Full of Briars (5 page)

“It seemed like the thing to do,” said Toby.

Mom hesitated before she continued, “I would like us to have a pleasant dinner, and get to know each other a little better. As a mother, you must understand how hard it's been for me to be separated from my children.”

Mentioning Toby's human daughter was always a gamble. Sometimes she was happy to talk about Gilly, and how much I would have liked her if we'd ever had the opportunity to get to know each other. Other times she'd just clam up and refuse to say anything at all, like speaking her child's name was a quick way to bring back the nightmares she'd been fighting for so long to put behind her. I held my breath, waiting to see what her response was going to be this time.

She smiled. Just a little, but that was better than nothing. “I do,” she said. “When I was separated from my daughter, it nearly killed me. She lives with her father now. It's better that way.” It was the only option Gilly had left. Toby had turned her completely human to spare her from dying of elf-shot, and the Luidaeg had changed her memories enough that she wouldn't know what she'd lost—but as I knew from losing my first serious girlfriend, Katie, that kind of change came with a cost. Toby couldn't be a part of Gilly's life, not now and not ever. Seeing her mother might crack the seal keeping her memories of Faerie buried, and that could break her.

“It's hard,” said Mom. “I admire how well you've managed.”

Toby shrugged. “It's not like I had a choice. You do. You can choose to take him home. Maybe that would be for the best. We all know it's dangerous here. It's never going to get easier. Honestly, if things continue the way they have, it's going to get harder. It seems like every time we stop to take a breath, something else goes wrong.” She glanced my way. “Sorry, kiddo. But it's like I said when you asked if I would be your knight. I got you shot.”

“Which is exactly why we've decided to let him stay.” My father's words fell through the air like bricks, bringing everything crashing to a halt. The group went silent. Even Raj didn't have anything clever or rude to say. He actually sat up, pulling his legs out of my lap.

I was the first one to find my voice. That was one for the record books. “You really mean it? I can stay?”

Dad smiled. He looked a little wistful, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe he'd been hoping for a different outcome. I was the kid here, but he was the one who'd been homesick. “You can. Assuming the food here is good enough.”

“Believe me, sir, you would not be alone in taking bad crème brûlée as a declaration of war,” said Tybalt, and both my parents laughed, and it felt like I could breathe again.

My parents left five minutes after the ripples of dawn finished flowing through the world. Magic returned, their Tuatha de Dannan escort opened a gate, and they were gone, heads held high, expressions neutral and serene, as befitted the High King and Queen of the Westlands. Toby had been summoned to see them off. It was supposed to be an honor, something to reflect the great service she had done to the people of the Mists by bringing their rightful Queen back to them. It felt like my parents giving me one last chance to change my mind.

I didn't change my mind. I watched them go, and I blinked back tears, and I didn't change my mind. Sometimes it's the things that hurt most that are the most important.

There were no Court functions scheduled after the departure of my parents. Arden didn't have much of a Court yet—just her, Madden, Lowri, and the courtiers she'd been loaned by local nobles who wanted to curry favor with the newly crowned Queen—and even asking her to provide waffles would have been unfair. By seven o'clock Toby and I were back in the car and back on the road, heading for San Francisco at a speed that would probably have resulted in half a dozen traffic tickets if the car hadn't been enchanted six ways from Sunday.

We were just passing the city limits when I stirred myself out of my silence and asked, “Can you drop me off?”

“Depends on where,” she said. “If you want me to drop you at the bus station, no. Your parents said I got to keep you, and I'm holding them to that. You have any idea how hard it is to break in a new squire? Nope. Not going to do it.”

“I was actually thinking more Goldengreen.” I looked down at my seat belt, taking my time adjusting it as I said, “Raj has prince things to do today, and I want to spend some time with somebody my own age.”

“Wow. I knew one day you'd reject us all for being too old, but I thought we'd celebrate your ‘staying in California' victory for five minutes first,” said Toby, without rancor. She sounded bizarrely happy. She had met the High King and Queen without embarrassing herself completely, and more, when they'd tried to take me away from her, she had managed to avoid the worst-case scenario. For her, this encounter was an incontestable win.

For me, too. I grinned. “You're ancient and decrepit.”

“Basically dust and bones.”

“I could scatter you from the mountaintops and tell the wind your name.”

“Aw, you'd do that for me? You're so sweet.” She took one hand off the wheel and reached over to ruffle my hair. I bore the indignity stoically. It helped that, for once, there was no one around to see. “You going to need me to come back and pick you up?”

“Nah. I can take a bus, or a taxi, or sleep in one of the guest rooms until it's late enough that I can call Raj and tell him I'll order pizza if he comes and gets me.”

Toby attempted to sound stern. “The Cait Sidhe are not a car service.”

“Can I be there when you tell Tybalt that?” I asked brightly. “He might faint from shock when he hears you admit that you knew that all along.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I liked you better before you had a sense of humor,” she said, turning off the freeway and onto the service streets that would lead us to the art museum housing the mortal side of the knowe.

“I always had a sense of humor,” I said. “It just took a while for me to adjust it to the tastes of non-Canadians.”

Toby snorted, and said nothing.

It was early yet; the streets were buzzing with humans on their way to work, most of them walking with their heads down and their eyes glued to their phones. Give it a few more years and none of us would need human disguises at all. We'd be able to go wherever we wanted with our true faces exposed, and anyone who saw us would just assume that we were part of an augmented reality game. That was going to be a fun future.

Toby was yawning when she reached the museum parking lot. It was still empty; the museum employees would start arriving within the hour, getting the place ready for the day to come. “Last chance to get a ride home in the car.”

“I'll be fine,” I said, and waved as I hopped out. “Don't wait up.”

“I won't!” She drove off as soon as my door was shut. I stayed where I was for a few seconds, letting her see me dwindle in the mirror. Then I turned and started down the shallow hill, moving toward the cliff that ran behind the museum.

The County of Goldengreen had originally been founded and held by Countess Evening Winterrose, a Daoine Sidhe who'd been in the Mists for as long as anyone I'd ever spoken to could remember. She had ruled mostly in solitude, but her knowe was palatial, as befitted someone of her stature. After her death, the place had been sealed for a while before the false Queen had given it to Toby as part of an elaborate plan to shift Toby's fealty and arrest her for murder. Not fun. Toby hadn't taken too well to being part of the nobility, and had offloaded the place the first chance she got, giving it to the air-breathing, half-Merrow, half-Daoine son of our local Undersea Duchess.

Sometimes I feel like my life should come with a flow chart or something.

It was a beautiful morning. The sea air was sweet and tasted of salt. Everything in the field behind the museum was blooming, adding a dozen floral perfumes to the mix. I didn't stop to smell the flowers. Even as early as it was, there are some things that are always best done quickly. I walked to the edge of the cliff, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant line of the horizon, and stepped off.

The world twisted and spun around me, rewriting itself before my feet hit the solid floor of the entry hall. It hadn't been a long fall, and I'd done it often enough that I landed with my knees slightly bent, allowing them to absorb most of the impact. Something moved in the rafters above me. I didn't look up. The bogies that infested the knowe were mostly friendly, but that wouldn't stop them from turning into giant spiders and dropping down onto my head for a laugh. Their sense of humor is nothing to mess with.

Toby hadn't been in charge of Goldengreen for long, but it had been long enough that I was familiar with the place. I started down the hall toward the kitchen. That was where I was most likely to find Dean's seneschal, Marcia, and she, in turn, would know where Dean was.

Sure enough, when I stuck my head around the doorframe, there she was, kneading bread dough and humming to herself. She was a slight, thin-blooded changeling, more human than fae, and her eyes were ringed with a thick layer of faerie ointment. Without it, she wouldn't have been able to see through the illusions that surrounded her. Her hair was a blonde corona around her head, and her clothes were strictly mortal-modern; she could have gone anywhere in the city without raising an eyebrow.

I rapped my knuckles against the lintel. “Hey, Marcia,” I said. “Dean still up?”

“Quentin!” She beamed as she turned. “Aren't you a sight for sore eyes? Actually, scratch that. My eyes aren't sore. That saying makes no sense. It's good to see you! Dean's down by the cove. You just missed Duchess Lorden.”

I grimaced. “Yay for timing, I guess.” Duchess Dianda Lorden was a good ally, and a good mother. She was also prone to threats of violence, and with her, those threats were never empty.

“Oh, you,” said Marcia, laughing. “Go on down. If you boys get hungry, just send a pixie, and I'll send down a little something.”

“Okay, Marcia,” I said, and sketched a quick bow in her direction before turning and trotting down the hall toward the door to the stairs.

Toby has this theory that knowes are not only alive, they're intelligent and can make their own choices. They just make them more slowly than people do, on account of how they're buildings, and anything short of being on fire is unlikely to seem all that urgent. The cove-side receiving room at Goldengreen was a great piece of support for her theory. It hadn't been there when she'd been in charge, or when Evening had been; it was a large enough part of the knowe's structure that there was simply no way we could have all missed it.

The door opened on a wide-stepped spiral staircase, curving languidly downward to a chamber that seemed to have been hewn straight out of the side of a mountain. The ceiling was inlaid with an elaborate design in white quartz and mother-of-pearl, and the stairs ended at a wide expanse of redwood floor, magically treated to keep it from becoming slippery. The floor stretched onward to become a dock, stopping just short of a strip of gleaming white sand. Beyond that, the ocean, sheltered by the ceiling until it reached the narrow strip of daylight that allowed it to escape from the confines of the knowe.

Dean was sitting on the edge of the dock with his hands on his knees, staring out over the water. I stopped where I was for a moment, just looking at him.

He was almost two years older than I was, which seemed like a lot, even though I knew one day, when we'd both been alive for centuries, two years would be nothing but the blinking of an eye. He had his mother's tawny skin and black hair, with streaks of oceanic green inherited from his father. His eyes were deepwater blue and distracting. I spent a lot of time when we were together trying not to stare into his eyes.

Right. This was verging on creepy. I started walking again, letting the scuff of my feet against the deck alert him to my presence. He turned and looked over his shoulder, smiling when he saw me.

“Quentin,” he said. “I didn't know you were coming over today.”

“It was sort of last minute,” I said. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Mom just left, and I was feeling a little down. It's good to see you.”

“It's good to see you, too.” I walked over and sat down next to him on the dock. Not too close, but . . . close enough. “Did you come to Arden's confirmation?”

“Yeah,” he said, and gave me a measuring sidelong look. “I'd never seen the High King in person before.”

“Mmm.”

“Maybe you should dye your hair.”

“Maybe,” I agreed.

Dean turned back to the water. “Mom went home after that and got really, really drunk. She said it was like seeing King Gilad finally laid to rest. I guess he was a pretty good king.”

“That's what everybody says.”

“Where's Raj?”

The question was surprising enough that I frowned, looking at him. “Home. It's his day to be a proper prince, instead of hogging the TV remote at my place. And he has a date with Helen tonight, so unless I call him for a ride later, I probably won't see him until the weekend. Why? Did you need him for something?”

“No. He's just usually with you when you decide to drop by for a visit. He's still dating Helen?”

“I think he likes the way she argues with him.” Helen was a half-Hob changeling. They'd met in Blind Michael's lands. Trauma like that either builds bonds or breaks them down. In Helen's case, I was never quite sure which that was. She was nice, and she seemed to enjoy Raj's company, but she was an expert at dodging invitations to spend time with the rest of us. It was hard to take offense at that. She'd been through a lot. At the same time, none of us could really tell whether she and Raj were good for each other when we never got to see them together.

“Huh.” Dean picked at a thread on the side of his trousers. “I keep expecting them to break up so that Raj can start going out with you.”

If I had been drinking, I would have done a spit-take. As it was, I choked on air, coughing before I said, “What?”

“I said—”

“No, I heard you. What I meant was
what
?” I shook my head. “Raj and I aren't going to date.”

Dean twisted to give me a dubious look. “Really.”

“Really-really! We flirt, but . . .” I paused to gather my thoughts. “Toby and Tybalt are getting pretty serious. If it gets
too
serious, he'll have to step down. I mean, he can't have a girlfriend he puts above the Court. That's not how they do things. Raj is his only available heir. Raj plays at being selfish and self-absorbed, but he loves his uncle more than anything, except maybe the Court of Cats. He'd never do anything to endanger either one.” And Raj knew I was going to be High King. Our Courts could be friends. Could even coexist peacefully. But he would never,
never
allow a situation to arise where the Court of Cats could be seen as beholden to the Divided Courts. Being my boyfriend, however casually, would mess things up for both of us.

“Sometimes I wonder what dating is like for people who don't have to think about the politics of everything they do and say,” said Dean.

I smiled wryly. “If Toby's anything to go by, it's sort of bloody and awkward.”

“Everything Toby does is sort of bloody and awkward.”

“Well, yeah.” I shook my head. “So no, Raj and I: not dating, not going to date. He's my best friend. I'd bleed for him, and defend him before oak and ash and thorn. But he's not my boyfriend.”