Page 25 of When Sorrows Come

If King Aethlin had been holding a fork, he would have dropped it. As it was, he pressed his hands flat against the table and inclined his head, managing to give the impression that he was bowing fully and formally without moving out of his seat. It might have been more polite to rise. Judging by the faint shaking in his shoulders, I wasn’t entirely sure hecould.

“Milady sea witch,” he said, infusing the Luidaeg’s most common nom de plume with all the respect he would have put into her proper name. “We were not made aware that you were coming.”

“As if I was going to miss the wedding of my favorite niece? Please.” She studied her fingernails, which gleamed razor-sharp in the light. “You’ve been to the Kingdom I currently call home. You should have guessed I’d be here. Can we call off this charade? You know who we are. You invited us. Standing on ceremony means you’re never on solid ground, and I’m hungry.”

“I...” High King Aethlin stopped, catching himself. “Of course. My apologies, milady. I should have anticipated you and been prepared with proper honors.” He snapped his fingers, pointing at a nearby server. The man jumped and scurried over, beckoning for the Luidaeg to follow him to the table that had been left open for our use.

She went without argument, having clearly decided that playing along would get her to dinner faster, and the others followed her, either inured to doing her bidding by long exposure or unwilling to take the risk of upsetting her. I stayed where I was. The Luidaeg isn’t as murderous as she likes to make herself out to be, and I wanted to keep an eye on Nessa.

The High King’s seneschal was also standing her ground, looking faintly lost as her charges wandered off to take their seats and place their drink orders. The servers had pitchers of water, beer, and what looked like apple cider, as well as bottles of both red and white wine. It was all a bit like preparing to dine in a very strangely themed restaurant.

“Did you require something further, Sir Daye?” asked Maida.

I held up a hand—another line crossed into irredeemable rudeness—and said, “I don’t know yet. Highness, is it some sort of horrific insult to the crown if I use blood magic in your presence?” Quentin had asked me to do this discreetly. With as many missteps as Nessa had made during this brief introduction, I wasn’t sure I could wait.

She looked startled as she sat back in her chair. “Insult, no, but confuse, absolutely. What is so dire that you would need to call upon thebloodin a royal knowe?”

Flower magic is illusion, and common enough that no one bats an eye when it’s used in the presence of kings and queens. Water magic is transformation, and perhaps the most common thing I’ve seen usedbykings and queens. Blood magic, though... blood magic is magic itself. The more I learn about it, the more I resent the fact that the magic that flows from Oberon has somehow been coopted as the primary gift of the Daoine Sidhe, who belong so unquestionably to Titania.

With blood magic, a spell can be made or unmade, gifts can be shared across bloodlines, and heritages can be unraveled like skeins of yarn woven from silence and secrecy. All we have to do is breathe them in. With the diners carefully kept at a distance from the high table, and the High King and Queen both known quantities, this was the closest thing I was likely to get to being alone with Nessa.

“Tell you in a second,” I said, and closed my eyes. I breathed in, tasting the heritage of the people around me. It’s a small enough act of blood magic that it doesn’t require anyone to actually be,you know,bleeding, which means it’s something I’ve always been good at, even back when powering a spell with blood felt weighty and portentous, something to be done only under the direst of circumstances.

Yes, there was a time when my blood stayed mostly inside my body, where Tybalt assures me it belongs. How things have changed.

Aethlin and Maida were close enough to register: pure Daoine Sidhe from side to side. Whoever had held the hope chest that removed Maida’s mortality had done an excellent job. The people to either side of them also registered; Tuatha de Dannan and Puca, respectively.

But no Gwragedd Annwn anywhere. Something else, something I couldn’t identify, but that was subtly, delicatelywrong. It was like going into the toy aisle of a department store, looking for a Barbie, and finding nothing but third-party knockoffs, their faces indefinably wrong, their hair a few cents cheaper and almost the exact color and texture of straw. A copy, in other words, something pretending to be Gwragedd Annwn.

Pretending very, very well. I opened my eyes, turning back to the High King, and smiled politely. “I appreciate your tolerance of my little habits,” I said. “I do have another question to ask you, however, if you would indulge me?”

Aethlin frowned. “What do you need?”

“Can you please produce your seneschal? If the copy is this pleasant to speak with, I would like to meet the real one.”

six

Ahorrified gasp went throughtheroom. Aethlin half-rose, apparently thinking better of it before he could get fully to his feet, and planted his hands flat against the table again. “Are you insinuating something, Sir Daye?” he asked.

“Nope.” I was being a jerk in a royal court again. I was finally back in my element, even if I was doing it in a dress way too fancy for the activity. “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m stating, blatantly, that whoever this woman is,” I pointed to the woman I still thought of as Nessa, for lack of anything better to call her, “she is not your seneschal. She’s not Gwragedd Annwn. She’s faking it well enough that I can’t actually tell you what sheis, but she’s been an impostor since we got here.”

Nessa looked at me with wide eyes, either horrified or doing an excellent job of pretending she was. “Nessa?” High Queen Maida sounded more confused than anything else. “Is Sir Daye correct?”

The false Nessa looked briefly bewildered, like she didn’t know how to react to this. Then she lunged to the side, wrapping an arm around my neck and yanking me against her. I didn’t resist. This was at least interesting, and I was sure the royal kitchens would make me a sandwich if dinner got canceled.

Something sharp pricked my right side, pressed hard enough to make it very clear that I was being held at knifepoint. I sighed. Maybe I was going to need two sandwiches.

High King Aethlin had finished rising as soon as not-actually-Nessa grabbed me. He was storming his way around the high table while several courtiers had appeared as if out of nowhere to get the queen to safety. Everyone seemed to be on the move, treating this as an unusual and frightening moment of chaos. I, on the other hand, was finally relaxed. We were back on familiar ground. Maybe the false Nessa was an early wedding gift, designed to make me feel more comfortable.

No. Tybalt might be willing to do a lot of things to soothe my jangled nerves, but nothing that involved the possibility of me getting hurt. We’re still sorting out the limits of my accelerated healing. There was no way he’d put himself in the position of being the reason we discovered my limits.

“You don’t want to do that,” I said.

“Speak for yourself,” snarled the woman who I now felt safe saying was distinctly not Nessa. Louder, she shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!”

“Please,” I said, in a tone that made it clear I was objecting to her words, not begging for my life. “If I’m a tyrant, you’re a fluffy little duckie. Which might be more welcome than whatever the hell this is right now. Where’s Nessa? Whoareyou? I’d say you only have a few more seconds before the royal archers are in position, so I’d talk fast if you’re trying to deliver some sort of message.”

“The only message I need is writtenin your blood,” she said, voice dropping toward a register that managed to be deeper and shriller at the same time, a neat trick, made less exciting by the fact that I could feel the hand on my throat changing shapes, the fingers getting longer, the nails getting sharper, the skin getting cooler and faintly clammy, like I was being clutched by some terrible thing that had slithered out of the closed cave where it was meant to linger.

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