The room didn’t change. Maybe that meant the blood was helping: things were actually letting me look at them now, instead of shifting as soon as I tried. I slid out of the bed, standing unsteadily. “What’s going on? Karen, why do you keep saying I need to wake up?”
“Because you’re dreaming, even though you didn’t go to sleep.” Her expression was grave. “You have to wake up. This is what she wants. I’ve walked in her dreams. I know this is what she wants. You can’t give it to her.”
“What who wants?” I rubbed my face, trying to clear it. The taste of the blood in my mouth was changing, saltiness turning sweet, until it filled everything. Until it filled every little crack and crevice and . . . oh. Oh. I lowered my hand, looking at it. The blood was gone, replaced by the dark purple stickiness of jam. There were seeds under my fingernails, like proof that a crime had been committed.
When I raised my head again, the room was dark. Everything was gone, except for Karen, standing in the nothingness. I took a step toward her. She remained just as far away.
“The pie . . .”
“Yeah.” She grimaced sympathetically. “You need to wake up now.”
“Quentin. Is he all right?” I looked around, trying to tease details out of the dark. “Oh, root and branch, where is he? And where’s Tybalt?” I remembered him leaving me to go to the Court of Cats, but had that really happened, or was I trying to imagine him safe and far away?
“Wake up,” commanded Karen. She took a step toward me, her eyes seeming to glow white through the gloom. When she moved, we actually wound up closer together. “You want answers, you can’t find them here. Wake up, now, before it’s too late. Wake up.”
She was close enough to touch me, and she did, reaching out with both hands and shoving me. I wasn’t braced. I fell, arms pinwheeling as I struck the spot where the floor should have been and then kept falling, down, down, down into the darkness that seemed like it would never end. I screamed. It didn’t change anything. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath—
—and I wasn’t falling anymore. I was flat on my back on what felt like a feather mattress, and I wasn’t moving at all. My mouth still tasted like berry juice and blood, a mixture of salty and sweet that was disturbingly reminiscent of Chex Mix. I cracked open one eye, wondering what room I was dreaming myself into now.
It was one of the guest rooms at Shadowed Hills. The walls were painted white, and the single window looked out on the eternal twilight of the Summerlands sky. This wasn’t the first time I’d woken up here; as I opened my other eye and sat up, I looked down at myself. I was wearing a cotton nightgown with the Ducal arms stitched on the right breast. Then I raised my head, and collapsed back into the bed as the room began to spin.
“Oh, Maeve’s ass,” I groaned. My voice came out weaker than I liked. I groaned again, and rolled back into a sitting position, waiting with my head bowed until the room was still.
So far, so good. I swung my feet around to the floor and stood. The room remained still. Emboldened by my success, I took a step toward the door and promptly collapsed, like my skeleton had been replaced with pipe cleaners. There wasn’t time to roll with the fall; I hit the floor hard, absorbing most of the impact on my knees and palms, although I also cracked my forehead. The hot smell of blood filled the room again, now emanating from my skinned hands.
The spinning of the room was joined now by the throbbing in my head, but I had just enough remaining coherence to bring a hand to my mouth and start sucking on it, trying to get as much blood as I could before the wound healed. My thoughts cleared as soon as the blood hit my tongue. Not enough for me to stand, but enough for me to realize that the last thing I wanted to do was stop drinking my own blood. I was prepared to reopen the wound on the floor if I needed to . . . but I didn’t seem to need to. I was still bleeding.
Huh. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, still sucking. I was definitely awake this time—asleep didn’t hurt this much—and the pie that I’d been hit with in the parking lot was definitely baked with goblin fruit. Nothing else explained my dreams, or my disorientation.
Which meant I was now addicted.
“Shit,” I mumbled, against the flesh of my own hand.
Footsteps came running down the hall outside my door before it banged open. I tilted my head back and saw a woman I didn’t recognize standing there, hands braced against the doorframe. She had the body of a 1940s pinup girl and the hair of a Disney princess, platinum blonde, shoulder-length, and just wavy enough to make it interesting to animate. She also had a pair of frantically beating mayfly’s wings growing from her shoulders.
“Toby!” she shouted. She hurried forward, helping me off the floor. Her wings provided just enough lift to make the process possible. I doubt she could have moved me on her own.
“Hi, Jin,” I said, leaning on her and allowing myself to be moved. My knees still hurt, and my palms were still bleeding. That didn’t strike me as a good sign. “Recent molt, huh?” Jin was an Ellyllon, a type of hedonistic fae who often worked as healers, since they were better acquainted with the body than almost anyone else. That meant, among other things, that she periodically changed her entire physical appearance. She didn’t have any control over the process, but the results were always interesting.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been blonde,” she said, taking her arms away once she was sure I was steady. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit in the face with an evil pie.” I opened my eyes, panic lancing through me. “Where’s Quentin? He was with me.”
“He’s here,” said Jin. “I made him wait in the ballroom when he wouldn’t stop pacing. Sylvester came back from Goldengreen once we realized what was happening to you. He’s been with your squire in the ballroom since.” As the Duke’s personal physician, Jin was one of the few people who could order Sylvester Torquill around his own knowe.
I nodded shakily, looking down at my bleeding palms. “This is bad, huh?”
“You could say that.” Jin placed the back of her hand against my forehead. “You’re not running a fever. That’s a good sign.”
“What are you talking about? It’s a drug, not a disease.”
“Yes, except that your body seemed to treat it as a combination of the two. Goblin fruit is tricky, Toby, and you have the power to make it . . . better . . . for yourself.”
From the way she said “better,” I didn’t think she was referring to the process of kicking my unwanted habit. “What do you mean?”
“Humans enjoy goblin fruit more than fae do. It’s part of why it kills them. It’s why it kills changelings, too, although it takes longer. You may be the only changeling who’s ever tasted the stuff and had the power to make things . . . more enjoyable.”
I stared at her.
Slowly, Jin nodded.
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” I grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled it in front of my face. It was a colorless brown, the noncolor of tree bark and faded dye jobs. “No.” Dropping the hair, I felt for my ear, and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still pointed. Less than it should have been, but enough that I knew I hadn’t turned myself completely human.