7: The Mad King It wasn’t long after the confrontation with the detective before a social worker appeared. She was a small, round woman with dark circles under her eyes and a pen stuck in her bun. She blinked at Beri owlishly through too-big gsses as if she’d never seen anything like him, and to be fair, she probably hadn’t.

  She sat in the same chair the detective had vacated with a slightly nervous smile and an absent pat to her hair. None of these people believed he was who he said, but their mannerisms certainly implied they thought he was someone.

  Beri asked, “Are we under arrest?”

  The woman frowned, checking her notebook as if she had missed some vital piece of information. “Is who under arrest?”

  He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, struggling, not for the first time tonight, to keep his composure. “Am I under arrest?”

  “Oh, I have no idea,” she said. “My name is Lindsay. I’m a social worker for the hospital. I’m here to do your mental health evaluation. Will you confirm your name, please, for HIPPA?”

  He didn’t bother to ask what HIPPA was. He didn’t actually care. He dropped his hand to answer her questions. Finally, he thought. Someone to determine I haven’t lost my mind. “Beriani Quintinar.”

  Lindsay looked down at her notebook again with the same bewildered expression. “That’s not what it says on your chart.”

  Beri sighed. “High King Beriani of Royal House Quintinar, Ruler of the Three Kingdoms and Lord of Avalon.”

  “There we go.” She ticked a box with a second pen. She must have forgotten where she’d stashed the first one. It was the sort of thing Katie would do, though he suspected in Lindsay’s case it was less because she’d run out of Ritalin than due to exhaustion and overwork. He softened toward her.

  Lindsay nodded decisively. “That’s quite a mouthful. I can see why you started with the short version. Admissions said you don’t have your ID?”

  Beri shook his head. “I left it in Avalon. This was a very st-minute excursion.”

  Lindsay kept her expression so still she might have come directly from the Seelie Court. “The chart says you got here by magic. Under normal circumstances, I would write that under my ‘delusions’ column but in your case, I’m going to believe it.” She smiled just a little, then held up her clipboard to let him gnce at it. “Just kidding. I don’t have columns.”

  He didn’t smile, but her manner was kind and he felt more at ease than he had since the attack. His stomach roiled when he remembered it. Poor Katie. Those vindictive monsters still had her and he was too busy trying to make a social worker in Denver believe his name was his name to come after her. Something cruel in his mind whispered, She’s already dead, fool, but he shoved the thought aside again.

  There were a great many ‘pretty brunettes’ in the worlds. There was only one Katie.

  “Tough crowd,” Lindsay muttered. “Okay. So, what brings you in today, Beriani? May I call you that?”

  There was literally no one who called him that. He let it stand for the sake of brevity. “My friend and I were assaulted in an alley behind a punk club.” He held up his bandaged hand. “I was injured in the fight.”

  “Oh,” Lindsay said. “Tell me more about that.”

  At this point, he would have lied about it if he could. Armed men shoved her into a car. But the Royal Mantle he’d inherited during his coronation ceremony precluded it. It made magic both more powerful and more unpredictable; lies could do any number of odd things in the mouth of a fey with this much power, including harming or dispelling the Mantle completely. So, he told her the truth just as he’d repeated it to the police, as precisely as he could remember it. Lindsay, at least, didn’t look disgusted or disbelieving.

  “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” She asked.

  The question was almost amusing. “No. Of course not.”

  Her other questions were fairly innocuous: how many times a week are you unable to stop worrying? Have you had any trauma? What type? Do you feel like you’re gifted, or maybe special in some way? I guess that would be a yes, wouldn’t it, since you’re the High King of Faerie. Have you ever had an experience with psychic powers or telepathy? How upsetting did you find that? Here’s a silly one, hahaha. Do people ever follow you? Paparazzi, really? Well, that makes sense if you’re the High King of Faerie, teehee. I imagine that’s upsetting, would you agree with that? How do you sleep? Oh, goodness, every night? Why do you think that is, stress? Each time, she made some note on her un-columned page with her second pen.

  “Last one.” Lindsay’s voice throughout the conversation had been calm and kind, and it didn’t change now. “Do you ever think about hurting yourself or others?”

  Beri raised both eyebrows. “We’ll tell you the same thing we told the police. We killed two of our attackers, and the rest took the bodies when they left.”

  For the first time, Lindsay looked surprised. “Oh you–you actually killed someone? Today?”

  “Today,” Beri agreed.

  “Okay.” A subtle frown knelt between her eyebrows. “Have you ever killed anyone else?”

  Beri leaned back to study her more closely, an unpleasant mixture of shame and guilt swirling in his belly at her question. What was she about? “Of course. We were king during the Ogre War. We executed both Seasons and the Lord of the Host, among others. It’s fairly common knowledge.”

  Lindsay nodded, writing on her notepad again. “Okay. I think those are all the questions I have for you, Beriani. Thank you for your help.”

  He flinched, clenching his jaw over an offended excmation. She didn’t mean anything by that, he reminded himself. She’s an American, speaking English, in America. She can have no idea how rude ‘thank you’ is in Faerie.

  Lindsay was lucky she’d said it to him instead of the theoretical other Sidhe magus he’d been imagining the whole evening. Beri was fully capable of turning her into a bird and forcing her skyward with a hard wind until she died of exhaustion and fright. But he wouldn’t. His governesses had taught him manners.

  The case worker left soon afterward, and he found himself alone again, this time for hours. He texted everyone in his contact list about his whereabouts, expecting no answer at this time of night and receiving exactly that. Then, hoping he might get some signal from Katie, he scrolled his social media until the phone died and she still hadn’t reached out. There was nothing left to do. He leaned back against the hard hospital bed to stare up at the ceiling lights until green circles fred against his retinas. His hand hurt terribly, but he had not been offered painkillers since he first arrived at the ER. It was probably for the best. He might have taken them just to assuage the boredom. In all, he counted off three hours and sixteen minutes while he waited, and the stroke of midnight as Saturday night became Sunday morning.

  His doctor, a young man with a sandy mustache, came in without announcing himself, followed by a police officer and an orderly in pale blue scrubs. Beri sat up, interested. Perhaps they would finally let him leave. He couldn’t go home, of course. Detective Jordan had made that clear enough. But at least he could find a hotel room and shower away the sticky sweat coating his skin.

  “I’m sorry about that wait.” The doctor was too busy examining the chart in his hand to meet Beri’s eyes. “It took a while to find you a bed.”

  “A bed?” Beri frowned. “What do you mean?”

  The doctor finally looked up. “We’re pcing you on a seventy-two hour psych hold at the recommendation of the hospital social worker. She’s concerned you might be a danger to yourself or others.”

  Beri stared. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out at first. Finally, he managed, “On whose recommendation? On Lindsay’s? That little traitor! We should have turned her into a bird after all!”

  The doctor and the orderly exchanged conversational gnces. Beri’s stomach abruptly sank. He had a vivid, terrible feeling this trip was about to go even further south than it had thus far.

  The doctor said, “Sir, I’ve written you a prescription for some medicine that’s going to help you feel like your old self in no time, all right? Just a little liquid suspension. You don’t even have to swallow a pill.”

  Slowly, carefully enough that he hoped not to cause arm, Beri slid off the hospital bed in preparation. “No. We will not accept drugs of any sort.”

  “I understand why you feel that way.” The doctor made a subtle gesture to the police officer behind him, who leaned past the cubicle’s sliding gss door to gesture outside it. “But this is going to make you feel much better.”

  “We seriously doubt that.” The orderly surreptitiously circled around to Beri’s left side. “Stay where you are. We will be leaving this hospital tonight.”

  In a calm, reasonable tone, the doctor said, “We just want you to spend a little time in a safe pce where we can make sure you aren’t in danger. The medicine is just to make you feel calmer.”

  The police officer pushed the sliding gss door all the way open, leaving a gap almost rge enough to drive a car through. Four burly men in blue scrubs and a woman with cartoons printed on her top stalked into the room, postures tensed for a fight.

  Beri’s heart picked up speed as they approached. The woman’s crepe-soled shoes squeaked on the floor. They were too close; there was no time for evocation. Defense would be inborn spells, quick and dirty. He drew magic in with a breath, pulling in a breeze hard enough to ruffle the clothes of the approaching staff. He formed it instantly into a force strong enough to change the direction of the air particles. He blew out. The sound of wind rushed through the room as the temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant. He shoved his hand palm up toward the ceiling. The closest orderly flew off his feet, held aloft by the shifting air currents.

  The orderly screamed.

  The doctor shouted, “Natalie, ring it!’

  Beri had just enough time to notice the shiny metal hand bell the nurse lifted before it pealed out a cnging, brassy tone. The strength of his magic abandoned him all at once, leaving him hollow and gasping. The orderly tumbled back onto the tile with a sickening crunch and another scream, this time one of pain instead of fear.

  Steel bells, Beri thought, dismayed. They’d come prepared.

  He didn’t have time to register what was happening before the orderlies rushed him. He was ft on his back on a gurney, a man on each limb and one holding his head before he had the chance to resist. Someone shouted; the doctor hurried forward with a glinting hypodermic needle in his hand. That deadly bell chimed, over and over and over, ringing with the frantic strength of the nurse’s fear.

  When the doctor stabbed him in the thigh, Beri had just enough time to be grateful the needle was titanium before he lost consciousness.