up in Faerie that I forget how dependent we still are on the mortal world, and how many purebloods know how to work it to their advantage. It’s odd how good they are at pulling those strings. These are people who don’t understand telephones or cars or cable television, but if you show them something and say “this makes you powerful,” they’ll figure it out. My liege, Sylvester Torquill, owns enough real estate in the Bay Area to make him a millionaire a dozen times over; his court employs a small army of accountants and investors to keep that money moving and prevent attracting attention. And he’s by no means unique among the truly long-lived.