“Most people call me Jazz,” said Jasmine, with a semiavian bob of her head. “May’s told me so much about you. It’s great to finally meet you.”
Still coughing from the wine I’d inhaled, I gave Jazz a quick once-over without even trying to be subtle. She was barefoot under her brown velvet gown, and barely topped five feet. Her skin was a rich medium-brown, and her hair was glossy black, filled with green-and-blue highlights. Her eyes were amber, rimmed with brown. Bird’s eyes. They confirmed her bloodline; Raven-dancer, skinshifter cousins of the Swanmays, probably from one of the flocks that originated in India.
Raven-dancers used to be considered death omens. Just like Fetches.
Catching my appraisal, Jasmine said, “I promise my intentions are good.”
May laughed. “Don’t mind Toby. She’s my parent and original.”
It takes more than an unexpected girlfriend to get me too flustered for Shakespeare. “Fairy, skip hence,” I replied. “I have forsworn your bed and company.”
“Haven’t,” she countered. “The rent would be awful, and you’d have no one to do the dishes.”
“Fair enough.” I turned to Jazz, offering her a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
“I know, right?” She grinned. I decided to like her. “I was starting to feel like May was hiding one of us away.”
“Toby’s been too busy inheriting a County to talk to us peons,” May said.
I groaned. “Oh, don’t start.”
Jazz cocked her head to the side. “You didn’t want it?”
“What gives you that idea?”
“The way you wrinkle your nose when May says ‘County.’ ” She laughed. “She wasn’t kidding when she said you looked alike.”
“There are reasons for that.” I gave May a sidelong look.
She shook her head. “It’s cool. She knows I’m your Fetch.”
“You do?” I looked back to Jazz, surprised. A lot of people won’t even talk to a Fetch. What sort of person dates one?
“I’m a raven.” She shrugged. “We’re psychopomps. If she wants to be an omen of death when we’re not hanging out, that’s cool.”
“So you’re saying you don’t mind if your girlfriend has a job?”
“Pretty much.”
“Congratulations, May,” I said, reclaiming my glass. “You found someone weirder than you are.”
“It took work, but it was worth it.” She winked at me. “And now we’re off.”
“To do what?”
“Dance!” She grabbed Jasmine’s hand, hauling her back into the crowd. I returned to my spot against the wall. That’s yet another thing we don’t have in common: I hate dancing.
So May was dating a girl. Huh. Faerie isn’t hung up on sexual orientation—experimentation is normal when you have forever—but I’m straight, and I expected May to be the same way. I kept telling people not to assume we were the same. Maybe it was time to start taking my own advice.
A petite Hob with pale eyes and honey-colored hair paused, offering her tray. “Fancy a drink, ma’am?” I didn’t recognize her, but that wasn’t unusual; the big knowes often borrow servers from one another for the big parties, just to take up the slack.
“Got one.” I raised my glass. “Are you new, or just guesting?”
“New, ma’am,” she said, and bobbed a curtsy. The contents of her tray remained miraculously unspilled. “Just hired from Wild Strawberries, ma’am.”
“Ah. Cool.” Wild Strawberries is the Tylwyth Teg Duchy up by Sacramento, which probably explained why she’d moved on. The Tylwyth are nice folks, but they’re hard on the staff. Hobs don’t usually settle long in their holdings. “Well, welcome. I’m one of Sylvester’s knights; my name’s—”
“Oh, I know you! ” she said. “We all know you, ma’am. You’re Toby Daye, the Duke’s favorite.”
“Uh . . . if you say so.” I blinked. His favorite? That was news to me.
“Don’t mind me, ma’am, I ramble.” She winked, moving the tray to her other hand. “My name’s Nerium, call me Neri, everyone does. I’d love to chat, but it’s my first party here; I need to make a good showing if I want them to keep me on.”
Her cheer was infectious. I smiled. “You’ll do fine.”
“I hope so, ma’am. If I see the Duke before he sees you, I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.” She curtsied again before vanishing into the crowd.
I settled against the wall, taking slow sips of my wine. The tempo of the music changed, sliding into a slower, statelier pattern. I felt a hand on my shoulder, accompanied by the faint scent of dogwood flowers. I turned, my instinctive smile tempering to something more solemn than the norm. “Your Grace.”
Sylvester nodded, his own smile as tempered as mine. “You made it.”
“I did. May wouldn’t let me skip out.”
“Remind me to give that girl a Barony. May I have this dance?”
If there’s anyone who can get me onto the dance floor, it’s him. I put my glass on the table. “We need to talk,” I said. “It’s about Lily.”
“That’s why we’re dancing,” he said, and took my hands, pulling me along. “Don’t look at your feet. Just trust me.”
I don’t take that sort of suggestion from most people. Sylvester’s special. I kept my chin up, letting him guide me into the dance. His steps were steady enough to make up for how unsure mine were. He was doing what a good liege is supposed to do: he was making me better than I would be on my own.
“Sylvester, I—”
“In a moment,” he said, and bore me along.
We circled twice before he spun me out, fingers circling my wrist, and pulled me back to the stability of his arms. I looked around. We had somehow managed to move to the center of the crowd, where the sheer volume of the bodies around us would keep even the most experienced eavesdropper from making sense of our conversation.
“Now,” said Sylvester, leaning toward me so that his words fell into the hollow space between our bodies. “Is Lily as bad as her handmaid seemed to fear?”
I nodded. “As bad, if not worse. She’s really, really sick.” I gave a quick run-down of her symptoms.
The muscles around his eyes tightened. “If the Queen—”
“She won’t. But I’m sure you understand why I can’t stay long.”
“I do. If there’s anything we can do, you need only ask. You know that.”
It was a shot in the dark, but it was one I needed to take. “Did Lily ever tell you where she hid her pearl?”
“No.” There was honest regret in his voice. “Your mother might have known, but I never did. Lily and I . . . respected each other for the shared elements of our past. That didn’t make us friends.”
“Damn,” I muttered. I looked past him, trying to figure out what else to ask, and caught a flash of gold from the other side of the crowd. I frowned. “Who’s that?”
Sylvester didn’t turn. “That would be Raysel.” His voice was flat and impassive.
“Raysel?” I looked closer. He was right; it was her. I guess a conveniently timed summer cold was just a little bit too much to ask.
Rayseline Torquill looked superficially like her father, but where he was understated and elegant, she was gaudy and overdone. The blue rosettes on her gold silk gown clashed with her hair. The bodice was cut too low and the skirt was cut too high, but no one was going to question the Duke’s daughter at her own family’s Beltane Ball. She looked like a tacky costume party rendition of a fairy-tale princess.
Her partner . . . wasn’t her husband. I stared. He was dressed entirely in blue, and the formal cut of his clothes echoed Quentin’s—but Quentin looked comfortable in his court clothes, and this boy looked like he was longing for jeans. His hair was a rich gold a few shades darker than Raysel’s gown. A pale track of pixie-sweat glimmered in the air behind them as he spun her around the dance floor, expression dour.
“Manuel.” I looked back to Sylvester. “How is he?”
“Doing better. Que
ntin tells me he was even seen smiling the other night.”
“Good.”
I was a petty criminal in the service of a man named Devin before I was a knight of Shadowed Hills. I went to Devin when Evening was murdered, and the help he gave me included two of the kids who’d replaced me in his entourage: Manuel and his sister Dare. Devin was always a bastard, but I thought he loved me, and I never dreamed he’d betray me. Even after I knew how wrong I’d been, I didn’t know the kids were involved. Not until Manuel pulled a gun.
Devin and Dare both died that night. I lived, and Manuel blamed me. That was okay; I blamed me, too. I should’ve seen the truth sooner, or reacted faster, or . . .
You can live your life in “should” and never change anything. What’s done is done. We buried our dead. I went home. Manuel went to Shadowed Hills to hate me in peace. We’d been avoiding each other since then, a practice Sylvester was wise enough not to object to. Some wounds only heal with time.
The dance was ending. Sylvester spun me one last time before leading me back to the wall, where he let go of my hands and bowed. I curtsied in return, putting every ounce of courtly courtesy I had into the gesture.
“I would stay,” he said, as he straightened. “But a host’s duties demand I go. Will you consult with Luna before you leave?”
“Absolutely. I’m hoping she might know . . . something.”
“No rest for the wicked, is there?” He smiled sadly before he turned, slipping into the crowd. The band was striking up a fresh waltz. The dancers swirled around him, and he was gone, leaving me to return to my original position alone.
Someone had shifted my wine to the side to make room for a tray of canapés. I gave it a dubious look, considering the wisdom of drinking something I’d left unattended, and settled for picking it up and putting it on the nearest tray of dishes to be returned to the kitchen. Better safe than really, really sorry. The stem of the glass was coated with powdered sugar from a stack of tea cakes. It came off on my fingers, leaving them gritty. I slipped my hand through one of the slits in my dress and wiped it surreptitiously against my underskirt as I returned my attention to the crowd, scanning for Luna.
May and Jazz flashed past, a streak of black and silver amidst the riot of color, and I smiled. My smile grew as I saw Connor O’Dell—the husband Raysel hadn’t been dancing with—moving toward me, skirting the edge of the crowd with exaggerated care. Selkies tend to be awkward on dry land, and Connor was no exception. He saw me watching, and flashed me a grin that made my knees go weak.
“Hey,” he said, once he was close enough to be heard without shouting. He didn’t bother concealing the worry in his seal-dark eyes. “Is there any news?”
“No,” I said. “I’m heading for the Tea Gardens as soon as I’m finished here. Have you seen Luna?”
“She was with the delegation from Roan Rathad a little while ago.” He grimaced, shoulders dipping upward in an involuntary semi-shrug. I understood the reaction. Roan Rathad was his original home, a mostly Selkie fiefdom that swears fealty to the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. It was Saltmist that decided he was expendable enough to be sold into marriage to a madwoman for political reasons, and Roan Rathad didn’t fight them. I’ve never asked whether it was our relationship that made them see him that way. After all, a man who was willing to sully himself by getting involved with a changeling would probably never marry expediently on his own.
If that’s why they did it, I genuinely don’t want to know.
“That explains the clothes.” I gave him a sympathetic once-over. He was wearing white linen trousers with a smoky blue tunic trimmed in silver; the colors of his particular Selkie clan. He looked like a ghost next to the vibrant colors of the rest of Shadowed Hills. The contrast was a visual reminder of his status in the Court: always an outsider, whether he was technically part of the ruling family or not.
It was also, if I was being entirely honest with myself, a damn good look for him, contrasting with his dark coloring and making him look like a movie star from a 1940s film noir mystery. Very few men can pull off white linen without looking like they’re about to hit the beach, but on Connor, it made him look like he was about to hit the dance floor at some nightclub in Monaco.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged for real this time. “I like your dress.”
“May helped me pick it out.” A new song was starting. “Can you point me in Luna’s general direction?”
“I can do you one better.” He offered his hand, coupling it with a slightly lopsided smile. “May I have this dance?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Fastest route across the floor?”
“You got it.”
“And so do you.” I slid my hand into his. Rayseline was perpetually jealous of my nonrelationship with Connor, but for once, I didn’t feel compelled to refuse the invitation. Turning down a dance on Beltane is an insult almost beyond measure, as is snubbing an old friend. Connor and I could waltz the night away if we wanted to, and Raysel couldn’t say a damn thing about it.
He tugged me onto the floor, still cautious. People parted around us, making room for us to move without knocking into anyone. It helped that he was recognizably a Selkie, with fingers webbed to the first knuckle and short brown hair stippled with gray like the blotches on a seal’s coat—even people who didn’t know that he was the husband of the current Ducal heir would move aside, out of politeness. No one wants to be responsible for causing one of the polite, slightly-awkward sea fae to go sprawling.
I was standing close enough to see the edge-to-edge darkness of his eyes, irises blending seamlessly into pupils. They were the color of the sea at midnight, and just as easy to drown in. I’ve been drowning in those eyes for years. Every time I thought I might be learning to swim, he just smiled at me, and I went under again.
“I know you hate to dance,” Connor murmured, beginning to waltz me in an almost straight line across the floor. “At least you might get the pleasure of seeing me fall on my ass.”
“Oh, right. I guess that’s a fair exchange.”
“Why else would they call us the Fair Folk?”
“Because we steal their kids and cows if they call us fairies?”
“I mean besides that,” he said, and smiled. The expression died quickly. “How bad is Lily really? Don’t lie to me. Please.”
“Bad.” I took a shaky breath, forcing my back to stay straight as I followed him mechanically through the motions of the dance. I could see flashes of night sky through the open doors on the far wall. We’d have a much easier time finding Luna once we reached the terrace outside. “Really bad.”
“Did you ask . . . ” He glanced around, lowering his voice before he asked, “The Luidaeg?”
“Yeah. She said she couldn’t help me. We’re on our own this time.”
He took an unsteady breath. “Root and branch.”
“My thought exactly. So I’m going to talk to Luna, see if she has any—” I stopped mid-sentence as the scent of familiar magic cut through the air, sharp enough to make my sinuses ache. It was a mix of sulfuric acid and crushed oleanders, as out of place among the delicate perfumes of the dancers as a fox in a henhouse.
Connor blinked as our unsteady waltz came stumbling to a halt. “Toby?”
“Hush,” I hissed, putting all my concentration into trying to follow the scent back to its source. I hadn’t smelled that combination in years, but I would’ve known it even without the immediate, visceral reminder of the dream Karen sent me. I’ll never forget Oleander de Merelands’ magic.
Especially not when it’s coming in with the wind off the terrace.
“What’s going—”
“Call the guards,” I said. “Call Sylvester. Now.” I pulled away without waiting for his reply, gathering my skirts and bolting for the door like Cinderella leaving the ball for the battlefield. Connor shouted something, the exclamations from the dancers I shoved out of my path rendering his words unintelligible. I didn’t stop. Oleander stole my life from me once
already. I’d be damned before I let her do it to anyone else.
NINE
THE 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.