“Let’s not stay here that long,” I said. The don’t-look-here would keep us from being caught as long as we were careful, but it wasn’t the same as true invisibility. Once Riordan realized that we’d disappeared, she’d call her guards. In fact . . . “Why the hell did she leave us alone? She had to assume we’d pull something like this.”
“That’s precisely why she left us alone,” said Simon. “Now she’ll have reason to rescind her hospitality and run us down like dogs. She needs more. More magicians, more hands to build her walls and work her fields—more bloodlines to mingle with the ones she already has. Which says nothing to what she would do if she understood some of the bloodlines she has with her already.” He gave me a meaningful look.
I felt sick.
Being part human means I’m potentially more fertile than the fully fae, since mortality yearns to reproduce itself. I could have a dozen babies for her, only to pull the humanity out of them with my own hands, leaving them pureblood, immortal, and ready to be raised by somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t me.
Simon nodded as he saw the realization on my face. “Even so. Treasa Riordan is a brilliantly practical woman. If she can use you to achieve her own ends, she will, and never understand why you might object. She knows what’s best, after all.”
“So we’re here why?” asked Quentin. “I could have cast this before we came inside.”
“But then we wouldn’t be inside, would we?”
It was difficult to refute the calm literalism of Simon’s words, even as I considered how pleasant it would be to punch him in the nose. “Okay, we’re here, and August was here, but I’m not picking up any traces strong enough to indicate that she was here recently.”
“When did she leave?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe someday I’d be able to develop this strange ability of mine to the point where I could tell just how old a faded trail was, but I wasn’t there yet. All I knew for sure was that August had been here—and that the trail had been fresher the first time I’d picked it up. I frowned. “I think she may still have been here when Riordan first arrived.”
“Which could mean . . .” prompted Simon.
I stared at him. “Which could mean she used Chelsea’s gating back and forth to get herself home. She may have been back in the mortal world this whole time.” But that didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she have gone running straight to the tower, and to our mother? Why would she still be lost, when she’d been given the perfect opportunity to be found?
Simon nodded, expression grim. “Precisely so. We need to be sure. Follow her trail, before Riordan comes back and our own journey comes to an end.”
“Right.” I closed my eyes and inhaled, digging down past the scent of Quentin’s spell, past the overlapping traceries of magic that made up the place—and there was so much magic, there was so much; what Riordan hadn’t repaired magically, she had created magically, filling in the gaps in the walls with virtual silver and stone. Given enough time, she would probably go back and fix those spots for real . . . or maybe not. When she had this much raw power to throw around, why put any flesh behind the fantasy? It wasn’t like she ever intended to leave.
Only knowes built to last need to have any real foundations. The Tea Gardens had crumbled when Lily died, because her magic had no longer been there to shore them up. The false Queen’s beachfront knowe was still there, but it was fading a little every day. Eventually, it would return to the mostly formless shallowing it had been when I first found it for her, filled with potential, beautiful as only something that could become anything ever was.
Maybe, after it had lain fallow for a century or two, someone else would open it and allow it to become something new, something that wasn’t tainted by the legacy of what it had already been. I sort of hoped that would be the case. But it wasn’t going to be any time soon. Arden had her knowe, one that was more reality than lovely illusion, and she wasn’t going to set herself upon the pretender’s throne.
Under Riordan’s magic, under the magic of her subjects, under even Chelsea’s frantic and panicked magic, I found August’s. It was baked into the walls, almost as it had been back in Amandine’s tower. It was no wonder Riordan had been drawn to this specific castle. With as much work as August had done, this may have been the only livable spot in all of Annwn.
“This way,” I said, and started walking.
With Quentin beside me, I didn’t need to worry about walking out of the don’t-look-here; it moved with him, and hence it moved with me. Simon brought up the rear. I couldn’t watch him and where I was going at the same time, but he seemed nervous, like something about being here was putting him on his guard. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him for that.
Annwn may have been a place where people lived once, but that was a long time ago, in a world that might as well have been a fairy tale for all the impact it has on people like me. Annwn is a myth and a legend and a lie, sealed off by Oberon like all the other deep realms of Faerie. The fact that we were here should have been an impossibility. Would have been, if we hadn’t been willing to barter our freedom for the use of a candle. Not exactly a route that was available to everyone, or one that should have been emulated.
And August had been here. The whole time Simon had been trading his soul away, one piece at a time, looking for a way to bring her home, she’d been here, locked away from her family but safe, outside the reach of anyone who might want to hurt her. August hadn’t been suffering like Luna and Rayseline had, or even like I had. She’d just been unable to find her way home.
Home. I frowned. That was the odd part of all this—not that there were any really normal parts to the situation. August had traded her road home to the Luidaeg, saying that she couldn’t come back until she’d found Oberon. I was becoming convinced that she was back in the mortal world, even if she wasn’t back with our mother yet. Was that not close enough to count as “home”? How had she been able to do that without finding Oberon?
Unless she had managed to find him, and things were about to get even more complicated. Because that was exactly what we needed.
The trail of August’s magic led down the hall and to a curving staircase, winding its way upward through the castle. This, I recognized, despite Riordan’s extensive renovations. These stairs led to the cells where Etienne, Tybalt, and I had all been imprisoned, intended to be used as warm bodies to help her build her new vision of Faerie. Well. Some of us were going to be warm bodies. Tybalt had been marked for slaughter by her ally, Raj’s father Samson, who was going to make sure that his son was never truly a King of Cats, only a puppet.
Thinking of Tybalt wasn’t good for me. Not yet. I shook the thought away as I climbed the stairs, looking for the place where August’s trail became something else.
Behind and below us, someone shouted. Riordan had noticed that we were gone.
“Perhaps speed is of the essence,” said Simon mildly.