There were no words. I stared at him, unable to decide whether I was more furious with him or with Evening. In the end, he won the coin toss. He was there for me to rage at, and Evening was still asleep, sealed off in a forgotten Road, where she could rot for all I cared.
“You stole them because of me,” I hissed. “You destroyed your own brother’s life—you destroyed my life—you shattered Rayseline’s mind, and you did it because Evening told you to.”
Simon flinched when I said Evening’s name, actually flinched, like he’d been slapped. “Please don’t help her find us.”
“What did you do to them? Where did you leave them?”
“I made a bubble,” he said. “I made it the same way Blind Michael made his lands, the way Gilad anchored his knowe. I forced magic into the space between worlds, and then I placed them inside it. They wouldn’t starve, there. They wouldn’t get sick, they wouldn’t die—”
“No, they’d just sit in absolute darkness until you came back to get them, and also, by the way, you fucked up how time ran there. Rayseline grew up. I was gone for fourteen years, and when I got back, she was an adult who hadn’t seen the sun since she was a little girl! You destroyed her, and you did it because what? You thought there was a chance that maybe, if you were a good boy someday, Evening would stop jerking you around and give you back your daughter?”
“Yes,” he said levelly, looking me in the eye. “That’s exactly why I did it. August meant more to me than anyone else in the world. She still does. You can consider me your enemy if you like, even though I mean you no harm, now or later, but I did what I did for the sake of your sister, and if you told me to do it again, and I believed that by doing so I could bring her home a moment faster, I would raise my hand in your service. The best of intentions for me can be the worst of consequences for someone else.”
I couldn’t find the words to reply to him. I just stared, the Babylon candle in my hand, the mist eddying around us, and wondered when things had gone so wrong for me that a moment like this one could even be possible. Quentin was standing a few feet away, close enough not to get lost, silent. There was nothing for him to say. This was between me and the man who had ruined my life—and no matter how much better things were for me now, he hadn’t known that then. Even if he had, that would have been no excuse. He had made my choices for me. He had taken one future away and substituted it with another.
And he had done it all with the very best of intentions.
There was regret in Simon’s eyes. He knew I was going to hate him for this, that I was never going to forgive him for saying the things he’d said to me . . . and he was saying them anyway, because of all the Torquills, he was the one who refused to lie to me.
“I’m too tired for this bullshit,” I snarled, turning away from him. “Come on. We need to find your daughter.”
I walked, and he followed, and the mist closed in around us, and everything else was gone.
FIFTEEN
WE WALKED UNTIL IT seemed like there was nothing to the world but walking. There was no time on the Babylon Road, not really: our candle was our clock, and it hadn’t started burning down yet. It wouldn’t, until we had reached our final destination, I asked it to do something other than playing GPS, or our deadline was drawing near. I wasn’t actually sure about that last one. The Luidaeg might let us wander in the fog for our entire supposed year of service, and then claim that what she’d really wanted us to do for her was go out and gather dust for later use. She could be tricky that way.
The mist cleared occasionally, revealing glimpses of sky or the surrounding landscape, which changed from step to step. One moment it was mountains. The next, it would be plains, or forest, or a great, surging sea beating itself senseless against a rocky shore. The scent of the wind changed even more constantly, now smelling of heather, or blackberry flowers, or redwoods. The only constant was that it never smelled of people. I couldn’t always pick up traces of other fae when they weren’t bleeding or using magic, but there was a flavor to the air in inhabited places, like they moved it around more just by being there. This air was sweet and alive, but it was empty.
“Toby.” Quentin stepped up next to me, lips thin, eyes anxious. “I think we’re walking into deeper Faerie.”
“I think you’re right,” I agreed. I had been able to accomplish that particular trick once before, with Tybalt’s help. Luna had opened us a Rose Road, and we had walked along it until he had sensed the presence of his nephew. Once he was sure Raj was somewhere near, Tybalt had opened a Shadow Road between where we were and where we needed to be.
Oberon might have locked the front doors and told his subjects to stay in the Summerlands until he came back, but that didn’t mean he had sealed all the secret ways in and out of the deeper realms. He’d just made it harder for people to get there.
“I don’t want to go back to deeper Faerie.”
“Sorry, kiddo. We have to go where the candle takes us.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “I’m sort of surprised you’re staying so calm. If somebody took Dean, I’d probably lose my shit, and I don’t lo—I like him a lot, but I’m not planning to stay with him forever.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You’re a teenager. You’re allowed to date and figure out what you want before you have to settle down to doing . . . other things.” Simon didn’t know Quentin was the Crown Prince of the Westlands—or at least I assumed Simon didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. That was information that he didn’t need. “I’m calm because if I weren’t, I’d start screaming and never stop again. My job has always been dangerous. I never thought it could put the rest of you in danger in our own home.”
But I should have. Simon was proof of that. Sylvester was a hero, and being a hero had put him in the position to be my mentor. Being my mentor had gotten his wife and daughter kidnapped, passively tortured, and imprisoned for an unmeasurable period of time. Being a hero meant that sometimes the danger followed you home.
I was a hero now, too. I hadn’t sought the position. It had been shoved on me one stolen child and broken promise at a time. That didn’t make it any less mine. The people around me—the people I cared about—were always going to be in danger.
Quentin scowled. “Oh, no,” he said. “Stop it.”
I blinked. “Stop what?”
“Stop thinking we’d be better off without you.”
“I wasn’t!”
“You were. I could see it in your eyes, and you’re wrong. We’re better with you, just like you’re better with us. Wait until we get Tybalt and Jazz back safe and sound. You’ll see.” Quentin bumped his shoulder against mine. “You keep making yourself calm, and we’ll find her, and we’ll bring her home, and your horrible mother will give them back, and we won’t invite her to the wedding.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said, with a weak smile.
“Sure you were. She’s your mom. But nobody wants to sit next to her at dinner, so let’s just skip it, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.