Page 25 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

That was really the crux of it, wasn’t it?

Because I knew Simon was the man who’d transformed me into a fish and left me to lose everything, and I knew he’d done it to save my life, and even more, I knew he was the man who’d raised me.

I knew how he told a bedtime story, and I knew how much he’d loved me. How much he still loved me.

Titania’s spell may have been a lie, but the people she’d tangled inside it were real.

The feelings had been real. The choices we made had been real ones.

If they hadn’t been, we would never have been able to break free.

And now those feelings, those choices, were bleeding over into the real world.

Things had changed, and we couldn’t change them back.

“Simon—” I began, barely swallowing the now-ingrained desire to begin my sentence with “Father.” He looked toward me, almost hopefully.

Before I could go any further, the kitchen door banged open and Quentin ambled inside, still dressed in his court finery, although he had undone his doublet and the laces on his shirt, and his hair was ruffled so that it stuck out in all directions, making him look somewhat like he’d been dragged backward through a hedge.

Dean, who entered directly behind him, was in a similar state. The hedge wasn’t out of the question.

I looked at them with amusement as they came to a stop, utterly unashamed but visibly somewhat embarrassed to have this many adults witnessing the aftermath of what must have been a fairly epic make-out session.

“I think they had the right idea,” I said, looking toward Tybalt.

He smirked.

“Hello, Dean,” said Simon.

“Hi, uh, Simon,” said Dean. He paused nervously. “Am I in trouble?”

Simon sighed. “You’re a man grown, and the Count of your own demesne.

If you had done something dire enough to put you into your mother’s bad books, I’m not the executioner she would have sent to deliver the news.

I drove October home after she left the Queen’s court.

She looked tired, and I feared the consequences of allowing her to drive herself. ”

“I’m right here, you know,” I said.

“He’s right,” said Tybalt.

Quentin’s cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize. I could have given you a ride if I’d known.”

“And left your car at Muir Woods overnight?” I raised an eyebrow. “Not the world’s best plan. The don’t-look-here would drop at dawn, and the local chop shop would have your engine in pieces an hour later.”

Quentin had been even more shaken up by Titania’s distorted version of reality than I had, in part because his reflection had shown him the worst possible version of himself.

Cruel, bigoted, and self-absorbed, the kind of man my generally kind and thoughtful squire didn’t want to believe he could have become in our reality if things had gone differently.

In our collective desire to help him recover, we’d basically all written to his parents to tell them what happened.

The end result had been an awkward if excusable weekend visit from the High King and Queen of the Westlands—excusable because we’d just experienced a collective traumatizing event, and not necessarily proof that they were visiting the Crown Prince in blind fosterage.

We all kept pretending no one knew who Quentin really was, even though it became less believable by the year, especially since Quentin looked more and more like his father all the time.

It was sort of nice to know what my squire was likely to wind up looking like.

Didn’t hurt that, like all Daoine Sidhe, the High King was unreasonably attractive.

Anyway, the end result of their visit had been Quentin becoming the proud owner of a newer, nicer car than mine, opening up the entire Bay Area for his enjoyment.

Fortunately for my nerves, his enjoyment pretty much consisted of driving from the house to Goldengreen to hang out with Dean, or to Shadowed Hills for sword fighting lessons with Etienne.

I would have been getting into so much more trouble at his age.

But then, he’d had access to Chelsea for a while now, and a teenage teleporter with no real impulse control was even better than a shiny new car.

“We could have taken my car and left yours,” he offered.

“Over my dead body,” I countered.

He blinked. “A fair offer, but Tybalt would object.”

“I absolutely would,” said Tybalt. “Pray remember that I am yet a King of Cats, and as such, my relationship to Oberon’s Law is more negotiable than most people’s. Even if they wished to accuse me, they would never find your body. The Shadow Roads have many uses.”

Quentin actually paled.

I elbowed Tybalt lightly. “No threatening my squire, please. I was the one who brought up dying, not Quentin.”

Simon cleared his throat, pulling the focus of the room back to himself.

“Dean, may I get a ride back to Goldengreen with you?” he asked.

“I need to return to the Undersea before morning, unless you’re truly eager to see your mother again, and October pointed out how much easier it would be for me to depart from the cove inside the knowe. ”

“You have someone coming to get you?” asked Dean.

Simon nodded. “I have my water-breathing potion, and summoning shells to drop into the sea when I’m ready to go home. Anceline is waiting in the nearby waters to pull me down to the depths.”

Living in the Undersea as an air-breathing person without specific aquatic adaptations meant Simon had to work harder to come and go than someone who’d been born to the deeps would have.

Dean had the same problem; while his mother was Merrow and hence water-breathing, he didn’t inherit those specific traits from her.

He was as landbound as the rest of us, which was a large part of why he’d been willing to accept a County in the Mists, rather than staying below where he’d never have been able to freely move through his mother’s domain.

Simon and Dean had both had to give up things they cared about in order to live in their preferred environments, but they handled it well, and they’d at least been given the freedom to choose.

“I didn’t drive myself here,” said Dean. “Are you okay with taking the bus?”

“I lived in this city for longer than you’ve been alive,” said Simon. “Buses hold no terrors for me.”

Quentin frowned, focusing on me again. “You were missing for like, half the court proceedings,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Everyone in this room was someone I trusted to have my back.

With the singular exception of Dean, they were also people I knew would follow me into Hell if they were given half the chance.

Dean wouldn’t necessarily come with me if I went, but he’d have hot cocoa and cookies waiting when I got back. These were my people.

“While the Kingdom was wrapped up in Titania’s bullshit, somebody looted the royal treasury,” I said.

“Apparently, everything you wouldn’t want to have go missing is missing, including a hope chest and a scabbard that turns any metal it touches into pure iron.

I’m the only hero of the realm Arden has right now, and she wants me to go find her stuff. ”

Quentin blinked, glancing to Tybalt before returning his attention to me. “She’s noticed that you’re like, super pregnant right now, hasn’t she?”

“Good job, Quentin,” I said. “There were at least half a dozen more tactless ways you could have put that, and you managed to avoid them. Yes, she knows I’m pregnant, but pregnancy doesn’t excuse me from acts of pointless heroism, and leaving all those things loose in the Kingdom is bad enough for a large enough swath of the population that it’s really not something she can wait on.

Maternity leave, not so much a thing in this situation.

And that’s before we were also missing a pretender to the throne.

” I paused, then sighed, making no effort to hide my frustration.

“I wish to hell we knew her name. It’s annoying to always have to talk around who she is. ”

“If my mother’s stories are accurate, the pretender wishes she knew her own name just as much,” said Dean.

We all turned our attention on him, even Simon, who looked uncommonly interested, like this was new information.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sirens and Sea Wights are both found in the Undersea,” said Dean.

“I don’t know who her parents were, or how she wound up with three descendant lines—whoever bore her, they’ve vanished into the tide, and they don’t seem to have any interest in coming forward to claim her.

But before she was deposed, whenever Mom talked about the Mists, she’d scoff and say she’d demand the false Queen come down to Saltmist to stand trial for the damage she’d done to relations between the land and sea if she could.

Under Gilad, the two realms were as close to united as such things come.

Under the pretender, they deteriorated beyond our greatest fears. ”

“Huh,” I said. I’d never considered that two of the pretender’s descendant lines were from the Undersea.

If she’d been able to breathe water, she might not be able to anymore—I didn’t know the abilities of Sirens well enough to say one way or the other.

Now that she was balanced between Banshee and Sea Wight, she might be stuck on the land.

Still, that was an angle I hadn’t thought of for trying to figure out where she’d come from before she decided to become our problem.

“Are you all right with this?” asked Quentin, returning his attention to Tybalt.

Tybalt lifted an eyebrow. “Not precisely, but October and I have come to an understanding.”

“Yes, we have,” I said, shooting Quentin a quick, sharp look. “And the rest of us are going to do whatever we can to not make things harder on you.”

“I appreciate it,” he said.

I yawned, only half-exaggeratedly. “And on that note, the super pregnant lady is going to bed. I know it’s only the middle of the night, but I’d rather be asleep when the sun comes up. Tomorrow’s going to be busy, especially compared to what I’ve been doing lately. Dean, you’ll get Simon home?”

“I don’t want my mother to murder me, so yeah, I’ll get him home,” said Dean.

“Great. Quentin, will you be up for a while?”

He nodded. “I’ll let May know that you’re okay, just sleeping.”

“Great,” I repeated. It was a handy word to use when thanks weren’t allowed.

I pushed myself to my feet, wobbling before I caught my balance, then moved to hug Simon.

I’ve never been the most huggy of people, but I knew he’d appreciate it, and it was a small enough price to pay to thank him for driving us home.

Indeed, as I had expected, he was smiling and suspiciously bright-eyed when I let him go and stepped back, stopping as my shoulder bumped against Tybalt’s chest. “I’ll see you soon,” I said. “Give my regards to Patrick and Dianda.”

“I will,” he said, as solemnly as if he were accepting a quest to be discharged before the crown. He even offered me a shallow half-bow.

I answered it with a wave before turning and sliding my arm into Tybalt’s. “Walk me upstairs?” I asked.

“Of course, little fish,” he said, pressing a kiss against my temple before leading me out of the room, leaving the rest of the evening behind.