Full of Briars Read online

  Four

  Everything was not going to be okay.

  My parents had wanted to meet Toby on neutral ground to discuss their decision, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. Summoning Toby back to Muir Woods would just make her tense. Going to the house would look like we were there to pick up my things. And it wasn’t like meeting her at Shadowed Hills would have been any better, since it would have blown my cover further without actually making things any better. Dad had been the one to suggest a mortal restaurant, one where we’d all be wearing human disguises and hence be unlikely to be recognized by anyone who didn’t already know us.

  I’d been the one to suggest Cat in the Rafters, since I knew it was owned by a member of Tybalt’s Court, and Cait Sidhe don’t care who is or isn’t an heir to the Divided Courts. As far as most of them are concerned, we’re all useless, and exist only to get in the way of good, honest felines. Getting a reservation there is supposed to be really difficult—it’s one of the best steakhouses in San Francisco—but it helps to have connections. I’d texted Raj, and Raj had pointed out that humans don’t usually go to steakhouses for breakfast. Then he’d spoken to his uncle, and now, two hours later, we were seated in the private dining room, waiting for the rest of our party to arrive.

  “This is . . . rustic,” said Dad.

  “Be nice,” chided Mom.

  “What? All I said was that it was rustic.”

  “Which everyone with any sense knows means ‘barbaric,’ at least when spoken by someone of your social status,” said a mild, faintly irritated voice from the shadows. A patch of shade peeled off and became a teenage boy about an inch shorter than me, thin, brown-skinned, and lanky, with black-tipped russet hair. Raj didn’t walk across the room: he slunk, moving fluidly and without seeming to use any actual bones. He paused when he reached the table, long enough to give my parents a lingering, utterly shameless look. Then he fell into the seat beside me, slinging his legs over mine before reaching across me to snatch the roll off my plate and begin munching. Between my body and my food, he was claiming me as his property in every feline way he knew.

  Dad frowned. “Quentin?”

  Right. “Mother, Father, meet Prince Raj of the Court of Dreaming Cats.”

  “And his best friend,” said Raj, not bothering to swallow his mouthful of roll first. His voice was muffled by the doughy mass, but not enough to take the edge off his words. “I know your son in all ways better than you do. Remember that, as you consider taking him from me.”

  “Oak and ash, Raj, don’t talk to my parents like that! Actually, don’t talk to anyone like that. You know modern grammar. Use it.” I didn’t have another roll, so I couldn’t throw it at him. I settled for wadding up my napkin and bouncing it off his head.

  He frowned at me, clearly unrepentant. “They’re purebloods. They don’t listen to modern grammar.”

  “No, that’s your uncle. My parents believe in the existence of contractions.”

  “That’s sometimes debatable,” said Mom, and laughed.

  Dad didn’t laugh. He was busy frowning at Raj. “His best friend? Really? This is the sort of company you’re keeping here, Quentin?”

  “You mean company like the future King of Cats? Um, yeah,” I said. Again, I didn’t have another roll, and thus couldn’t throw it. “Raj is going to take over for his uncle someday. He’s a prince, which means he’s the sort of company I’m supposed to be keeping, and he’s not a stuck-up jerk, which makes him better company than like, every other prince I’ve ever met. And he likes me for me.”

  “But he knows your identity,” said Dad. There was a dangerous note in his voice now. “How are you going to justify this one?”

  “I don’t have to,” I said. “He’s a Prince of the Cait Sidhe. They don’t care about our titles and positions.” I had pulled rank to get him to stop hogging the remote control, but they didn’t need to know that, and he’d promised not to tell his uncle. He hadn’t, either. We had been through a lot together in Blind Michael’s lands. Bonds like that ran deeper than anyone who hadn’t been there would ever be able to understand.

  Raj, meanwhile, was still looking at my parents like they were something unpleasant at the bottom of a jar. “You sent him away, to the knowe of a madman, with no one to help or hear him when he cried,” he said. “How are you going to justify that? If we’re going to demand justifications of one another, I don’t think I’m going to be scrambling alone.”

  “Raj, come on,” I said quietly. My cheeks and the tips of my ears were burning. Embarrassment is not my friend. “Back off.”

  “No,” he said, shifting his attention to me. “At least my father had the decency to outright admit that he was selling me for the sake of his own ambition, before he went and betrayed us all.”

  “What is he talking about?” asked Mom.

  “Um,” I said. “His dad tried to lead an insurrection against his uncle—who isn’t actually his uncle by birth. That’s not how the Cait Sidhe do things. Anyway, he died in the fighting and we left the body in Annwn, along with Duchess Treasa Riordan of Dreamer’s Glass. She’s officially missing right now, since no one wants to admit that Chelsea was powerful enough to rip holes in the walls of Faerie. It would probably be regarded as untidy, and maybe Li Qin wouldn’t be allowed to keep tending the Duchy, which would be bad for everybody.”

  “I don’t mourn him,” said Raj, leaving his legs slung across my lap as he leaned back in his own seat, folded his arms across his chest, and looked imperiously down his nose at my parents. The urge to dump my water on him was getting stronger all the time. “He was my father, but he was also a fool, and my mother deserved better. Now that he’s gone permanently, maybe her memory will be held in higher regard by those who knew her in life.”

  “Oh,” said Mom. She hesitated a moment before reaching for her own roll, and saying, “I don’t remember any of this from your letters.”

  “I told you there had been some unrest in the Duchy of Dreamer’s Glass, and that the Duchess had disappeared, and that one of the other local nobles was standing steward.”

  “See, when you say it like that, it sounds perfectly reasonable, and not like a thing that princes shouldn’t be involved in at all,” said Mom. “What does that tell you?”

  “That I already have the makings of an excellent diplomat, and if you give me long enough, I’ll be able to sell icebergs to Snow Fairies,” I said brightly.

  Mom blinked. Then she began to laugh. Her cosmetic spells were back in place, making her skin as smooth and perfect as ever, but I knew what she really looked like; I could picture every delighted crease around her mouth and eyes. Knowing I was the reason she looked so happy made me want to smile. I fought the urge for a moment before I realized it was my father’s presence that was making me repress it, and so I let it out, beaming at her. If making my mother happy made me this happy, maybe my own happiness would have the same effect on him. Maybe.

  I could hope, anyway.

  Raj wasn’t finished. He looked down his nose at my father and drawled, “Well? What are your intentions here tonight?”

  Dad lifted an eyebrow. “My intentions?”

  “Toward Quentin. Would it help at all if I told you the Court of Cats would view removing him as a breakdown in diplomacy between us, and feel absolved of any need for civility between our Court and yours for the next hundred years?”

  “Given how little civility exists between our Court and yours, either nothing would change or you would be declaring war on behalf of all cats, everywhere,” said Dad. “I’m terribly sorry if it sounds like I’m doubting your ability to fulfill your threats, but that is something I would truly like to see. In all my time as High King, and my years as Crown Prince before that, I never saw the Cait Sidhe agree on anything, much less on something as large as going to war.”

  Raj scowled and took another bite of my roll. />
  “You know, I’d criticize the company you’re keeping, but you have friends now, and that’s nice,” said Mom. “You never had many friends when you were home.”

  “Because anyone who showed up at Court with kids just brought them because they wanted you to like them better,” I said. “Remember that one Baron who brought his daughter, told her to play with me, and then tried to convince you it was true love and we should be engaged immediately? Uck.”

  “She was a sweet girl,” said Dad.

  “I was six,” I countered. “The only ‘sweet girl’ I wanted to spend any time with was Penthea, because we were being explorers and we were going to find Oberon and get him to unlock the doors to deeper Faerie and then we’d be heroes and could have all the cookies we wanted.”

  “Lofty goals,” said Raj.

  “Again, six,” I said.

  The door to the private dining room opened, and Toby and Tybalt stepped inside. Both were wearing human disguises, making them seem just foreign enough to be jarring, while still familiar enough that the knot of tension at the base of my spine unsnarled a little in relief. They were here. This could still work out.

  Tybalt was wearing a cream-colored button-down shirt and brown slacks. They were probably leather, but his disguise turned them into linen, which was something of a relief. His pants could get distracting sometimes. Toby had gone for her usual “black tank top and blue jeans” combination, and I had absolute faith that her clothes would look the same with and without her illusions. She wasn’t putting on a show for my parents anymore. I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad one.

  “I see you’ve found my nephew,” said Tybalt, once they were close enough to speak without shouting. “I apologize for anything and nothing he may have done. Anything because he is my nephew, and hence my responsibility; nothing because he is a cat, and hence fully capable of extricating himself from any holes which he may have dug for himself. Raj, please, I beg you, stop treating the future High King of the Westlands as furniture. It’s untidy.”

  Raj did not remove his legs from my lap. “No,” he said. “They want to take him away. I don’t want him to go.”

  “So you’re just going to sit on him and make sure he doesn’t get up?” Toby shook her head. “What, is that a genetic thing with cats?”

  “Why, October.” Tybalt pulled out one of the free chairs for her, holding it until she sank into the cushions. “I don’t sit on you when I want you to stay put. I know it would do no good, and simply make us both late for whatever horrifying thing you were racing off to do. It’s much more effective to follow close behind and be ready to either chide or attack whatever troubles you.” He pushed her chair in before sinking down into his own.

  “We’re glad you could join us for dinner,” said Dad. “Hopefully the waiter will be back with the menus soon, and we can order.”

  “Oh, that won’t be happening,” said Tybalt. Everyone turned to look at him, except for Toby, who was looking resolutely at her napkin. “This is a Cait Sidhe-owned establishment, which is what makes it safe to conduct this meeting here. At the same time, it is . . . let’s charitably say ‘rare’ for the Court of Cats to have the opportunity to host individuals of your stature. The restaurant has been closed to all other custom for the day, and the chefs are working at assembling a menu that will show the length and breadth of their skills.”

  “What if my parents had allergies?” I asked.

  “The cooks in Muir Woods would have been informed, as they were of your parents’ preferences,” said Tybalt. “The High King and Queen travel nowhere without a certain amount of pomp, is that not so, Your Highness?”

  It took Dad a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. He nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Sometimes, getting away long enough to hit the Timmy’s for donuts is the hardest part of my week.”

  “They don’t have Tim Hortons here,” I said.

  “Then we sent you to live with savages,” Dad replied, deadpan.

  The corner of Toby’s mouth twitched. “We do okay in the baked goods department,” she said. “San Francisco likes its donuts.”

  “Ah, but Tim Hortons is a Canadian institution,” said Dad.

  “That is fascinating,” said Raj, tone implying it was anything but. “Can we get back to you promising not to take Quentin away?”

  “Raj,” said Tybalt admonishingly. “That is not how we speak to visiting royalty.”

  “That’s exactly how we speak to visiting royalty,” said Raj.

  “Not when we want something from them.”

  Toby was quiet. It was starting to worry me. I was so used to her loudly pushing her way into the center of things that her being silent for more than a few seconds was unnerving.

  “Sir Daye?” Mom’s voice was gentle. Toby glanced up, and Mom smiled. “I’m glad you could join us.”

  “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.

  Five

  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 t
he 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.”