A Red-Rose Chain

Showering only took about ten minutes. It wouldn’t have taken even that long if I hadn’t needed to wash my hair before going to visit hostile royalty. It seemed polite. Packing my toiletries and cosmetics—such as they were—took me even less time. I stepped out of the master bathroom to find that Tybalt had not yet returned. I dropped my cosmetics case into my backpack and was in the process of zipping it up when my eye caught on the bottom drawer of my dresser and I stopped, just looking at it, feeling my heart beating too hard against my ribs.

There was a time, when I was more human than I am now, when I carried two knives everywhere I went. A silver knife, received from Dare before she died, and an iron knife, received from Acacia, otherwise known as the Mother of the Trees. The iron hadn’t burned me then, although I’d needed to handle it with care. Iron kills magic. It’s the only thing that can reliably be used to destroy the fae—all save for the Firstborn themselves, who must be killed with iron and silver together. It’s not forbidden, exactly, but it’s viewed as a cheater’s weapon.

And I wanted to take it with me so badly that it hurt. I wanted the safety it would afford, even if I never took it out of its case. I couldn’t carry it in my bare hands anymore; it would blister my skin and poison my blood if I tried. The closest comparison in the human world was pure uranium.

In the end, I turned away, and left the dresser drawer closed. There would be a time for iron. This was not that time.

I dressed the way I always did: jeans, a tank top, and my leather jacket, which was the only armor I’d ever worn into battle, and sometimes felt like the only armor I would ever need. Then, with my hair still damp against the back of my neck, I picked up my suitcase and walked out to face my fate.

May, Tybalt, and Quentin were already in the kitchen when I came downstairs. Quentin was at the breakfast table, his face pressed against the mat. May seemed slightly more alert, but only slightly. She was wearing jeans and a brown cable-knit sweater. At least one reason for her exhaustion was immediately evident: the streaks of color were gone from her hair, leaving it the plain, no-color brown that she’d inherited from me when she took my face and form. I blinked at her before raising an eyebrow.

“What did you do to your hair?” I asked.

“I figured anything I could do to not draw attention to my appearance would be a good thing,” she said, before smothering a yawn behind her hand. “I’m not going to lie about what I am, and there’s a good chance Nameless McBitchypants will tell the King of Silences that I’m a Fetch as soon as she realizes who I am. But if we can pass me off as a changeling member of your retinue for at least a little while, that’s what we should do.”

I blinked at her again. “That’s . . . a really good idea,” I said finally. “Good thinking.”

“I was up until an hour before he,” she jerked a thumb toward Tybalt, “came to pry me out of bed. This is a terrible plan. Why can’t we sleep until six? We can prevent the war after six happens.”

“Arden wants us there before we’re expected,” I said brusquely, leaving my suitcase in the doorway as I walked to the fridge. I yanked the freezer door open and rummaged until I found my waffles. “This way we arrive while they’re all still getting ready for the day.”

“And this won’t make them shoot us on the spot?”

“That would be undiplomatic. Look, I figure they’re already going to be pissy and hard to deal with. Maybe if they’re pissy, hard to deal with, and exhausted, they’ll slip up.” I dropped my waffles into the toaster. “Or maybe we will. Hell, I don’t know. Do whatever you have to do to wake yourselves up. Swallow a bottle of No-Doze. Lick a bee. I have no useful suggestions here.”

“Nor do you have any actual nutrition in your planned meal,” observed Tybalt.

“Why mess with a good thing?” I threw the empty waffle box at the back of Quentin’s head. It hit him squarely. He sat bolt upright, twisting around to give me a betrayed look. “Up. It’s time for wakefulness and energy, not drooping like a wilted flower.”

“I hate you,” he said.

“Weren’t you enrolled in human high school at one point? They would have made you get up much earlier than this.”