my loss home to the ones who loved me—and then what? Without an heir, he couldn’t step aside. He’d be forced to remain King until a challenger appeared, and Princes and Princesses of Cats are rare. So rare. He could be King for years yet, delaying his marriage to October, stranding them both in lives they no longer wanted.
I could ruin everything by allowing myself to be lost. For the first time, I let myself reflect on how foolish it had been of me to intercede when Cal was endangered . . . and how little choice I’d had. Yes, I needed to take care of myself, needed to remain a viable heir for my uncle and a viable protector for the Court—but if I’d been willing to stand by and watch Cal die because I was too concerned with myself to move, I would have been no fit King.
I made a small, aggravated sound. There was no winning at this game, no perfect answer that made everything easy and gave everyone exactly what they wanted. There were only different sets of complications. There were only different ways to fail.
I’d never been in feline form for this long before. I thought uneasily of the trouble Uncle Tybalt had had with shapeshifting after the Liar—I wouldn’t even dignify that woman, or her place among the Firstborn, with her name—had been forced to release him. His imprisonment had lasted days. Mine had been hours. Surely the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. Surely I wouldn’t lose myself. Would I?
Mother never stood on two legs, not once. She was born in feline form and had died the same way. Her magic had simply refused to turn inward the way it needed to in order to accomplish transformation. But she had never lost herself. She had known her name and her place, always. She had known me. She had loved me. She had cared for my father, enough not to leave him when it became apparent how much he privileged power, but she had loved me.
I loved Helen. I loved Helen, and Quentin, and even my uncle and October. Surely that would be enough to keep me from slipping away or forgetting who I was supposed to be.
But my uncle loved October, loved her more than I thought I would ever be capable of loving anyone. I couldn’t imagine giving that much of my heart to someone else to hold. Even if I tried, I couldn’t imagine giving it to someone like October, who seemed bound and determined to make some unnamed date with death. Loving her would be like loving a natural disaster. Pleasant enough from a distance; all but guaranteed to break your heart.
I made another aggravated sound and tried to stand. My hind legs refused to obey me. That would be alarming, had I not been able to feel them; they were being stubborn due to bruising and drugs, not because of any permanent damage. I lashed my tail just to be sure. My stomach rumbled. That was new. If I was feeling well enough to be hungry, I must be recovering.
Not that there was anything in this cage worth eating. There was a small bowl of brown, crispy things, the likes of which I had seen in the shelters and occasionally on back porches in the mortal city. They smelled like they had once been part of some sort of animal, although what kind was less than clear; they had been ground and dried and processed until they became an unimpressively uniform color. I sniffed again. There were things in there that I was nowhere near hungry enough to eat.
I would be eventually. I knew that. Hunger is more than an annoyance; it’s a reminder to keep one’s strength up, to be prepared to run. But until I removed the tube, I wasn’t going to be running anywhere, and I’d already decided the tube could stay where it was until night fell.
I tucked my paws under myself and wrapped my tail around my body, intending to take another nap. They’re restorative, and it wasn’t as if I had anything else to do with my time, since no one had seen fit to provide me with an Internet connection.
“—please, I know it’s irregular, but I really think you have my cat.”
I cracked one eye open. The voice was familiar, even through the haze of pain, drugs, and ongoing exhaustion. But who in the world did I know who might be here?
“All