Almost unsurprisingly, when I opened the door, I found a sentry waiting. Grianne was leaning against the wall, her Merry Dancers spinning a slow ballet through the air above her head. Like all Candela, she was gray-skinned, gray-haired, and lithe of build, while her Merry Dancers were perfect spheres of whitish-green light that brightened and dimmed in accordance with her mood. Judging by their current brilliance, her mood wasn’t all that great.
More surprising was the purple pixie playing tag with her Merry Dancers, spinning around them with dizzying speed. Lilac stopped playing when she saw me, hovering in the air ringing for a moment before she dove for my hair and buried herself there. Grianne looked down and focused on my face, one brow raising slightly as she took in the rounded planes of my cheekbones and the brown of my hair.
“Huh,” she said finally. “Old school.”
“I’ll get back to normal soon,” I said.
She shrugged, expressing that it was no concern of hers. “How are your hands?”
“Numb.” I held them up for her to see. “Did Jin tell you how bad it was?”
“Yes.” That seemed to be enough for Grianne. She pushed herself away from the wall. “Duke Torquill sent me to wait for you. He and the others are in the kitchen.”
The kitchen. That could be a good thing. That smacked of recovery, of needing to take people where they could get a good meal and a glass of something extremely alcoholic. My hope must have shown on my face. Grianne shook her head.
“Don’t,” was all she said. She turned and started down the hall, leaving me with little choice but to pad after her, swallowing my questions. I’d have my answers soon enough. Pestering Grianne wouldn’t make them come any sooner, and might result in her deciding I was too much trouble to guide.
I’ve been in and out of Shadowed Hills since I was a little girl. I did most of my training there, and while it’s been a while since I was a regular sight in the halls, I still know my way around. Mostly. Like all large knowes, the building has a tendency to rearrange itself, and I didn’t want to risk getting lost. The time I’d already spent unconscious had been more than long enough.
The time . . . “Grianne, how long was I out?”
“Eight hours. Maybe.” She kept walking. “Long enough for everyone to yell a lot. Sir Etienne had the shift before mine.”
If I’d woken up while Etienne was on duty, I might have been able to get better answers. I silently pledged to do a better job of timing my returns to consciousness. The thought was laughable, but it was a good enough distraction to keep me from grabbing Grianne and shaking her until she gave me the answers I needed.
Then we were at the kitchen doorway, a wide, gently peaked wooden arch that led into a large, comfortably designed room. Melly, the Hob in charge of the kitchens as a whole, was bustling between the stove and an artfully rough-hewn table, a bowl of soup in each hand. Quentin was seated there, across from—
“Jazz!” I sped up, brushing past Grianne in my hurry to get to the now-bipedal Raven-maid. May was standing behind her, hands resting on her shoulders, keeping her in place, keeping in contact at all times. They turned to look at me, Jazz weary, May wary. “Are you all right?”
“I have thumbs again,” said Jazz. She sounded distant, and faintly dazed, like she was still waking up from a long and not entirely welcome dream. “I didn’t before.”
“Eat your soup,” said May. She kept looking at me as Jazz turned to begin fumbling for her spoon. “She needs time. How are your hands?”
“Messed up, but I’ll live.” I raised them for her to see. “Where’s Tybalt?” If Jazz was back in human form, Tybalt would be too. He’d probably been asking for me.
May looked away.
A chill lanced through me. I turned to Quentin. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
“You should eat something,” said Melly. She sounded worried about my well-being. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the way she was looking at me, with sympathy and something I didn’t want to let myself read as pity.
“Sylvester was supposed to be here.” I whipped around, looking for Grianne. She was gone. She had delivered me to the kitchen and left, presumably because she didn’t want to be here when the shit hit the fan. “Grianne told me Sylvester wanted me to come here. And where’s Jin? Where’s Tybalt?”
“Duke Torquill was with me,” said Arden. I turned.
Arden Windermere, rightful Queen in the Mists, was standing on the other side of the kitchen, with Sylvester slightly behind and to the left of her. It was hard to focus on him, or on anything beyond the box she was holding. It was made of wood—four kinds of wood, to be exact, oak and ash and rowan and thorn, carved with knives of air and water, joined together through cunning manipulation of the wood, not with anything as mundane as nails or hinges—and about the size of a thick paperback book, and I wanted it. I wanted it so badly that my hands began to ache again, this time with the effort of staying lowered by my sides. Assaulting a queen to steal a hope chest wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to end well for me.
Arden herself wore a long gown of frost-blue velvet, simply cut enough to pass as casual attire for a queen. It called the dark red highlights out of her long black hair and drew attention to her mismatched eyes, one mercury silver, the other pyrite gold. I wasn’t as human as I had been, but I was still human enough that when I finally switched my attention from the hope chest to her, she briefly took my breath away. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation.
I swallowed hard, forcing down the awe and the sudden conviction of my own insignificance, and asked the only question that mattered: “Where’s Tybalt?”
“Jin is with him,” said Sylvester. It would normally have been considered rude for him to answer for the queen, but his tone was gentle, almost careful, and it seemed like they had already discussed the necessity of handling me with delicacy.
It made me want to punch someone. “That’s not an answer.”
“October.” Arden somehow turned my name into a command. I glanced back to her, only flinching a little when I met her eyes. She held the hope chest out toward me. “Madden told me you were going to need this. I am . . . grateful that you were able to free him from the enchantment he was under, and regret that I did not notice the situation myself. I hope you will accept the loan of this treasure as a token of my gratitude.”
So she wasn’t going to ask anything of me in exchange for use of the hope chest. That should have been a good thing. That should have been her honoring me as a hero of the realm. Instead, it felt like the sort of gesture you made to someone on the brink of breaking down.
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at Sylvester, and waited.
It didn’t take long before he sighed and looked down at his feet. “Tybalt is with Jin,” he said. “There have been . . . complications.”
“What do you mean, complications?” My voice was a razor slashing across the throat of the world.
“Your betrothed is a King of Cats,” said Sylvester. He looked up again, meeting my eyes. “His magic is . . . substantial. When it misfires . . .”