“Okay, kids,” she said. “Let’s go eat.”
Karen climbed out of my lap. Walther, Quentin, and I stood, and together, the five of us walked toward the door. When we were halfway there, Karen took my hand. I didn’t pull away.
SEVEN
MOST OF THE LOCAL NOBLES had loaned Arden members of their household for the duration of the conclave, making up for the shortcomings in staffing at the kingdom level. Arden was still getting established, and had a lot of hiring to do before she’d be operating at full capacity. Besides, this guaranteed those nobles a steady source of gossip, even if they weren’t attending the conclave themselves.
It also meant that when we stepped into the ballroom, Karen and I were no longer the only changelings in the place. The fact that we were the only changelings not holding serving trays wasn’t exactly reassuring, but that’s life in Faerie. Sometimes the reminders that we’ll always be a feudal society are impossible to ignore.
Tables were set up around the room. There were no assigned seats, but people tended to stick to what they knew. One table was on a raised dais, reserved for the leaders of the conclave. It held Arden, the High King and High Queen, Queen Siwan of Silences . . . and Tybalt. I stopped dead when I saw him sitting there, talking with High King Sollys, an expression of deep solemnity on his face.
The Luidaeg touched my elbow. “Muir Woods is technically within the bounds of the Court of Dreaming Cats,” she murmured, voice low enough that she probably wouldn’t be overheard. “That gives your kitty-boy equal claim to the land, if he wanted to get cranky about it. By attending this conclave, he said, ‘Hey, treat me as an equal,’ and so they are. I bet he’s on the stage when we resume. They just didn’t know he was coming in time to avoid putting him in the audience when he first showed up.”
Tybalt knew Arden. He could have told her he was coming. The fact that he hadn’t could only have been intentional, a move designed to put her off her guard. It might have been a reaction to her failure to invite him in the first place: I didn’t know. I didn’t know a lot of things, including what sort of game he was playing here, and since I couldn’t ask him, it was difficult to keep the pit in my stomach from opening even wider than it had before.
The Luidaeg gave me a sympathetic look. “Never forget that he’s from a different Court. You can love him—I know you do—and he can love you, but there are places where your differences will always win out. Maybe it’s good that this is happening now, while you still have the distance to see them.” She reached over and carefully untangled my fingers from Karen’s. “You, come with me. We need to do a circuit of the room, so everyone here remembers you’re under my protection.”
Karen bit her lip and nodded, only looking back once as the Luidaeg led her away.
Walther, Quentin, and I stood silent for a moment, taking in the room. Whoever was in charge of the decorating—probably Lowri, given how recently Madden had been woken—had pulled out all the stops. Redwood boughs draped with fog-colored ribbons formed great arcs across the ceiling, heavy with the glittering shapes of pixies and fireflies. The floor was hidden by a warm, conjured mist that smelled of blackberries and the sea. Everywhere I looked there were servers in the colors of the Kingdom, moving through the crowd with trays of drinks and small canapés. Most people were seated by this point, and the servers were bringing them baskets of fragrant bread and larger glasses of sparkling wine.
The only table not being attended by one or more servers in Arden’s livery had been claimed by the King and Queen of Highmountain. They sat alone while their Barrow Wight handmaid rushed back and forth, bringing them trays of delicacies, carting away their empty glasses, and trying to avoid colliding with any of the servers.
“Paranoid about poison?” I guessed.
“Or they’re just jerks,” said Walther. “Not uncommon, as it turns out.”
“I can take you to your table, if you want.”
All three of us turned. Madden was behind us, golden eyes glowing in the diffuse light, dressed in the colors of the Kingdom. He’d never looked so much like a seneschal. Mostly, I was just glad to see him awake and moving around.
“That would be nice,” I said. “I’m not quite sure what the pecking order here is supposed to be, apart from ‘everyone is more important than you.’”
“Nah, not everyone,” he said. “Some people are less important. But, mostly, you’re right. Come with me.” He started across the room toward one of the tables that still had open seats. One of the people already seated there had hair the color of fox fur, russet red and inhuman.
Sylvester.
For a brief moment, I considered turning and running for the door. My fiancé was ignoring me, my niece was being tormented by a woman who should have been incapable of hurting us until she woke up, and now I was being seated with my semi-estranged liege? There wasn’t enough “no, thank you” in the world. In the end, I couldn’t do it. Walther needed me here. The High King had ordered me to be here. Karen needed me to be here. I squared my shoulders, straightened as much as I could, and allowed Madden to lead us to the table.
There were seats for ten. The five occupied seats were held by Sylvester, Luna, Li Qin, Elliott, and Elizabeth Ryan, who had somehow convinced the servers to give her a large glass of whiskey instead of the sparkling wine that everyone else was drinking. She barely glanced up as we approached the table.
Sylvester, on the other hand, rose and offered me his hands. “October,” he said. There was no mistaking the delight, or the relief, in his voice. “I was hoping you’d come sit with us.”
No matter how angry with him I was, he was my liege, and the man who’d been the closest thing I had to a father for most of my life. I slipped my hands over his, letting him close his fingers around mine, and said, “I guess this is where Arden wanted us. Hi, Sylvester. Hello, Luna.”
Luna Torquill, Duchess of Shadowed Hills, and formerly a friend, did not reply. She turned her face to the side, showing me the tapered point of one white-skinned ear. Her hair was pale pink at the roots, tapering to red-black at the end, and had been partially braided to form a crown around her head, while the bulk of it fell, loose and unencumbered, down her back. She was beautiful. There was no denying that. But she wasn’t the woman who’d known me as a child, or the one who used to comfort me. That version of Luna had died when her own daughter poisoned her, forcing her to abandon her stolen Kitsune skin in order to survive.
“I met your sister,” I said, partially out of spite, partially out of sheer stubbornness. I wanted her to see me. I wanted her to acknowledge that we had a history, and she couldn’t just cut me out of her life because she didn’t want me anymore. “Ceres, I mean, in case you have other sisters. She’s living in Silences these days. She said she was glad to hear that you were doing well.”
“I’m not doing well,” said Luna. “My daughter yet sleeps, for all that you changed her blood. When your mother changed your own, you woke. The same for your own child. You’ve kept my Rayseline from me. So no, October, I have nothing to say to you.”
“Luna,” said Sylvester, in a chiding tone.
Luna said nothing.
“I think I know why that is, actually,” said Walther. I turned to look at him. So did Sylvester. Walther flushed red, and continued, “When I’m mixing a potion, a lot of it is about intent, telling the spell what I want it to do.”
“All magic is like that,” I said finally, pulling my hands out of Sylvester’s and sitting down. He held on to me for a few seconds longer than I wanted him to, resisting my efforts to remove myself. In the end, however, he had to let me go. Anything else would have been rude.
“Sure, but that’s the point,” said Walther. He sat. So did Quentin. As if by magic, servers appeared to set goblets and bread in front of the three of us. “When your mother changed you, she wanted you to wake up. When you changed your daughter, you made her mortal, and
you knew she needed to wake up or she was going to die. So you both brought intent to what you were doing. You removed the elf-shot as part of removing the parts of the blood that weren’t needed anymore.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. That was all. I didn’t dare say anything else: I was too afraid that he was right.
Rayseline Torquill was Sylvester and Luna’s only child. She had been born the daughter of a Daoine Sidhe and a Blodynbryd, something that would have been impossible if Luna hadn’t been wearing a skin stolen from a dying Kitsune, making herself part-mammal for as long as she had it. Faerie genetics don’t follow rules so much as they obey vague suggestions, at least when they feel like it. Rayseline had been born with biology that was forever in the process of tearing itself apart, and eventually, she’d snapped under the strain, trying to murder her parents and claim their lands as her own. She’d killed my lover—her ex-husband—Connor O’Dell when he’d jumped in front of the arrow intended for my daughter. Sadly, his sacrifice hadn’t been enough to keep Gillian from being hurt. It had just been enough to make me lose them both, him to death, her to the human world.
Raysel had also been elf-shot on that day, and her mother had asked me to soothe her pain. I’d done the best I could, slipping into Rayseline’s sleeping mind the way I had once slipped into Gillian’s—the way my mother had slipped into mine—and asking what she wanted to be. When I’d finished, she was purely Daoine Sidhe, more prepared to control her magic and her mind . . . and she’d still been asleep, because I hadn’t wanted her awake.
Luna must have known that from the start. It explained a lot. And it didn’t make things any better between us. I wasn’t sure anything could.
Li Qin smiled at me across the table. She was a short, lovely woman of Chinese descent, with eyes almost as black as her hair, and an air of serenity that came from knowing she was in control of her own luck. Literally: her breed of fae, the Shyi Shuai, manipulated probability in a way that could lead to remarkable good fortune and equally remarkable backlash. I sometimes suspected, although I’d never asked her, that one of those backlashes had influenced Li’s widowing. Her wife, January O’Leary, had been Sylvester’s niece, and she’d died when I wasn’t fast enough to save her.
Sometimes I wondered why Sylvester wanted to make peace with me. I wasn’t good for his family.
“How have you been, October?” asked Li. “You haven’t been to visit in a while.”
“Busy,” I said. “Preventing a war. Deposing a king. Keeping Walther alive while he figured out how to unmake elf-shot. You know, nothing big, but it all took up a lot of time.”
“We miss you,” said Elliot. “April sends her regards.”
Quentin perked up. He liked April. She was always happy to fix his phone when he broke it, which was surprisingly often. “How is she?”
“Doing well,” said Elliot. “She’s really grown into her role. Although she still acts as the company intercom most of the time.”
“Naturally,” I said. April was Li and January’s adopted daughter. As the world’s only cyber-Dryad, she was half electricity, and lived in the County wireless when she didn’t have a reason to be physical. Again, fae genetics are weird. “I’m sort of relieved that she’s not here.”
“Believe me, so am I,” said Elliot. “She’s a wonderful regent, but she doesn’t do diplomacy well.”
I had to laugh at that. Diplomacy was not and would never be one of my strong suits, and somehow it kept turning into my job. Elliot answered my laughter with a lopsided smile, eyes twinkling above the bushy tangle of his beard.
Elizabeth finally looked up from her glass, eyes hazy with her omnipresent inebriation. I’d never seen her without a drink in her hand. Sometimes I wondered whether she rolled out of bed and straight into her cups. “Could you please keep the noise down?” she asked. “I intend to get righteously drunk before they bring the first course around, and you’re slowing me down.”
“Hi to you, too, Liz,” I said.
“Hello, October.” She sighed, and took a swig before setting her glass aside. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I know.” According to the Luidaeg, the bargain she’d struck with the Selkies after their ancestors killed her children was coming to an end. I was going to play a part in whatever that meant. I just didn’t know what that part was, or when it was going to be necessary.
“But until that grand day comes, you’re all going to play nicely, or I’m going to pull your fucking spines out through your nostrils,” said the Luidaeg, stepping up behind me. I twisted to look at her. Karen was sticking close by her side, and while my niece looked shaken, she didn’t seem any more traumatized than she’d been when they walked away. That was a nice change.
The Luidaeg’s eyes, however, were only for Elizabeth. “Hello, Liz,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you here.”
“However much I may dislike my position, I’m still leader of our colony, and that means things like this are important,” said Elizabeth, making no effort to conceal the bitterness in her tone. She lifted her glass in a mocking half-salute. “Hello, Annie-my-love. Broken any young girls’ hearts recently?”
“No, but I haven’t spent much time trying. Maybe I’ve lost my touch.” The Luidaeg took one of our table’s two remaining seats, leaving the place between her and me open for Karen. “When are they going to feed us?”
I blinked. “Uh. Shouldn’t you be at the high table? Please don’t claim insult on the Queen. My nerves can’t take it right now.”
“Please, that bullshit? No. I gave my seat to your kitty-boy. He needed it more than I did, and he’s making them even twitchier than I would.” The Luidaeg smirked before looking to Karen. Her expression softened. “Sit down, honey. It’s okay.”
Karen sat, and again as if by magic—maybe actually by magic; this was Faerie, after all—more servers appeared, this time carrying platters of food. There’d been no survey asking what we wanted to eat, and yet almost everyone seemed to receive a different meal, one suited to their tastes. The Luidaeg got a bowl of fish chowder. Elizabeth got a piece of baked salmon surrounded by potatoes carved into rosebuds. Luna got a salad made entirely of edible roses.
I got a bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce, covered in parmesan cheese. Quentin and Karen got the same thing, only twice as large, accounting for their teenage metabolisms. I chose to see this as a sign that I was rubbing off on them, rather than a comment about how immature my taste in food was. It wasn’t easy, but like I’ve always said, if you can’t lie to yourself, who can you lie to?
The food was excellent. I expected nothing less from Arden’s kitchen. And, for a while, everything was quiet. That’s the nice thing about formal dinners: they give people an excuse to cut the small talk and pretend that things aren’t as awkward as they inevitably are.
Naturally, it couldn’t last. King Antonio of Angels shoved his chair back from the table, sending it clattering to the ground. Dianda, who was sitting across from him, calmly put her fork down and looked at him with all the flat blankness of a snake getting ready to strike at its prey.
The room went silent. I stole a glance at the high table. Everyone there was looking toward the disturbance, but none of them had moved yet. I couldn’t decide whether that was a good sign or a bad one, and so I turned my attention back to the standing king.
“How dare you,” Antonio snarled, eyes fixed on Dianda. “This is an insult and an outrage, and one I should have expected from a perverted daughter of the sea.” His Merry Dancers swirled around him, mirroring his supposed fury.
Dianda raised an eyebrow before pushing her wheelchair back from the table and standing. She made the transition from mermaid to woman look effortless, even though I knew from experience that it was nothing of the sort. “All I said, sir, was that there was no reason to restrict regency of our greater demesnes to those of unmixed blood. My son is my heir. The fact t
hat his father is Daoine Sidhe is no reason to deny him his birthright.”
“You should never have married outside your own kind if you wanted your bloodline to endure,” he snapped. “The very idea—”
“Oberon passed no laws against inheritance by children of mixed blood, unless you consider a ruling made by one of his descendants to carry backward through the family tree,” said Dianda, her tone icy. “As I seem to recall, the ruling in question said only that changelings could not inherit their family lands or titles. Nothing about fully fae children.” She seemed unbothered by the fact that the entire room was staring at her. The Undersea was still largely alien to me, but I knew enough to know that they solved their disputes in a much more violent, visceral way than most of the Divided Courts.
Her comment seemed to have been enough to enflame a few more tempers—just what we needed. Chrysanthe, the Queen of Golden Shore, stood, hooves clattering against the marble floor, and braced her hands on her own table as she demanded, “Why do we still abide by such an outdated, archaic ruling? Changelings have as much of a right to their inheritance as anyone!”
That was the final straw. The room was suddenly full of shouting nobility, all with their own ideas and opinions about what was to be done. Most were against the idea of changelings inheriting; about half were against the idea of mixed-bloods inheriting; all of them were against the idea of somehow being overlooked in the fracas. Liz started drinking faster, holding her tongue. Quentin and Karen sat frozen to either side of me, too stunned to eat.
Right. “I don’t think this is the part we’re needed for,” I said, standing and offering each of them a hand. “How about you come with me, and we’ll see if we can’t get out of here before someone starts throwing punches?”
“Okay,” said Karen gratefully, taking my hand in hers. Quentin didn’t take my hand, but he did stand. Given that he was eighteen now—almost an adult by human standards, even if he was still a baby to the fae—that was all I’d been expecting.