“Queen Siwan expects to have the potion ready by morning,” said Arden, sounding confident now that she was back on comfortable ground. “They’ll wake Dianda first, so that we can focus our apologies on her, and let her decide what’s to be done with Duke Michel. I’ll wait to wake my brother until after all the guests have gone. He’ll have enough to adjust to without adding in a hundred new faces that he won’t need to remember right away.”
I nodded. “Smart.”
“Yes.” Arden looked down the line to Sylvester.
“Luna is already agitating to have Rayseline woken,” he said gravely. “I would appreciate it if you could be there.”
“Of course,” I said. “Whenever you need me.”
He inclined his head.
“The others who sleep will be dealt with one by one, until all are either awake or sleeping off a sentence that shouldn’t be commuted,” said Aethlin. “It may take years, but by the time we’re done, no one will slumber who doesn’t deserve it.”
I thought of all the people who might be woken, and what they might be deserving of—especially Simon Torquill. But that was Sylvester’s problem, not mine, and all of this was a problem for another day. “That’s good,” I said. “May I go?”
“You may,” said the High King. I curtsied deeply to the four of them—my liege, my Queen, the parents of my squire, the people who had called this conclave and changed our world forever—and turned as I straightened, moving toward the door. There were people waiting for me out there, people who I had thought were going to be lost for a long, long time, who were magically, gloriously still with me. So I was going to go and be with them.
Out of everything in the world, that was the only thing that really mattered. Everything else was just stage dressing. They were the show.
DREAMS AND SLUMBERS
You are for dream and slumbers, brother.
ONE
June 10th, 2013
“I’M SCARED.”
The words were simple: their meaning was complex. My entire life is like that these days. It got complicated almost a year ago, when a wild-eyed woman crashed into the bookstore where I worked and ordered me to take back my father’s throne. Like it was a little thing to ask for, or an easy thing to do, and not just a complicated way of committing suicide.
A year ago, if something sounded simple, it probably was. “Yes, we have that book in stock,” or “no, we only carry science fiction and fantasy,” or “let me ask Alan if he knows.” There were days when I’d been bored, restless, convinced I was meant for something better . . . and on those days, I’d slip into the basement, past the bounds of the illusion I used to keep everyone—even Alan, who owned the place—from realizing I lived there. I’d go into the tiny sanctuary I had carved from the flesh of the mortal world, and I’d wipe the dust from my brother’s lips, and I’d remind myself that boredom was a blessing.
Boredom meant the nameless Queen’s agents hadn’t found us. Boredom meant I wasn’t faced with the choice between running and leaving my sleeping brother alone and defenseless, or staying and risking us both. Boredom was everything. Until October Daye, Knight of Lost Words, daughter of Amandine, bane of my peace of mind, smashed her way in and ruined it all.
I’m going to fuck up the tenses here, because past and present get blurred when you’re talking about more than a century, but I’ll do my best. Here it is:
My father was a King, which made me a Princess born and an orphan before I turned sixteen. It made my brother Nolan a Prince, but there was never any question of who would take the throne; I was the elder by two full years. My magic came in earlier and stronger than his. And when we were children, I was fearless. I treated the world like a game that could be won, and I was going to be Queen someday.
Not that anyone knew. My father was unmarried; my mother, his mistress, hid in plain sight as a servant in his Court. Nolan and I lived in a house by the sea with our nursemaid, Marianne. She disguised us as changelings when she brought us to see our parents, and it was the best of all the wonderful games we played. I was a princess in hiding, ready to dazzle the world by bursting forth fully-formed and ready to rule. Someday. After decades and decades and decades of watching how my father did it, learning from his experiences, and preparing.
No one could have been prepared for the earthquake. It came out of nowhere, shattering the Summerlands and San Francisco in the same blow. When it ended, my brother and I were orphans. It was just the two of us and Marianne, who was old and tired and hadn’t signed up to be our replacement mother. She did the best she could. She taught us to run, and hide, and keep our heads down. She honed our illusions until we reached the limits of what our blood allowed.
It wasn’t enough. There were people who remembered her from my father’s Court, people who’d heard the rumors about Gilad having children and were starting to put two and two together. She had to go. Staying would have gotten us all killed. I knew that, and still I cried the night she said good-bye. Nolan was even worse. He’d been so young when the world fell down. Ten years old when we were orphaned; fourteen when Marianne walked away. He cried until she had to charm him into sleep, because otherwise he would have betrayed our position.
He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, like he was dead, and I was going to throw myself after him when Marianne grabbed my arm and said, “Wait.”
She’d been my keeper and companion since I was nursing. One of my first memories is her smiling down at me, a rag soaked in milk and honey in her hand. I stopped moving and looked at her, letting the habit of obedience guide what happened next.
Marianne smiled sadly. She was Coblynau; I never knew how old she was, but her face was a maze of wrinkles, and her sorrow showed all the way down to her bones. “Here,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a handful of driftglass beads strung on a braid of unicorn hair. “I got these from the Luidaeg when you were a baby; they’ve kept you safe until now, and they’ll keep you safe hereafter.”
I gasped. I couldn’t help myself. The Luidaeg’s gifts were never things to take lightly, or to request without dire need. “But Marianne, the cost—”
“Was paid long ago, and I never begrudged it. Here.” She pressed them into my hand. “This is all I have. This is all you have. Be careful, Arden, and never forget that I love you as much as I love my own children. Never forget to stay safe, for my sake, for your sake, for the sake of the Mists.”
Then she was gone, and I was alone with my brother, too young to be a woman, too young to be a surrogate mother to a confused boy still getting the hang of his own teenage years. The Princess who would never be a Queen. My father taught me about ruling, and my mother taught me about hiding, and my nursemaid taught me about running away, and of the three of them, Marianne’s lessons were the ones that served me the best for years, and years, and years. Her lessons got me through the time I spent alone, after Nolan was elf-shot by the false Queen’s forces. She kept me safe.
Until October. Until the challenge, and the crown, and this great barn of a knowe, where the air still sometimes tastes like my mother’s perfume when we let the ghosts out of rooms that have been sealed for more than a century. Until I left my mortal life the same way I left my fae one: not walking away but running, fleeing into a different future. I was born a Princess in hiding. Technically, I grew up the same way. But the way I hid as a child was a glorious game, and the way I hid as an adult was a constant threat, and they are not the same.