Chimes at Midnight

“I’m running through chores in a vain effort to stop myself from running through all the times I’ve endangered his life,” I said. “That’s a longer list.”


“Bloodier, too,” said Quentin. He sounded almost cheerful about it. I shot him a glare. He grinned. There was an element of relief in his expression, like he was glad to finally have everything out in the open. “Don’t worry. Like I said, my parents approve of you.”

“That worries me even more,” I muttered.

“What does?” Arden demanded.

I turned.

She was standing by the base of the stairs, with foxtail briars snagged on the legs of her pants and a distinctly windblown look to her hair. She folded her arms, glared, and said, “Your shoes are now safely hidden on Alcatraz. In the middle of a field. In a hole. Is that good enough, or do you need me to put them somewhere else? After all, it’s not like there’s anything urgent I need to be taking care of.”

“We’re going to get your brother back,” I said. It seemed like the only thing I could say. Arden kept glaring. I pushed on. “Right now, the Queen having your brother is a good thing.”

Her mismatched eyes widened. “What?”

“Hear me out.” I raised my hands to ward her off. “She’s not going to hurt him. He’s bait. She wants you to rush in there half-cocked, so she can arrest you on some bullshit charge. She arrested Dianda for sedition. There’s no reason for that, unless she’s planning to try and present you as a figurehead. The way I see it, if the Queen gets close enough to offer you a deal, she will: your brother for you publicly renouncing your father. Say you’re not a Windermere. Let her keep the throne, and ensure you have no valid claim to it in the future.”

“Fine,” Arden snapped. “If it gets my brother back, fine.”

“And if it gets Dianda convicted?”

“She’s a big girl. She can stand on her own two fins.”

“You have watched way too many Disney movies.” I stepped closer. “If you renounce your claim to the throne, Dianda stays in the Queen’s dungeon for however long it takes to set up a trial with the Undersea. I’ve been in that dungeon. The amount of iron in there will break her long before she sees the open sea again. Her family will never get her back. You want to do all this to save your brother. Think about what that does to Dean’s mom.”

Arden’s glare didn’t waver. “She made her choice.”

“I know. But what you don’t seem to understand is that you’re not making your choice. You’re making the choice the Queen is trying to force you into, and that isn’t going to be the right choice for you or your brother. Where are you going to go, Arden? With Dianda in custody, you can’t take Nolan and run to the Undersea. Silences is a puppet government. Angels has its own problems. You could head inland I guess, to Frozen Salt or Skytower, but you’d never be able to stop running. Your parents were assassinated. Do you honestly think the Queen of the Mists is above making sure Nolan doesn’t wake up and start this all over again?”

“This is your fault,” said Arden quietly.

“Maybe. Or maybe it was always going to happen. The Luidaeg sent me to find you. Someone would have done it eventually, if not me.” My stomach was starting to ache again. I had to fight to keep from reaching for the baggie of blood gems. “As long as she has Nolan but not you, he’s safe. This is the moment where you step up. This is when you fix things.”

She kept glaring for a few more seconds. Then she seemed to wilt before my eyes, her shoulders slumping, her chest collapsing as she stopped holding herself rigidly upright. “I was supposed to protect him,” she said.

“This is how you protect him,” I said. “You protect your family by making the world a better place for them to live. Not by running away.”

“I don’t know what to do,” said Arden. Madden whined and put his hand on her shoulder. She sighed, resting her cheek against it.

And I smiled.

“That’s okay, because I do,” I said. “Danny, can you drive Quentin back to the house?”