Page 58 of When Sorrows Come

Had I not been distracted by the fact that he was dying at thetime, I would have thought more about the fact that Quentin’s father would get enough of my memories with the blood that healed him to realize the Banshee boy who’d accompanied me from the Mists was actually his son in a very good, nigh-unbreakable disguise. I would still have given him the blood—you don’t sit by and watch the High King bleed to death, causing a potential crisis of succession, when you have a choice in the matter—but I would have tried harder not to think about Quentin while I did it.

Then again, the best way to make someone think about elephants is to tell them not to think about elephants. I supposed I was lucky he’d only twigged to the location of his son, and not to the fact that the nondescript, somewhat boring man following the Luidaeg around like a really tall antlered puppy was actually Oberon, King of all Faerie. That would have been a lot harder to explain.

Of course, this was distracting from both the matter of the coup at hand and the need to finish getting ready for my oft-delayed wedding, but it was still better than outing Oberon before he wanted to be.

“I know whatthat womancan do,” said Quentin. “She’s done it to me. I also know that if you’re loyal enough to something other than her, the effect is blunted. Dean shrugged it off entirely.”

“To be fair, I’m only half Daoine Sidhe,” said Dean, looking faintly alarmed at being dragged into this. “I have two Firstborn to answer to. Resisting one of them wasn’t as hard as it could have been.”

“Remind me to tell you a funny story about your other Firstborn,” I said. Maida blinked at me. I shrugged. “Long story.”

“We went to the Duchy of Ships to do a favor for the Luidaeg, and we met the Merrow Firstborn while we were there,” said Quentin. “Her name’s Amphitrite, but she mostly goes by ‘Pete,’ and she’s kinda awesome but kinda annoying, too. Which describes most of the Firstborn I’ve met, I guess.”

“Okay, I guess it wasn’t that long of a story,” I said. “But it illustrates why you should stop being pissed at your parents, Quentin. If they hadn’t sent you away, you would never have met Pete, or the Luidaeg—or Dean.”

“Or Toby,” contributed Raj, who had clearly been silent for too long and was starting to feel left out. “Or me.”

“So many wonderful people to enrich and endanger your life,”said Tybalt dryly. “Are we quite done with the family dramatics? I would like to resume the process of preventing a coup before it interferes with my wedding date.”

“I want that also, honey,” I said. “But this feels like a fight that’s been a long time coming, and it needs to happen.”

“Do you have any idea how many years I spent feeling like no one in the world wanted me?” asked Quentin, attention back on his father. “Like I must have done somethingwrong, or you wouldn’t have separated me from Penny? There was no one in Shadowed Hills who was equipped to be the kind of adult I needed to have in my life. A couple of the Hobs tried, but I was enough of a pampered prince not to recognize kindness as sincere when it came from the staff. I was drowning when October came along. I didn’t know who I was or where I stood or how I was going to survive long enough to prove to you that I was worthy of coming home, and then there was this woman—this ridiculous, careless,rudewoman, who didn’t want me any more than anyone else did, but at least she was honest about it. At least she didn’t lie to me.”

“Quentin...” I stopped. I didn’t know what else to say, honestly.

“Oh, don’t pretend you wanted me around in the beginning. We both know you didn’t.” Quentin smiled a little, shrugging. “It’s okay. You were still sad, and I was sort of a spoiled brat. We weren’t good for each other yet. We learned how to be good for each other, and we did it together, which made it even better.”

“I’ve always liked you,” said Raj. “Of course, the circumstances of our meeting were traumatic enough without adding abandonment issues to the mix.”

“Yeah.” Quentin focused back on his father. “If I wanted someone to love me, I had to force them to see me for who I was under all the fear and resentment and propriety, and I did this to myself so I could be here to see Toby get married without endangering your precious throne in the process. So I’m not going to apologize to you because I’mnotsorry.”

They glared at each other, and although they currently looked nothing alike, there was no mistaking the fact that they were family. Only family can look that angry, in that specific, focused way. Family means never having to say, “I forgive you.”

Aethlin was the first to look away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Lasttime I saw you, you were... you seemed well, and you told us you loved us, and I thought things were all right between us. I didn’t really have a choice about sending you away, not given who was making the suggestion, but I could have kept you and Penny together, or I could have found a way for you to contact your sister without invalidating the protections of a blind fosterage in the process. I’m the High King. I could have found a way, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” said Quentin. He released some of the tension in his shoulders, not sagging, precisely, but becoming less of a sculpture in the shape of a Banshee boy. “I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you who I was. Howdidyou realize who I am?”

“I don’t... I don’t actually know.” Aethlin looked back to Quentin, frowning again, but this time with confusion. “I remember pain, and then blackness, and then redness filled with moving figures and places I had never been, people I had never seen. I think... I think I saw Annwn.” His voice took on a lilting note of awe, like the idea of catching even a glimpse of deeper Faerie was something to be treasured and dwelt upon.

I might have felt that way once before it had actually happened. There was nothing likeseeingdeeper Faerie to make me never want to do that again.

“Toby, did you bleed on my father?”

“Had to,” I said. “He’d been stabbed in the kidney and he was bleeding out. I needed him to be able to heal before his injuries killed him.” And possibly even immediately after those injuries killed him—if his magic had still been capable of working fast enough.

That’s something I have no interest in advertising. I made that mistake at Tamed Lightning, allowing Li Qin and the rest of the staff to realize I could occasionally, under the right circumstances, raise the dead, and my repayment had been an invitation to bleed myself virtually dry to bring back their loved ones. It’s not the sort of thing I can, or should, be doing on a regular basis. Death is a part of the order of things, even in Faerie, or we wouldn’t have the night-haunts.

If I raised all of Faerie’s dead, what would the night-haunts eat? I would be condemning an unknown number of them to a slow withering away, and all for the sake of denying the way things weremeant to go. And I would still do my best to save the people I cared about... if I had the opportunity.

I guess I’m as much of a hypocrite as everyone else. I’m just a hypocrite who admits it.

Quentin rolled his eyes. “I was all prepared to yell at you for telling on me, but you didn’t, did you? You just didn’t think.”

“In my defense, if I’d stopped to think, he would have bled out on the floor,” I said. “That would have been worse, I think.”

“Maybe,” muttered Quentin. He shot his father a sharp look. “Maybe not.” Then he thawed and sighed, and admitted, “Yeah. It would have been worse.”

Aethlin took a half-step backward, visibly stung, but didn’t object. Instead, he turned back toward me and Maida, hands by his sides and still covered in flecks of dried blood—whether his or mine, I couldn’t possibly have said.

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