Late Eclipses (12 page)

 

 

 

T
HE TERRACE OUTSIDE THE BALLROOM doors extended in both directions and around the corners, out of sight. I knew from experience that it made a complete circuit of the building, regardless of what shape the hall happened to be at any given moment. The architecture of Shadowed Hills may shift, but some things don’t change, and the place is always riddled with towers, nooks, and crannies. That meant more doors than we could possibly cover, even if Connor found every guard in the knowe. When I factored in the general chaos of the Ball, I had to assume it would take him several minutes to convince anyone he found that there was a problem and get them heading in my direction. Possibly longer, since I hadn’t told him exactly what the problem
was
.

A soft breeze wafted up riotous perfume from the gardens below, burying any trace of Oleander’s magic. I wouldn’t be able to track her that way, and the stone floor of the terrace showed no footprints. I hesitated, trying to decide how to proceed. I could wait until the guards came, losing any advantage I might have gained by spotting her quickly, but getting myself some backup. Or I could follow blind and hope to get lucky.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that Karen made me dream about Oleander the night before I picked up traces of the bitch’s magic in a crowded room. There were no good reasons for Oleander to be at Shadowed Hills, but there were a hell of a lot of bad ones, and I wasn’t willing to take the chance she’d get away while I was playing it safe.

I started down the terrace. The light filtering through the curtained double doors into the ballroom made navigation easy, as long as I stayed close to the side of the building. Silver stars sparkled in the sky overhead, throwing down rays of frosted light that managed to be brighter and gentler than mortal moonlight.

I paused at the first corner, listening for footsteps, but all I heard was the muted sound of the Ball coming from the windows. I started forward again, walking along the stretch of terrace above the main rose garden. Something rustled to one side, and I whirled, hands going to my knives.

One of the climbing roses that crawled up the side of the hall had pulled loose from its trellis and was slapping against the rail. I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and started walking again. Jumpy? Me? Damn right. I spent fourteen years wearing fins the last time I got near Oleander de Merelands. That’s not the sort of thing you forget. That’s the sort of thing that—

I stopped in my tracks. That’s the sort of thing that should make you too smart to go wandering around alone, in the dark, with no real guarantee of backup.

“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered.

The light from the ballroom didn’t quite extend to the rail surrounding the terrace. The figure standing there was almost obscured by the shadows, right up until she turned to face me. For a single heart-stopping moment, it looked like Oleander: long dark hair, slim hands, and a smile full of poison. I snapped into a fighting stance, all hesitation forgotten . . . and the woman laughed, stepping forward.

The light shifted, revealing her smile to be sweet, if weary, and her hair to be a deep, true brown. “Am I that fearsome, or did Sylvester send you to put me out of my misery after dealing with those meddlesome ‘guests’ from Roan Rathad?” asked Luna. “I’ve dodged them for now, thank Titania.”

“Luna?” I dropped my hands away from my knives, reeling at the enormity of my own mistake. If I hadn’t realized who she was before I drew . . . “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

“That was my intent, given the delegation I was just meeting with. Have you seen them? Please tell me they didn’t follow you.”

“Not that I noticed,” I said, still trying to swallow my dismay. My conviction of Oleander’s presence was fading, replaced by confusion and a pounding headache. “Has anyone passed you in the last few minutes?”

“No, no one.” She turned to pluck a goblet from the rail behind her before flashing me a concerned look. “There were people here when I first came out, but they’ve gone back inside. October, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m starting to think I have.” My headache was getting worse. Where the hell were the guards? Connor was the husband of the presumptive Ducal heir. Even if they thought he was being crazy, they should have humored him and come looking for me.

“What are you talking about?” Luna’s question dragged my attention back to her. She was frowning, her silver-furred tails beginning to twitch. She wasn’t born Kitsune, but she’d picked up a lot of the body language after wearing a Kitsune skin for over a hundred years. I never would have suspected her of being something else if I hadn’t met her parents.

“I thought I was following someone,” I said lamely.

“And this phantom would be . . . ?”

There was no point in lying. If nothing else, I’d have to explain when the guards showed up—
if
the guards showed up. “Oleander de Merelands.”

Luna’s eyes widened in justified dismay. “That’s impossible. She’d never . . . she’d never dare!”

Sixteen years ago, Luna and Rayseline Torquill vanished into thin air. Our only leads pointed to Sylvester’s brother; that was why Sylvester sent me to find him. I learned a lot of things from that little errand, including what it’s like to be a fish . . . but I didn’t find the missing Torquills. They beat me home by almost three years, and I still don’t know how. Sylvester normally tells me everything. He won’t tell me that. All I knew for sure was that they made it home before I did, and that Raysel came home broken.

“It was her,” I said, trying to sound confident. Oak and ash, could I be wrong? Did I
want
to be right?

“It’s not possible. The roses would tell me.” Luna meant that literally. Her mother was the Dryad Firstborn, and Luna was essentially a Dryad of roses before she hid herself inside a Kitsune skin.

“I just—”

“We all make mistakes.” Luna nodded like she was trying to convince herself. “This must have been one of them. You’ve had a hard few days.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, uneasily. “I was meaning to find you anyway.”

She glanced away. “I thought you might. Sylvester sent a messenger to the Tea Gardens to ask if there was anything we could do to help, but we haven’t heard back.”

“Lily’s subjects are a little distracted right now,” I said. That was the understatement of the night. “Have you ever heard of anything like this? I mean, Undine aren’t supposed to get sick, are they?”

“No. They’re not.” She took an abrupt gulp from her goblet and grimaced like she’d tasted something bitter. “Maeve’s teeth, I have no idea what convinced our steward to stock this vintage . . . Undine are born of water, they live by water, and they don’t get sick. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Right.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Medicine gets a lot more complicated when half the people involved aren’t technically “alive” by any normal standard of measurement. “Would your mom know anything?”

“No, October.” Luna actually sounded amused. “Her children are plants. We
drink
water, we’re not
made
of water.”

I lowered my hand. “I had to ask.”

“I know. I’ll send word to Mother, see if she might have encountered this sometime in the past. It’s a long shot, but since we can’t ask my grandmother . . . ”

“Yeah.” I laughed sourly. “There’s a quest for some other idiot: looking for Maeve so they can get medical details for all her descendants.” Our King and Queens have been missing for hundreds of years. Someone’s eventually going to have to go and find them. Personally, I have other problems to deal with.

“I suppose that’s true,” Luna agreed, rubbing her forehead. “It’s a very warm night. The summers were never this warm when I was younger.”

“If you say so,” I said. California has a reputation for strange weather patterns, but the Summerlands are in a league of their own. I’ve seen snowstorms in July and heat waves in December. “I’m going to be at the Tea Gardens for a while, and then . . . well, I don’t know where I’ll be after that. Check with May. If she doesn’t know where to find me, check with—check with Tybalt. He usually seems to know where I am.”

Luna’s smile was brief and knowing. “Yes, he
does
go out of his way to keep tabs on you, doesn’t he? One might think he cared.”

I groaned. “Don’t you start, too.”

“You should be flattered. He’s a sweet man, in his way.” She paused before adding, “My daughter’s mad, you know.”

I stared at her.

Unheeding, Luna continued, “People think I don’t see it because I’m mad, too, in a quieter way, but madness isn’t blindness. I lived with my father. I know what she is. I can’t blame her. I still can’t help feeling she had as much choice in her madness as I had in mine, and chose the wrong path.”

“Luna, what are you—”

“I was afraid for her. That’s why we found her a husband. Saltmist was begging for a treaty, what with that madwoman Riordan sniffing at the borders of Roan Rathad and them so restricted from intervention, and Raysel needed an anchor.” Her eyes were far away; she wasn’t talking to me anymore. “We were trying to save her the way my parents never saved me.”

“Luna?” I put a hand on her shoulder, jerking it away almost immediately. “You’re burning up!”

“I don’t feel well.” She wiped her forehead again, giving me a pleading look. “Can you tell Sylvester to turn the summer down?”

“You’re shaking.” I caught her hand. Her fingers were so hot that they felt like they might blister my skin. “Come on. We need to go inside.”

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to tug away. “It’s just warm.”

“You have a fever. That’s not fine.” Purebloods almost never get sick. When they do, it’s either a laughable thing, over in a matter of hours, or serious enough to be incredibly scary. Luna’s parents were Firstborn, making her blood purer than most. If she was sick, it wasn’t going to be the easy kind of illness.

“It’s not?” she asked. The color was draining from her cheeks, leaving her pale—too pale. Whatever was happening to her couldn’t be entirely natural.

“No. Come on, now. We need to find Sylvester.”

“If you say so,” she said, and reeled, knocking her goblet to the terrace as she slumped toward me. The heat from her skin was intense. “Is there time for me to faint?”

I slid an arm around her, propping her up. She turned wide, haunted eyes toward me. Threads of pink and yellow were lacing through her irises, eroding their familiar brown. “Oh, oak and
ash
,” I whispered.

“Has my father heard us? Is he coming?”

“Luna—” Luna couldn’t escape her father in the shape she was born in, and so she stole the skin of a dying Kitsune and fled to the Summerlands. I’d seen the colors bleed into her eyes twice, and both times she was under such stress that she almost reverted back to her original form.

“I forgot my candle,” she said, in a voice as thin and strained as wind through the trees. Then she went limp, eyes closing. I staggered, trying not to drop what was suddenly a dead weight.

“Luna?” There was no reply. I lowered her to the terrace, fumbling for a pulse. “No. No, not you, too. Don’t die. Please don’t die.” I slid her head into my lap in the vague hope that it might help her breathe, and looked frantically up and down the terrace. There was no one in either direction.

Taking a deep breath, I tilted back my head and screamed for help.

 

 

 

I
’D BEEN SHOUTING FOR A GOOD FIVE MINUTES when a tipsy Hind staggered out of the ballroom. She had a champagne flute dangling precariously from one hand, and was already starting to scold me for making too much noise when she realized what was happening in front of her. Her cloven hooves clattered as she staggered to a stop.

The sound barely registered; it was her champagne flute shattering against the terrace floor that snapped me out of my panic, like the breaking glass somehow flipped a switch inside my brain. I sat up straight, ordering, “Go inside and send the first person you can find wearing the Duke’s livery to me,” in my best “I am a Knight of this Duchy, do not fuck with me” tone.

I turned my attention back to Luna as the Hind turned and fled. She was still breathing, but her fever seemed to be getting worse, and that couldn’t possibly be good. I reached for her goblet, intending to use whatever was left of its contents to cool her down, and paused.

Purebloods almost never get sick. Oleander’s weapon of choice was poison. The two weren’t necessarily connected, but did I really want to take that chance?

I was staring at the goblet like I expected it to turn into a snake and bite me when a wonderfully familiar voice demanded, “Tree and thorn, October, what in the name of Oberon’s honor is going on out here!”

There’s just one man in Shadowed Hills—maybe just one man in all of Faerie—who can say things like “in the name of Oberon’s honor” and sound like he believes what he’s saying. Not even Luna’s condition was enough to quash my relief as I twisted around to face him. “Etienne. Root and branch, I’m glad you’re here.”