Page 2 of The Innocent Sleep

I put my hand over hers, trapping it where it was, keeping her close to me. “You know how my first wife died.” Sweet Anne had been as mortal as the morning. She would have been long gone even had all things played out perfectly.

But I would still have changed the past, had I been able to do so. Even now.

“And you know I’m basically unkillable.” She stepped closer, until I could smell the salt-sweet of her skin. “Can we try to be happy? Please? For me? For us? So I can be in a decent mood and not totally terrified when I go to tell Quentin and May? Oh, ash and oak, and Raysel. Is she going to think we don’t have room for her? That we want her to lea—”

I pulled her into my arms and pressed my lips to hers, silencing her anxieties with a kiss. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would work for long; her worries would catch up with her soon enough, as they always did. But for the moment, all I wanted was to kiss her until she was breathless, then pick her up and do it over again. A baby. Our baby. A child we had made together, coming into Faerie already safe and loved, with no need to fear rejection as we had both done. She was already a mother, but I had never been a father to a child that lived, and the thought was dizzying and heady.

I took a step back, pulling her along with me, and sat down on the bed, placing her in my lap as I continued the all-important task of kissing her anxieties away. My little fish had many anxieties. This could take a while.

When I finally stopped kissing her, it was to lean back and smile without letting her go. “A baby,” I breathed. “Our baby. I’ve never been a parent before.”

I had come close, down the years, had taken the uncle’s role at every opportunity, but a child of my own, to love and raise in safety and in joy, had never been a part of my life. October snorted, like she wanted to argue, then leaned over, resting her head against my shoulder. “Our baby,” she agreed. “I guess it’s time to start talking about names. Oh, and there’s that whole Sleeping Beauty story thing. Do purebloods have any weird ‘Hey we have a baby now’ traditions that I need to know about?”

I swallowed my laughter. “Well, there won’t be a christening, if that’s what you’re asking. There will be a party, however, to present the infant to the local nobility, and to allow them the opportunity to provide gifts. It’s traditional for the Firstborn of the parents to be invited. They never attend, of course.”

“Except that in my case, they actually might,” she said, with a groan.

“That’s a problem for tomorrow,” I said, and leaned down to kiss her again. This seemed like an excellent way to pass the next several hours.

That was when she screamed and jerked away, almost falling out of my lap. I held her where she was, staring wordlessly as she spasmed and thrashed, clearly caught in the web of some agonizingly painful physical reaction with no visible source.

She kept screaming. I stared at her, trying to find the words that would take her pain away, trying to figure out what enemy was attacking her so. The bedroom door slammed open. May burst into the room, her eyes gone wide and wild, and air around her crackling with the scent of cotton candy and ashes.

“Toby?” she demanded, a note of shrill terror in her voice. Her eyes snapped to me. “What’s wrong with her? Why is she screaming?” Then: “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I said, and I could hear the horror in my own voice. “I was kissing her, and she just—”

October was struggling to breathe, even as she continued to scream. It seemed impossible that her body should still be producing sound, that she should be anything but silent and unconscious from a lack of air, all apart from whatever was happening to her. Quentin appeared behind May in the doorway, his eyes fixed on October and a short sword already drawn and in his hand. Jasmine, close behind him, was just as visibly horrified as the others. None of them seemed to have any better idea than I did why this was happening.

I couldn’t let her go, couldn’t go looking for whatever was causing her such endless pain. All I could do was hold her fast, keeping her from falling to the floor as she screamed and writhed.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she managed a break in her screaming long enough for her to catch her breath. Silence fell, broken by the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs. She looked to May, gasping as she struggled to speak. “Is that . . . Raysel?”

“She’s asleep in her room,” said May. “She was exhausted. I know that seems odd, given the whole ‘cursed to sleep for a century’ thing, but magical sleep and real sleep aren’t the same thing. She’s fine.”

October took another breath. It sounded painful. It sounded like a dagger in my own heart.

“Someone . . . on . . . stairs,” she said.

May looked at her in horror before she whirled to stare at whoever was coming down the hall. She paled at the sight, taking a half-step back, putting herself more firmly in the bedroom door. “You can’t be here.”

October tried to stand. I didn’t let her go.

Quentin turned. “You!”

This time, when October tried to stand, I allowed it, and stood with her, close behind, putting my hands on her shoulders. Not to hold her in place—to be sure she knew that I was there, for anything she needed. She drew her knives, keeping them low by her sides, and I shifted slightly to make it easier for her to strike if the need arose.

The smell of roses wafted down the hall, woody and wild and tantalizingly familiar. I wanted to follow those roses, to sniff at them until I understood where they were coming from. October stepped forward, and I let her, lowering my hands as she left me behind.

“Quentin,” she said.

Her squire ducked his head as he hurried into the room and moved to stand beside her. May remained in the doorway, eyes on our unseen intruder.

“Child of mine,” said a female voice, familiar and not, all at the same time. I saw May stiffen, and I knew who had come for us. “Child of mine, you cannot stand against me. Stand aside.”

May glanced at October, agonized, before she moved out of the doorway to make way for the woman who appeared in her place. Titania stepped into the room, looking flatly at October. Her expression was almost neutral, more dismissively unimpressed than anything else. Her hair and clothing were once again impeccable, all signs of the earlier battle washed away. I couldn’t look at her directly. She was so much more than we were, and she had caught me so easily before this . . .

“You can’t hurt me,” said October, my brave girl. “You can’t hurt any of us. You’re not allowed to harm my family.”