Not even when it turned out he’d been lying to me the whole time, and that he’d been taking care of me in part because his brother had been married to my mother since before I was born, which technically made Simon my stepfather. Simon Torquill was also the man who’d kidnapped Sylvester’s wife and daughter, and turned me into a fish for fourteen years, effectively destroying my relationship with my own daughter. Why hadn’t Sylvester told me any of this?
Because he had promised my mother that he wouldn’t. He had put his promise to a woman who had all but abandoned me ahead of his relationship with me, and he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give me a good reason why. I hadn’t spoken to Sylvester in three months. As far as I was aware, he still didn’t know Tybalt and I were engaged, and I was happy to keep it that way.
I don’t trust easily. Abuse that trust, and I don’t see why I should keep giving it to you. Sylvester had more credit with me than most people—he’d been building it for decades—and I loved him very much. Probably always would. I just needed some time before I’d be able to deal with him again.
Arden smiled, looking relieved that she hadn’t just been shot down cold. “Excellent. Is there anything else I can do for you tonight? The kitchen’s still open, if you’re hungry after all your hard work.”
“I could eat,” said Quentin.
“October would greatly appreciate a sandwich,” said Tybalt. “Or perhaps a banquet that you happen to have lying around going uneaten.”
I shot him a mock-glare. “Stop trying to feed me.”
“Stop trying to starve yourself to death for no apparent reason, and I will consider it,” he replied.
Arden laughed. “Well, since you put it that way—” she began.
A commotion from the entryway cut her off. Arden turned, amusement giving way to confusion and then alarm. The rest of us turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Lowri and the other guard from the entryway staggered into view, bent under the weight of the big red-and-white–haired figure they held between them. Madden was limp, his feet dragging behind him like a dead man’s.
“Madden!” cried Arden, shoving me out of the way as she flung herself across the throne room to reach her seneschal. She grabbed his head, lifting it so that she could stare into his face. His eyes were closed, and if he felt her hands against his skin, he didn’t react to them. He didn’t react at all. “Madden? Wake up!”
“He was dropped through a portal into the clearing, Highness,” said Lowri. Her voice shook as she spoke, her accent growing stronger in her dismay. “Whoever left him for us, their magic came and went too quickly. We didn’t have time to recognize it.”
“Why won’t he wake up?” moaned Arden. She didn’t look like a Queen in that moment: she looked like an ordinary woman, on the verge of a breakdown over the thought that her best and oldest friend had been hurt. “Madden, please. Please wake up, Madden, please.”
“He won’t,” said Tybalt. He strode over to Arden, pushing her aside as he bent to pull Madden’s jacket open. Quentin and I followed him, although we didn’t touch Arden. He could get away with a certain amount of manhandling the Queen, since she had no authority over him. Quentin and I weren’t so lucky. Arden was our friend and all, but that wouldn’t stop her from getting pissed if we touched her while she was already distraught.
Tybalt felt around inside Madden’s jacket, Arden looking on in wide-eyed dismay, until he hissed with displeasure and pulled out a short, almost stubby-looking arrow. The tip was damp with blood, but only the tip; the arrow had done little more than scratch Madden’s skin, based on how much blood was there. The smell of it hit me as I was walking toward him. I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.
Blood knows everything. Blood is where memory is stored, and where magic lives . . . and when someone is poisoned or enchanted, the blood knows that, too.
“As I suspected,” said Tybalt sadly. He turned the arrow in his hand, careful to avoid the point. The shaft was fletched in deep pine green and silver—the same shade of silver that appeared on the arms of the Kingdom of the Mists, in fact. That was odd. There are only so many colors in the world. Some duplication is unavoidable, but people mostly try to avoid using the colors that have been claimed by neighboring Kingdoms when they can possibly help it. There’s just too much chance of winding up with an angry monarch on your tail, questioning your fashion choices.
“Elf-shot,” I said, voice muffled by my fingers.
Arden’s face, which had been teetering on the edge of despair, crumbled. It was like watching a bottomless pit open in what had been a perfectly happy woman. “What?” she asked, eyes flicking to me. “No. It can’t be elf-shot. No. I’m . . . I am the queen. I became queen so that my people would be safe. Madden is my people. He’s my best people. I mean, he’s my best friend. He can’t be elf-shot. I won’t allow it.” Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart felt like it broke a little too, in sympathy.
Elf-shot is either one of Faerie’s crueler weapons or one of Faerie’s kinder weapons, depending on how you look at it, and how you feel about hundred-year naps. It allows the purebloods to wage war without killing each other, since killing a pureblood is a violation of Oberon’s Law. Killing changelings doesn’t violate the Law, naturally, and just as naturally, elf-shot is fatal to us, because who cares if some mongrel foot soldier dies on the battlefield?
I care. And everyone I know who’s effectively lost a friend or loved one to elf-shot cares. A century is a long time, even for a pureblood.
Maybe my reasons for hating the stuff are more personal than I like to admit. Elf-shot killed Connor, who was my lover and my friend and an important part of my life. Elf-shot forced my mother to shift my blood away from human and toward fae, disrupting the fragile balance I had managed to build for myself and sending me into what has sometimes seemed like an inevitable spiral toward the pureblood side of my heritage. And it was elf-shot that forced me to turn my little girl human, taking her away from me forever. So yeah, I hate it. I figure I’m allowed.
Arden was shaking her head, eyes still fixed on my face. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Why would someone use elf-shot on Madden? He’s . . . he’s the best. He’s the sweetest person in the world. No one wants to hurt him.”
“Unless, through hurting him, they might hurt you,” said Tybalt gently. Arden whipped around to stare at him. “You know as well as I do that the throne carries a heavier cost than we would choose, if it were up to us. So often, that cost is borne by the ones we care for.”
“Green and silver are the colors of the Kingdom of Silences,” said Quentin.
We all turned to stare at him—even Arden, who had started to cry. Quentin was undaunted.
“Silences is the Kingdom to the north of us, right? Their colors used to be green and red, to symbolize the evergreen forests and the roses they grow there, but when they lost the War of Silences, the Queen of the Mists—I mean the one who wasn’t really Queen, Your Highness, it’s just that we never got a real name for her, so I don’t have anything else to call her—took the red away from them. She said they no longer had the right to claim the blood of those who had died in the name of their false cause, and that they should always know who the superior Kingdom was. That’s why she made them match the silver in the arms of the Mists.” Quentin bit his lip before continuing, “I mean, I’m just saying. Those are their colors.”
“Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed. Silences wasn’t just the Kingdom to the north. It was the only Kingdom whose monarch had been chosen by the Mists, after the War of Silences had left their ruling family broken and their surviving heirs, if any, scattered. It had been a Tylwyth Teg demesne before that. But the man who had been given the throne had been a Baron in the Mists before he became a King.