Page 57 of When Sorrows Come

“Do you really want an angry, resentful, known king-breaker being held captive in your knowe when you’re already dealing with an outside enemy?” Artyom tensed, raising his sword. I looked at him flatly. “That was not a threat. That was a question. Believe me when I tell you that you’ll know if I start making threats. They’re pretty damn hard to miss, coming from me.”

The High King groaned before Artyom could respond, shifting in Maida’s lap, lifting one hand to rub his forehead before he opened his eyes and blinked unsteadily at the ceiling. Maida leaned forward slightly, making sure he could see her face as she smiled.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “Welcome back.”

High King Aethlin gasped and sat upright, causing all three of the guards present to tense. They were primed for a fight. Pity they were also massively outmatched. Aethlin looked frantically around, eyes finally settling on me.

“You!” he bellowed. “Take me to my son!”

Well, crap.

fourteen

“How could you dothis? Don’t you understand the danger this places the entire Kingdom in? I trusted you to behave responsibly when I allowed you to stay in the Mists! Not to do—” High King Aethlin gestured frantically with both hands, trying to encompass all of Quentin in one gesture. It wasn’t working.

Arms crossed, Quentin looked at him flatly.

“—whateverthisis,” Aethlin concluded. He dropped his hands, glaring. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I wasn’t planning to say anything. You weren’t supposed to know.”

“Obviously,thatdidn’t work the way you planned it. This is disrespectful to me, to your mother, and to your Kingdom. That woman has been a terrible influence on you, and I should never have allowed you to stay in her custody. I should—”

“Fuck you,” said Quentin, voice bright and almost chipper. Aethlin stiffened.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I’m sorry, was that disrespectful? I meant fuck you,Your Majesty.”

On the other side of the room, Dean put a hand over his mouth to cover his smile. Chelsea had acquired a movie theater-style bucket of popcorn somewhere and was sharing it with Raj. Most of the rest of our company had decamped for the kitchen while Tybalt, Cassie, and I were off with the Doppelganger, leaving onlyWalther and the assorted teens. Walther looked as amused as they did.

High King Aethlin didn’t look amused at all. He looked like he was about to give himself a heart attack through sheer rage.

“You donotspeak to your father in such a disrespectful manner, young man! You were raised better!”

“Yes, I was, but not by you.” Quentin balled his hands into fists and glared at his father. I suppose the difference in his transformed height didn’t make any real difference, since it wasn’t like they’d spent much time together since he was a child. “Not even when I was here, not even when people knew me by name and smiled at the sight of me. No, you left the raising to Nessa and the rest of the staff, except when it was convenient to trot out the proof that you were virile enough to have produced an heiranda spare. So impressive! You think I didn’t hear the way your courtiers talked about us when we were supposed to be in bed?”

“You were supposed to be in bed,” said Aethlin.

“I was akid! Kids sneak out of bed to see what their parents are doing while they’re not around! Kids get into mud and mischief and messes, and they’re not pretty little accessories that you can just pack up and mail to California when you don’t want them anymore!”

Aethlin froze. “Is that... is that what you think happened?”

“I think you sent me away, and you sent Penny away, and you couldn’t even bother to send us away together,” snapped Quentin. This had been brewing for a while, clearly, and I wasn’t going to interrupt it. Beside me, Maida was stiff as an iron bar, her eyes locked on the stranger who was her son, her hands buried in the folds of her skirt and her nails, I was sure, digging into her palms. I could smell blood.

“She was my only friend and the only person who knew me, reallyknewme, who I was when I wasn’t ‘the Crown Prince,’ and you sent her away like I wouldn’t care. You left her alone in the world and you shipped me off to a bunch of strangers.” Quentin shook his head. “Did you ever even bother to check and make sure I was okay in Shadowed Hills? Did anyone bother to tell you the Duke was mad, or that his wife and daughter had been kidnapped, leaving him tearing at the walls as if it would somehow bring them back?”

“I didn’t—Countess Winterrose made the case for yourfosterage, and she was... she wasverycompelling,” said Aethlin helplessly. “Before she came, we had never even considered the virtues of sending you and your sister away.”

“I think this is one where you have to back down a little, kiddo,” I said. “You’ve been in a room with her, you know what it’s like to have her full attention focused on you. Daoine Sidhe literally can’t say no to their First, and when she stops talking, everything she said sounds so reasonable that you’ll justify anything to yourself to keep from contradicting her. I don’t know how long the effect lasts.”

“Not long enough if it’s something you really care about,” said Maida. “I started regretting what we’d done before the end of the first year. I started asking your father to call you home before the end of the second.” The look she gave Aethlin’s back was nothing like the adoring glances she’d been directing his way back in the Doppelganger’s cell. This was the face of a mother who’d been denied access to her children by the man who was supposed to help her protect them, and I was glad, for Aethlin’s sake, that he couldn’t see it. He might have started to worry about his marriage.

Fortunately for everyone involved with this little family disagreement, Aethlin’s guards had agreed to wait out in the hall while he spoke with Quentin, and hopefully they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut, since they definitely knew Quentin was in the knowe. The High King’s disorientation upon waking up hadn’t lasted long, and he’d realized that if Quentin was safely hidden, he should probably be allowed to stay that way. Even if Aethlin still wanted to yell at him for possibly muddling the lines of succession.

It seemed to me that there was a long tradition of using magic to conceal princes and princesses until the time was right to reveal them, and with both Fiac and the Luidaeg on hand, no one reasonable would dare to contradict them if they were to say Quentin was the Crown Prince—not that they were going to. The fact that he was currently a Banshee would be secondary to the woman who can’t lie identifying him in front of the man who reacted to falsehoods with aggression. But no, the High King needed to yell, I guess.

And he was doing an admirable job of it.

---