A Red-Rose Chain

WALTHER HAD LEFT MARLIS with a supply of the antidote he’d dusted on her cookies, and a promise that he’d find a way to make her long torment end. I think that even if I hadn’t been willing to stand up against Rhys, Walther would have been plotting a revolution all by himself. The tearstains on his shirt made the reasons exquisitely clear.

Ceres escorted us to the edge of the forest, leading us through the trees until the path that would bring us to the palace appeared out of the green. There were rose goblins lounging there, basking in the moonlight and “coincidentally” keeping an eye on the distant keep. I had every faith that, had Rhys sent people looking for us, the rose goblins would have come to warn Ceres. The fact that they would have warned us at the same time was almost an accident.

“Remember,” she said, and then she was gone, melting back into the green like she’d never been there in the first place.

“It’s amazing how quickly a purple person can disappear when she really puts her mind to it,” I said. The path stretched out in either direction. Thanks to the way the forest bent, both ways seemed to lead to the castle. I turned to Walther. “Which way?”

“This way,” he said, and started walking. Tybalt and I followed, letting him set the pace. We’d all had a hard night, and it wasn’t over yet, but of the three of us, he was definitely the one who had suffered the deepest and most painful shocks.

After we had walked in silence for several minutes, Walther said, “You didn’t ask.”

“What?” I turned my head enough to see the side of his face. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his face with his hand, spreading his fingers so as to cover the whole thing before lowering his arm and saying, “When she thought I was her sister, you didn’t say anything. And now you’re not asking. It’s not the response I expected.”

“Ah.” We kept walking, me taking advantage of the pause to put my thoughts in order. Finally, I said, “I guess I didn’t know how to respond. I still don’t. You’re you. You’ve always been you. If who you are used to be someone different, that’s your business, not mine.”

“There have always been members of my Court whose parents named them one thing, but who were in truth another,” said Tybalt. “When I was younger, they would go to the stage. Only men were permitted, you see, so a man who was in truth a woman could live a woman’s life, petticoats and powders and all, under the guise of playing pretend. And few who would enforce the law looked critically at the stagehands—I suppose they assumed it would not have been worth the dangers of being a woman in the theater if you never took the stage. They did not understand that the attraction was in having the freedom to be themselves, free from judgment, free from social laws.”

“You know, sometimes I forget how old you are,” said Walther.

“But I never forget how old I am, even as I am surrounded by the children of this modern world, who do not understand the trials of those who came before them,” said Tybalt. He sounded amused, which meant he was probably being clever—or at least thought he was.

I elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “We get it. You’re a creepy old man, and I’m way too young for you. Now quit it.”

Tybalt laughed.

Walther rubbed the side of his face this time, rather than the whole thing, and sounded relieved as he said, “I didn’t expect this to be quite so easy, if it ever came out. I was expecting . . . I don’t know.”

“Is this because I’m a changeling?” I asked gently.