A Red-Rose Chain

“Eighteen’s a big deal for humans, maybe,” said Quentin. He grinned, the light from the lamps around the parking lot throwing gold highlights off his dark bronze hair. He’d looked like a dandelion when we first met, all pale yellow fluff with no real substance. Now he was taller than I was, and finally starting to fill out. It was unnerving. My squire wasn’t supposed to grow up. “Ask me again when I come of age.”


“So we hold off on the grand bacchanal until you turn thirty. Got it.” I looked back to Tybalt, allowing my face to relax into a wide, only slightly mocking smile. “You know, you’re going to have to get used to riding in cars eventually. I’m never going to learn how to teleport, and that means I’m going to keep driving everywhere.”

“Must you taunt me so cruelly?” Tybalt asked.

“Yes, I must,” I said, and offered him my hand. He took it, tucking it gently into the crook of his arm. It was an old-fashioned way to walk, but it made him happy, and I was all in favor of things that made Tybalt happy. He shook his head, still feigning offense at my comments about the car, and started walking toward the woods. Quentin followed close behind us, for once not ranging wildly ahead. Fighting a bunch of disoriented fae dogs and cleaning up the signs of the struggle had tired him out, at least for the moment. Knowing Quentin, he would bounce back soon. In the meantime, I got to keep everyone where I could see them.

The trees loomed around us like sentinels, filled with dancing lights as pixies soared from tree to tree and Will o’ Wisps danced above the water. I wondered idly what the human rangers who ostensibly controlled the park thought of the changes that had occurred over the course of the past seven months. Knowes—better known as “hollow hills” in the human world, which has had a long time to forget the proper names for fae things—have a tendency to weaken the walls between the Summerlands and the mortal worlds when they stand open. Not to the point where monsters can slip easily through, but in more of a “pixies in the backyard, strange whispers in the water, Dryads in the trees” sort of way. Fae communities grow up around them, because we know we’re safe there. We can always run for the Summerlands if things turn sour.

Up until seven months ago, no one knew that there was still a knowe in Muir Woods. I’d known that there had been a knowe there, once upon a time, but I had assumed it was one of the lost ones, so old and so weakened that it had become nothing more than a shallow scrape in the space between worlds. It turned out the knowe was perfectly healthy and structurally sound. It was just waiting for its actual owner to come back and give it permission to open. Enter Arden Windermere, daughter of Gilad Windermere, rightful Queen in the Mists. She had been in hiding since before I was born, choosing safety and obscurity over the dangers inherent in taking the throne.

We would never have found her if the woman who’d been holding the throne of the Mists hadn’t been a psycho bitch who decided to banish me from the Kingdom for the crime of asking her to stop selling drugs that killed changelings. That didn’t sit well with me, or with my allies, and we’d ended up asking some pointed questions about how a woman with no Tuatha blood could be the rightful heir of a Tuatha de Dannan king. One thing led to another, and we’d managed to find Arden, talked her into retaking her Kingdom, and brought her back to the knowe that had been patiently waiting for more than a century for her to come home.