Most fae holdings are hidden in the Summerlands, anchored to the mortal world by enchanted doors. Those places—those directly connected places—are called hollow hills, or knowes, and they can be a bear to access. The people who control them get to decide how difficult the doors will be to find or open. Sylvester Torquill was a generally kind man, thinking the best of people, encouraging them to think the best of him. Somehow, that translated to his knowe having an entrance that could double as an obstacle course.
Quentin pulled ahead. I didn’t try to stop him. He’d been here more recently than either May or I, and he knew the exact permutations of the current lock, leading us over, under, around and through the hawthorns and the fallen logs and the great sandstone boulders. We played ring-around-the-roses with a wild rosemary bush, whipped twice around a lighting-blackened oak, and stopped as a door appeared in the largest of the old oak trees in front of us.
May was wheezing. She waved me forward, and Quentin hung back, both acknowledging that this would go better if I were the one to do it. Swell.
I stepped up to the thick oak door and knocked, the sound echoing into the stillness beyond. I stepped back, glancing nervously at the sky. The sun was almost up. We had five minutes, maybe less, before dawn, and then I was going to be in a world of hurt if I was still in the mortal world.
Dawn is painful outside the Summerlands. The only reason it isn’t painful there is that it never happens. The Summerlands exist in a perpetual twilight that grows deeper or brighter according to the whims of the purebloods who control the individual slices of territory, but which never quite yields to day. Somehow, crops still grow there, even mortal ones, and no one suffers from a Vitamin D deficiency. It must be something in the water.
I live in the mortal world. Dawn is part of the price I pay for my freedom from noble oversight, for being able to have things like cable television and midnight trips to 7-11. But I was normally paying that price in the safety of my own home, where I could stick my head under a pillow and wait for the air to come back. I raised my hand to knock again.
The door swung open to reveal Sir Etienne, who was—for once—less than perfectly polished. His dark hair was in ruffled disarray, and his gray tunic was barely belted, creating the impression that he’d grabbed it off the floor. The air around him smelled of limes and cedar smoke. He must have opened a gate to bring himself to the door, possibly because dawn was so near. His eyes widened at the sight of us.
“Get inside,” he snapped, stepping to the side to make room. “The sun is almost up. Hurry!”
It wasn’t the most polite of invitations, but he didn’t need to tell me twice. I rushed inside, trying to ignore the way the world tilted around me at the transition, marking the demarcation between the human and fae worlds. May and Quentin were close behind.
Etienne slammed the door, sealing the mortal world and the mortal sunrise safely on the other side. Then he turned to me, surprise fading, replaced by wariness. “October,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Who said anything was wrong?” The question sounded frail and strained, even to my own ears. I still had to ask it. If I didn’t keep up appearances, I was going to break down. My conversation with the Luidaeg had proven that much.
“You’re here,” he said simply.
For a moment, I couldn’t think of a reply.
There was a time when it felt like I was driving to Shadowed Hills every ten minutes, looking for answers, looking for help, or just looking for a hot meal. Sylvester was my liege. His wife, Luna, had been my friend once, before things had gotten so strained between us. But they were just the tip of the iceberg. I’d grown up running around the knowe, giggling with the household staff, sleeping in the guest rooms. This had been my home during a period of my life when I’d felt like I didn’t deserve to have one, and I had walked away from more than just Sylvester when he’d broken my heart by lying to me.
My heart was healing. The bridges between me and my liege were in the process of being mended. And once again, I needed help.
“I don’t know how many times I can tell this story without losing it, and I need to ask Sylvester for a favor,” I said, all too aware of May and Quentin at my back. May was in even worse shape than I was. I had always known that Tybalt lived a dangerous life. Jazz ran an antique store. She wasn’t supposed to be a target. “Is he up?”
“For you, he will be,” said Etienne. “I’ll fetch him. I trust you can find the receiving room on your own?”
“Pretty sure,” I said.
He nodded, traced a circle in the air with his hand, and vanished through the portal of his own making, leaving the smell of limes and cedar smoke hanging once more heavy in the air. I didn’t wait for it to dissipate before I started walking again.
Quentin pulled up next to me. I glanced at him.
“Does Raj know how to get around the wards?” I asked.
“He can’t come straight into the knowe, but there’s a spot in the woods we always use when he needs to meet me here,” he said. “He can walk from there.”
“Because Raj will be thrilled that we made him walk,” I said.
Quentin smirked.
Raj was a Prince of Cats, but he wasn’t a King yet. Once he was crowned, his power would expand, making him the anchor to the Shadow Roads in San Francisco, and—more importantly, in some regards—opening the wards of the local knowes to him. It’s considered incredibly bad form to ward against Kings and Queens of Cats, just like it would have been considered bad form to ward against Arden. Princes and Princesses are fair game, but the monarchs? They can come and go as they pleased.
Would Tybalt still be a King when he stepped down? It seemed likely. Power doesn’t like to let go once it has hold of someone. Tybalt would be a King without a throne. An enviable—and dangerous—position to be in.
It helped a little to think about the future. What he was going to be after I got him safely back from my mother, after he’d recovered from whatever she did to him, and most importantly, after he’d been able to step down from his throne. Abdication was a funny wedding gift, but under the circumstances, I’d take it.
The receiving room doors were unguarded. Another sign of how late, or early, it was. The people who would normally have been standing by to let us in were probably already in bed. I was grateful that Etienne hadn’t felt the need to wake them just so they could stand on ceremony. Fatherhood really was mellowing him.