“My father says I should go with you, because this is important stuff for me to know and understand,” he said dutifully, looking over his shoulder at me. I kept my eyebrow raised until he sighed and added, “He also says I should be prepared to run if it’s necessary to save my own life, because he needs an heir more than I need an education.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll ask Arden for some blood before we leave.”
Quentin paled. If there was one area in which I had not been good for my squire’s education, it was his understanding and use of blood magic. I hadn’t quite managed to pass along my revulsion at the sight of the stuff, but he’d been fostered with Sylvester, who never did very much blood magic, and then squired to me, who had a tendency to either wind up covered in the stuff or try to ignore it completely. I’d made a few efforts to get him accustomed to what would be his greatest strength when he was a King, but it was hard to keep my own prejudices from shining through.
I was going to have to try harder. I owed it to him, and to the Kingdom that would one day be his to hold. “Walther is coming with us,” I explained. “He can make blood charms. Blood from Arden will hold her magic, and by having Walther preserve it, we can keep an escape route open the whole time.” Blood from her sleeping brother, Nolan, would have been even better. Their power was roughly equal, but he had less opportunity to use his, and it built up in his veins like wine. I just didn’t think she was going to let me bleed him for the sake of our escape.
Then again, she was shipping me off to stop a war. I made a note to ask her about it.
“Make sure he makes enough for everyone,” said May. She was still sitting at the table.
I turned to look at her. “Didn’t I tell you to go pack?”
“Yes, and I stayed right here to make sure you weren’t going to try to sneak out of the house while I was distracted,” she said amiably. “I figured it would be harder for you to ditch me once you’d said that I was allowed to come along in front of Quentin. Besides, I’m a great alternative escape plan. Let them fill me with arrows while you run. I’ll catch up later.”
“What if they’re using elf-shot?” asked Quentin.
“Now that is an interesting question that I would almost like to know the answer to,” said May. An edge came into her voice, accompanied by the strange, nameless accent that she sometimes had, usually when she was talking about—or to—the night-haunts. “A few centuries ago, this woman decided she wasn’t going to let us have her husband. I’m not sure why. Someone had told her we were evil, or that we perverted the bodies of the dead or something.”
“Maybe someone told her that you ate them, sweetie,” said Jazz.
“Maybe,” agreed May. “Anyway, this lady met us standing over her husband’s body with a crossbow and a whole quiver of elf-shot arrows. She started firing at random into the flock, trying to scare us off, or take hostages if she couldn’t manage it. She was a pretty good shot, too. She hit half a dozen of us before she ran out of arrows. And not a single night-haunt fell.”
“So night-haunts are immune to elf-shot?” I asked.
May nodded. “Yeah. I just don’t know if Fetches are. Could be interesting to find out.”
Jazz punched her in the arm. “Don’t do it on purpose. I have no interest in sitting and weeping by your bier for a hundred years or more.”
“Yes, dear,” said May.
Quentin, meanwhile, had a more important question. He frowned and asked, “What happened to the woman?”
“Oh, her? She had raised a hand against us, and willingly entered our circle. We ate her.” May stood, leaning over to kiss Jazz’s cheek before she added, “I’m going to go get my things ready. Don’t leave without me!”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, staring after her as she sashayed out of the kitchen. May and I were close. Sometimes I even thought of her as my actual sister, not the result of a complicated series of choices and magical bindings. I definitely loved her. But there were still times, like this one, when I was reminded that she was unique in all of Faerie, and that there were legitimate reasons for her to scare the crap out of me.
“That’s my girl,” said Jazz. She sounded faintly amused. She pushed her own chair back, stretching, and said, “I’m going to go help May pack. I’ll probably be asleep when you leave.”
“Okay,” I said. “There’s cat food in the hall closet, and mulch on the porch.”
“I know where everything is,” said Jazz. Her amusement faded. “Bring her back safe, Toby. And bring you back safe, too. I’m not sure she could live with herself if she let you get hurt.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“That’s all I ever ask,” she said, and left the kitchen, leaving me alone with Quentin.
He looked at me. I looked at him. He shrugged. I sighed, and said, “I bet this isn’t what you were expecting when you asked to be my squire, huh?”
“It’s better,” he said, with a brief grin. “By the time I’m King, there won’t be anything left that can surprise me.”
“I guess that’s a good trait, in a King.” I pushed away from the counter. “I should pack, and you should, too. Leave behind anything that might let them figure out who you are.”
He blinked at me. “You never figured it out.”
“I wasn’t looking, and I’m not a hostile monarch getting ready to go to war against the Court you represent,” I said. “For all I know, you carry a handkerchief with the logo of the Westlands on it, and seeing it would let any servant in Silences know that you’re the missing prince.”
“I think that’s the plot of a Disney movie,” said Quentin slowly. “But okay. I’ll make sure I don’t pack anything that could give me away.”
“Good,” I said. I retrieved my neglected sandwich from the counter. “Let’s go get ready to do something incredibly stupid.”
“Business as usual, then,” he said, and fled the kitchen, laughing, before I could swat him. I followed, a smile on my face. That was the nice thing about sharing my home with people that I loved: even when things were bad, I could generally find something to smile about.
Quentin beat me to the top of the stairs and was already in his room by the time I reached the hall. I paused for a moment, listening to the sound of him opening drawers. He would be done packing well before I was. Unlike the stereotype of the teenage boy living in mess and chaos, Quentin kept the tidiest room in our house. May’s bedroom was always an explosion of fabric and makeup and bright colors. And my room was, well . . .
I turned and opened the door, revealing the battered outline of my secondhand bed, rescued from being a spine-breaker only by the addition of a memory foam mattress topper, and the heaps of unfolded laundry that always seemed to sprout up around my dresser and nightstand, like strange mushrooms. Spike, my resident rose goblin, was asleep in one of those piles of laundry, curled into a tight ball with its nose resting on its spiny tail. The cats were equally asleep, on the bed.
Spike had tried to sleep in the bed with me, Cagney, and Lacey when I first brought it home. Unfortunately, being a rose goblin meant that it was completely covered in thorns. I’d only needed to roll over on top of it once to know that it needed to sleep elsewhere.
“Hey, guys,” I said quietly, and walked across the room to the closet. “Jazz is going to be taking care of you for a while, all right? Try to be nice to her. She’s probably going to be pretty stressed out.” Cagney and Lacey, as expected, ignored me.
Spike was another story. The rose goblin clambered to its feet, stretching in a languid, catlike manner before rattling its thorns at me and making an inquisitive keening noise in the back of its throat.
“What?” I asked, opening the closet and beginning to paw through my growing collection of ball gowns. I was going to need to bring them all. The irony of wearing dresses created by the false Queen’s magic to a Court where she was currently in residence did not escape me. After a pause, I also dug out the black spider-silk formal I’d worn when I went to prevent our war with the Undersea, and the silver spider-silk gown I’d worn to Arden’s Yule Ball.