Page 9 of When Sorrows Come

“He’s in the kitchen with Chels. I’ll get him for you. Hold on a second.”

“For you, anything.”

There was a clatter as Bridget put the phone down. Having a cellphone inside a knowe is materially different from having a landline only in the absence of the cord. The magic April uses to make the signals work doesn’t always cover the entire knowe, and sometimes calls drop, or become weirdly distorted, or jump from one phone to another—you can be having a conversation with one person and suddenly be connected to someone else in the knowe who just happened to be using the phone at the same time. It’s messy. Leaving the phone somewhere that gets a stable signal is occasionally the only solution.

A minute passed, agonizingly slow in the dimness of my room. There was a scraping sound as the phone was lifted on the other end. “Hello?” said Etienne.

“Planning any upcoming trips?” I asked.

He sighed. “I told them it was a bad idea. I told them you would react poorly. I swear I did. Sometimes I feel as though the people who claim to care about you the most dearly have never actually met you.”

“Uh-huh. And how long have you known?”

“My invitation arrived two weeks ago,” he said.

Two weeks ago. I tried to think back, to remember if there had been any unusual secrecy or caginess, or if May had filled thekitchen inexplicably with pixies. Sometimes she baked cookies for them, but I couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary.

“Two weeks,” I said flatly.

“October, I’m sorry they chose not to inform you.”

“It’s fine. I assume that if you’ve been invited, Sylvester knows?”

“Yes,” said Etienne. “His Grace is aware.”

He didn’t say anything more. Neither did I, letting the silence stretch between us like an unbreaking thread, waiting him out. It sometimes seems like half of PI work is being quiet and letting other people incriminate themselves. For all his love of the rules and codes that a “proper knight” was meant to live by, Etienne was far less accustomed to holding his tongue when not in the presence of the nobility.

“He is not presently intending to attend,” he said—not blurted, as each word sounded reluctant, but also like he simply couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

I said nothing.

“Dammit, October, this wasn’t my idea. I didn’t make or execute the plan.”

I sighed. “But you went along with it. You kept quiet when you knew it was going to upset me, and you went along with it.”

To my surprise, he laughed.

I blinked. “This isn’t funny.”

“Yes, it is. I was your knight, October. I stood responsible for you as you went out of your way to upset, vex, bedevil, bother, and annoy absolutely everyone of any high position in the Mists. I used to wonder if you were using the peerage as a checklist of people to get on the wrong side of. It was my responsibility to teach you honor, comportment, and the courtly graces, and I failed and succeeded in equal measure because I crafted you into the most infuriating creature ever to walk in Faerie. And as it seemed your only goal was, at times, to vex those you felt took themselves too seriously, it seems only fitting that the same fate be visited upon you by those who love you as you are. You have a sister willing to arrange an entire wedding for your sake. You have a man who loves you. Let them love you as best as they know how. They only emulate what they admire.”

The line went dead. I lowered the phone, staring at it for a moment before dropping it onto my chest and staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t call back. There would have been no point.

He was right.

I had spent my childhood rebelling and running away from the establishment, whatever the hellthatwas supposed to mean. My mother had no title, but shewasa landholder, and people had a dismaying tendency to defer to her, for reasons I had lacked the information to understand at the time. My not-quite-father figure was a Duke, and everyone around us either worked for him, swore fealty to him, or both. Thumbing my nose at the people in power had been a way to feel important, even though I wasn’t. Even though I was just another changeling who would never amount to anything.

Only now Iwasthe establishment. I spent time, socially, with kings and queens—was even going to marry one of them. I had been to various kingdoms, sometimes as a diplomat, sometimes as a hero. Iwasa hero. What I wasn’t was particularly good about keeping my mouth shut when under pressure. Preventing me from knowing when the wedding was going to happen kept me from accidentally blurting it out in front of the wrong person or wrong pixie, who might carry the news back to any of the various people who had reason to wish me or Tybalt ill. This had been a smart way to do things.

I still didn’t like it. I sighed and closed my eyes, letting the dimness of the room and the comfortable softness of my bed lull me into a light doze. Staying where I was sounded even better than a hot shower and was easier on the water bill. It wasn’t a true slumber; my eyes snapped open as soon as the scent of musk and pennyroyal drifted through the air, marking Tybalt’s arrival.

I didn’t move or say anything, just lay there with my eyes open and my phone on my chest, fully clothed and barefoot, staring at the ceiling. There was a soft rustle as Tybalt made his way across the room to the bed. Like all cats, he could move in total silence when he wanted to—and often did. Like most people with sense and compassion, he understood that sometimes sneaking up on your fiancé the hero who usually has a knife with her is not the best possible idea.

“October? Are you awake?”

Upon reflection, I elected not to answer him and kept staring at the ceiling.

The mattress bent as he sat upon the edge, his weight pulling it downward. “I can hear you breathing. I know you’re awake.”

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