Page 4 of When Sorrows Come

Always horrifying drama. In this house, horrifying drama is never a sometimes food.

I whisked the cloth off the pile of scones, revealing them to the rest of the kitchen. Even that seemed more dramatic than it necessarily had to be. The boys’ impending revelation was infecting breakfast. The scones were pale pink, glittering with yellow sugar, and smelled like one of Luna’s gardens. I picked one up and sniffed. It smelled sugary, tart, and floral all at once. I laughed.

“She made rose lemonade scones,” I reported to the two boys. “Leave it to May to find a way to make even breakfast seem ominous. Either of you want a scone?”

“I’m good,” said Dean.

“I’d love one,” said the other boy.

“Here you go.” I dropped the scone onto a plate and passed it to him before serving myself. May has long since figured out that the best way to get me to reliably eat is to keep food around the house, already cooked and ready to be shoved into my face. Scrambled eggs and bacon may be enjoyable, but they’re not likely—that takes effort. Fresh-baked scones that someone else did all the work of preparing? I’ll eat those. Same with coffee that someone else brewed. I may not get the pharmaceutical benefits of caffeine, but hydration is a good thing.

“October...” began Dean.

“Nope. Still fixing breakfast.”

Both boys watched helplessly, the one who might be Quentin clutching his plate, as I prepared my coffee and carried it to the breakfast table, along with my own scones. I had taken two. Maybe that was greedy of me, but it’s my house, and I was getting the distinct feeling this was going to be one of those nights where I didn’t have a lot of time to sit down and eat.

The boy who was probably Quentin sat across from me, watching warily as I picked up a scone and took the first bite. He held his head like Quentin did, a little off-center, like he was expecting to need to tilt it in disapproval at my antics at any moment. And he had that Quentin-y look in his eyes, the one that implied I was about to do something absolutely appalling that would probably violate about a dozen rules of hospitality and nearly as many laws of Faerie, either written or unwritten.

The scone tasted like summertime perfume. I swallowed thoughtfully, and took a sip of coffee, lingering over the action. Letthem squirm. If they’d done what they were claiming to have done, they deserved it.

Finally, I put my cup down and focused on the Banshee boy. “Prove you’re my squire,” I said.

“By the rose and the thorn, the root and the branch, I would need to have a death wish to pretend to be your squire when I’m not,” he said. “I swear it on my magic, may it wither in my veins and stop my dancing if I lie.”

“Nice, and suitably dire,” I said approvingly. “But it proves nothing, especially since my squire, who issmarter than an unnecessary bargain with the sea witch implies, has magic that smells of steel and heather, while yours...” I breathed in deeply. “Yours smells of common gorse and vetiver. It’s not even related.”

He flinched a little. Apparently, that was more of a transformation than he’d been expecting. But this was the Luidaeg we were talking about here, and her magic is never just skin-deep. I took the opportunity to lean forward, breaking off another bite of scone. “So convince me,” I said, popping it into my mouth.

“Your fiancé is a total nerd who tried to convince me you’d be fine with him dragging me to Silences for the weekend to watch a production ofMuch Ado About Nothing, and then he said that since back in Shakespeare’s day ‘nothing’ was slang for female genitalia, it was the most appropriate play for a King of Cats on the verge of matrimony, since the title is actuallyMaking a Fuss About—”

“Okay, you’ve met Tybalt,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “And if you are Quentin Sollys, I have officially ruined the next King of the Westlands. Prove you knowme.”

He looked at me gravely, and said, “The first time I met you, I had been sent to carry a message from Duke Sylvester Torquill, which you summarily refused to hear, chiding me for my attempts to deliver it in the middle of a human neighborhood. I didn’t know much about humans back then, so I believed you when you implied that someone might come along and... and overhear something that would betray the existence of Faerie to the mortal world. I was so worried I’d fail if I forced you to listen to me, by breaking one of the oldest rules, and that I’d fail if I didn’t force you, because I’d be letting a Ducal message go unanswered.” A note of frustrated misery crept into his tone. “I’d been in Shadowed Hills for almost a year. Everyone said the Duke was mad, but he’d been bettersince his wife and daughter came back, and then they all said it was only you who could move him to one of those black tempers, where he threw things and screamed, or tried to read secret messages in the cobwebs, or...”

His voice trailed off. I fought the urge to prod him to keep going. I’d been back for six years, and I still knew almost nothing of what it had been like to live with Sylvester while Luna, Rayseline, and I were all missing, presumed lost forever. People would only ever tell me that the Duke had lost his mind, or perhaps lost himself, in the tangled maze of bereavement and betrayal where he’d been abandoned. Etienne had been with him the whole time, and still couldn’t speak of those years without paling and looking away. The general consensus seemed to be that I was better off for having been somewhere else.

And yet, Sylvester’s temper and sense of right and wrong had been skewed enough these last few years that I sometimes felt like I needed to understand the man at his worst in order to figure out how to live with the person he was now.

The boy—Quentin, I couldn’t pretend any longer that it wasn’t Quentin—was looking down at the table, silent. I tapped the edge of my plate with one fingernail, filling the room with a sharp chime. He glanced up.

“Hey,” I said. “I believe you.”

Some of the tension left his shoulders.

I wasn’t done. “I believe you have done something very stupid and very ill-considered, and I’m trying to decide how angry at you I am right now, so if you would please take a deep breath, tighten any necessary sphincters, and explainexactly what the fuck it is you were thinking, Imightbe less inclined to ground you until your own coronation!” My voice rose steadily throughout my little rant, until I was almost shouting by the end.

Quentin flinched again. “Um,” he said.

“Um? That’s what you have to say for yourself?Um? Oh, well, let’s pack in it, folks, everything’s fine, your parents aren’t going to have me tried for treason after all!”

“Treason?” asked Dean.

I turned and glared at him. He quailed, apparently realizing that attracting my attention right now was a bad idea.

“Yes, Dean, treason,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level. “I don’t know how you do things in the Undersea, but here on theland, bargaining with one of the Firstborn to transform the Crown Prince into someone new, someone who hasno blood relationto either the High King or the High Queen, who cannot possibly inherit the throne that is his by right of birth, is considered a little bit, I don’t know, treasonous. Since I already have a reputation for king-breaking, which is entirely unfair and unearned—”

Quentin made a choked sound that might have been laughter. I shifted my glare briefly to him, and he quieted again.

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