Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(5)
Arden blinked slowly at her before turning back to me. “We’ve been waiting for High King Sollys to approve the use of Master Davies’ elf-shot cure before we woke anyone else.”
“I know,” I said carefully. In this context, “anyone else” meant Madden, Arden’s Cu Sidhe seneschal, and Nolan, her younger brother. “Because we’re trying to avoid destabilizing the region. You know. More than we already have.”
“He sent word at sundown that he won’t approve use of the cure until there’s been a proper conclave of local monarchs to discuss the matter. He’ll be here next week.”
“. . . Oh.” Quentin’s father was coming here? Quentin didn’t know. Quentin couldn’t know. He would have told me, even if he was trying not to. My squire was many things. Good at lying to me wasn’t one of them. He’d managed to keep the truth about his parentage secret for as long as he had only because there had never been any reason for the subject to come up: his being Crown Prince wasn’t going to impact me for years, if ever. His dad coming to town was something else entirely.
“I need you to come back to Muir Woods with me,” said Arden. “Walther is already there, but he says he won’t do anything without you.”
“Anything like what?” I asked. I knew, really. There was only one thing she could want badly enough to risk pissing off the King of the entire continent. She had come to me effectively hat in hand, dressed like the mortal she’d been living as when we met, because she wanted this so badly. And she knew that she couldn’t order me to help her do it.
“I need you to come back to Muir Woods with me,” she repeated. “I need you to be there, so that Walther will wake up my brother and my best friend before the High King gets here, realizes he left a loophole in his orders, and makes it illegal.”
I glanced to May and Jazz. They both nodded silently. I looked back to Arden and sighed.
“Let me get my coat.”
TWO
ARDEN HAD COME IN through the back door, but as soon as I got back to the kitchen, it became clear that she wasn’t planning to leave that way. She inscribed a wide arc in the air with her left hand. A portal opened in the air, accompanied by the sudden, sharp smell of blackberry flowers and redwood sap. Through it, I could see the entry hall of Arden’s knowe in Muir Woods.
Right. “I’ll be back soon,” I said, shrugging my leather jacket on and tugging the collar into place. It was always chilly in Muir Woods. Call it a side effect of being close to the sea. “Remember to tip the pizza delivery guy, and try to avoid anything getting stuck to the ceiling.”
“On it,” said May, with a brief salute. “You crazy kids have fun now.”
I didn’t have time to respond before Arden was stepping through the portal, grabbing my right wrist and hauling me with her. The world shifted, performing the dizzying dip and wheel that always seemed to accompany point-to-point transportation, especially when it involved moving between the mortal world and the Summerlands. I pulled away from Arden, bending forward to put my hands on my knees and breathe away the dizziness.
“Come on,” she said, making no effort to hide the urgency in her tone. “Get up, we have to hurry.”
“And I have to breathe, so hang on.” I pulled in a lungful of air. It went straight to my head, as Summerlands air often did. It was cleaner, purer than its mortal world equivalent: Faerie mostly skipped the industrial revolution, although we had our blacksmiths and tinkerers. Widespread air pollution just wasn’t a thing in the Summerlands. Sometimes I wondered if that was the cause of my dizziness when I made the transition. My body was still too human to deal easily with the lack of toxins.
Arden stayed nearby, shifting her weight from foot to foot in a way more reminiscent of the teens currently invading my home than of a Queen in her own Kingdom. Then again, Arden didn’t have much experience with Queenship, having been in the position for less than a year—ten months, at my last count. Prior to that, she’d been living a quiet mortal life, keeping her head down and concealing herself from the fae out of fear that she’d be assassinated or elf-shot by the imposter who was sitting on the throne that rightfully belonged to the Windermere line. Arden’s father, King Gilad Windermere, had never married, choosing to hide his consort and heirs for their own safety. I guess he’d assumed that he’d have time to claim them publicly, when they were old enough to deal with the slings and arrows of royal life.
It hadn’t worked out that way. He died, leaving them unprotected. Nolan had been elf-shot by the forces of the woman who was claiming to be Gilad’s rightful heir. And Arden had gone into hiding, where she’d remained until I tracked her down and dragged her, kicking and screaming, back to her birthright. She didn’t seem to be holding a grudge about that, but it was sort of hard to tell, given that since she’d taken the throne, she’d formally named me as a hero, sent me to act as a diplomatic attaché to a hostile neighboring Kingdom, and was now asking me to help her go against the wishes of the High King.
Okay, scratch that. She was definitely holding a grudge.
I took another breath, getting my balance back before I stood upright again. “Okay,” I said, tugging my leather jacket straight to cover the last of my dizziness. “Where are we going?”
“This way.” She spun on her heel and stalked deeper into the knowe, gesturing for me to follow.