Page 55 of When Sorrows Come

“She’s called me before because she had a dream that told her something that was about to happen. She sees the future in dreams.”

Fiac blinked again, before looking at Cassie like he was seeing her for the first time. “I see,” he said. “Well, that explains almost as much as it asks.”

“What do you—” I began, then stopped as the door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall. I’d have to grab a knife from the floor to arm myself, and so I settled for shifting into a defensive stance, fists raised, ready to brawl. I’m not the best brawler, but my ability to take a hit that should knock me down and keep on kicking means that I can definitely be a challenge.

Cassie moved to put herself behind me, while Artyom moved, sword in hand, to put himself in front of Fiac. Whoever was coming was going to find themselves with at least a little bit of a challenge before they took the High King.

Then Maida rushed down the short entry hall, two more guards in her wake, and we all relaxed, Artyom already apologizing as he lowered his sword with the speed of a man who expected to be executed for threatening his Queen.

Maida ignored him, hurrying to drop to the floor next to her unmoving husband and gather his head into her lap. She glanced at the ruined carpet, and I could tell from the way her shoulders tensed that she knew exactly what that volume of blood meant, possibly down to the drop. She knew she should be grieving, not trying to comfort her unwounded husband.

Tybalt came in behind the rest of them, strolling more calmly, projecting casual unconcern as only a cat can. He didn’t have his hands in his pockets, but everything else about him screamed “whoever’s problem this is, it’s not mine.” None of this blunted the relief in his face when he glanced across the room and saw that I had kept my word and was still standing where he’d left me, not wearing any more blood than I had been before.

The concerns of our relationship aren’t unique, but they probably ought to be. They’re hard on the nerves.

“Whathappened?” demanded Maida, voice just a little shrill, just a little too loud for the space we were in.

“Well, Highness—” began Artyom.

“No,” Maida’s voice was flat, leaving no room for argument. “I don’t want to hear it from you. I want to hear it fromher.” She turned to look at me, an almost feral expression in her eyes. I was the interloper here, after all, and I’d brought chaos in my wake. I’d come without her son, at least as far as she knew, and my arrival had been marked with infiltration and assault, and now with the injury of the High King. She had good reason to be upset with me. If I’d been in her position,Iwould have been upset with me. Maybe even more upset than she was. I don’t react well when people hurt Tybalt.

“The High King came to the room where my party is currently housed,” I said. “I know those rooms were prepared for us by the imposter, not the real Nessa, so we may have to move if there’s something wrong with them, but for right now, that’s where we are. He requested I come with him to interview the Doppelganger who had been masquerading as your seneschal—that’s the Doppelganger all over the kitchenette floor, by the way, I’m sorry we weren’t able to keep it alive for further questioning—”

“I’m not,” interjected Tybalt, walking daintily around Maida and the guards, and around the bloodstain on the floor, to stand behind me. I resisted the urge to take a step back so our shoulders could touch. I was in the presence of the High Queen. I needed to at least pretend to be following the rules of court behavior.

“Well, no, it was trying to kill you at the time,” I said. “Anyway, the Doppelganger got everyone to focus on it, and the second Doppelganger, which had replaced a member of the King’s guard—”

“Enzo,” supplied Artyom. I supposed that would matter if the man was still alive somewhere in the knowe, as Nessa had been. Since the Doppelganger had appeared Tuatha de Dannan while impersonating him, I didn’t have a good feeling about that. Keeping a teleporter confined is difficult at the best of times, and if the Doppelganger had had access to the original Enzo’s blood, it would have been able to teleport away.

“All right,” I said. “A second Doppelganger had replaced Enzo. You need to check all your staff for indication that they’ve been replaced. This is clearly bigger than we thought it was at first. The second Doppelganger stabbed the High King in the lower back, I believe piercing a kidney, from the location of the wound and the volume of blood involved. I don’t believe the blade was poisoned, since I went on to use it to cut myself and have suffered no ill effects. They just wanted to stab him. Like the first Doppelganger, this one said ‘sic semper tyrannis’ after the deed was done, but unlike the first Doppelganger, it slit its own throat so it couldn’t be taken captive. The High King had fallen by that point, and I know he’s Daoine Sidhe, meaning he can borrow magic if he has access to blood. So I bled myself into his mouth before he could die from his injuries, and he was able to heal.”

Through all this, Fiac stood silent and stoic, waiting until I stopped before he looked at the High Queen and said solemnly, “She speaks the truth.”

Maida made a sound that was caught somewhere between sob and sigh, stroking her husband’s hair with one hand. “So he’ll live?” she asked. “He’s uninjured?”

“I didn’t roll him over to check, but he’s still breathing, and he wouldn’t be if he hadn’t been able to use my blood forsomething, so probably, yeah,” I said. “You can check if you want. He was stabbed... here, roughly.” I put my hand on my own back, indicating the place where I’d seen the knife come out.

Maida nodded and sniffled, pulling on the High King’s shoulder until she had rolled him onto his side. The rent in his tunic was easy to see from this angle. She slid her hand inside, feeling around for several seconds. Finally, her eyes widened. “There’s no injury,” she said, allowing him to roll back into his original position. “You saved my husband’s life. Our kingdom owes you a debt of gratitude.”

Still Fiac said nothing. I had never considered how intensely disconcerting it would be to have a living lie detector who could fly into a killing rage at the slightest falsehood in the room with me. Then again, it wasn’t a situation that came up all that often.

I hoped he wasn’t going to be a witness at our wedding.

“He needed me,” I said. “I couldn’t stand by and let the High King die if there was something I could do to save him.” Quentin would never have been able to forgive me.

“So why is Artyom saying he was poisoned?”

“The High King is Daoine Sidhe,” I said carefully. “I’m not, but I know blood memory can be very overwhelming, especially if you swallow too much—and I had to give him a lot of blood to be sure he’d have access to my magic and be able to put himself back together without lingering injury. He’s just a little confused about who he is right now, that’s all.”

“Treason,” spat Artyom.

“I think for it to be treason, I would have to have been trying to permanently replace the High King’s mind with a copy of my own, which was not the goal here,” I said. “The world doesn’t need more of me.”

“One is more than sufficient to most needs,” muttered Tybalt.

I glanced at him sharply. He put on his best expression of innocence though he didn’t try to deny saying anything.

Right. I turned back to Maida. “I think your guard may have mistaken the passive effects of blood magic for an intentional attack,” I said, as delicately as I could manage. “The High King should recover soon. Has he been trained in the use of blood magic?”

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