Rosemary and Rue

“I meant a little more formally.”


“Oh.” Sylvester cleared his throat. “Yes, October, I see you. Can you stop that, please? Where have you been? Well, I know where you’ve been, that was a silly question, forget I asked it, but we’ve all been worried sick about you, you know. We only found out you were back when Evening called out of courtesy.” He sounded faintly hurt now. “I’ve sent messages. Didn’t you get them?”

“Yes, Your Grace, I did,” I said, straightening. “I just . . . I wasn’t ready to answer them.”

“But why?” Sylvester asked, looking at me like a kid who’s just been told that Christmas has been canceled.

“I think I know the answer to that one,” said Luna, putting her hand on his arm and offering me a warm, if slightly sorrowful, smile. “Hello, Toby. You’re looking well.”

“As are you,Your Grace,”I said,smiling back.I couldn’t help it. It’s hard to look at Luna without smiling.

Short, slender, compact; you could describe the Duchess of Shadowed Hills in those words, if they wouldn’t make her sound so fragile. Luna was a small woman, but she was anything but breakable, with arms strengthened by hours of gardening and all the magical defenses her Kitsune blood implied. Their strength is advertised by the number of their tails, and she had three to call her own, silver-furred and sleek. Her waist-length brown hair was plaited back, and she was dressed for gardening, ignoring the formality of her surroundings. Luna has never been much of one for standing needlessly on ceremony.

“You should have come before this,” she chided lightly. “We’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I admitted, and turned to face Sylvester. “Your Grace . . .”

“We looked for you,” he said. There was an urgency to his words, like there was nothing in the world I needed to hear more than I needed to hear what he had to tell me. “We looked for you everywhere. You have to believe me. When you vanished, I set Etienne to scouring the city, I sent half my knights with him, I did everything I could, and you were just . . . you were just gone, Toby. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? He was admitting that he’d taken resources away from the search for his wife and daughter—admitting it while his wife was standing right next to him, no less—and he was telling me he was sorry? I gaped at him, not sure what I could say.

Rayseline saved me from answering by stepping up on her father’s other side, sliding her hands around his arm and looking at me. Her eyes were the same gold as her father’s, but while on him the color was warm and welcoming, on her it seemed almost reptilian, the gaze of a predator.

“Oh, look,” she said. “She’s finally deigned to come and see the consequences of her failure. Hello, failure. How’ve you been?”

“Hello, Rayseline,” I said, keeping my tone measured. Whatever relief I might have felt at her interruption died at her words.

We don’t know what happened to Luna and Raysel during the twelve years that they spent missing—twelve years that corresponded with the first twelve years of my own missing time. But while for me, those years were lost, whatever they went through, they lived it. The few people I’d spoken to said that Luna came back a little sadder, a little stranger, but Raysel . . . Raysel came back wrong. Growing up the way she did broke something inside of her, and looking at her now, I began to realize why the whispers said it might never be repaired.

“I wondered when you’d come sniffing around here,” she said. “Looking for something else that you can’t do? I’m sure Daddy has plenty of unsolvable puzzles and quests that can’t succeed. Go do some of those.”

“Raysel, that’s enough,” said Sylvester, sharply. “I’m her liege. October is always welcome here.”