Page 15 of When Sorrows Come

“Did the Crown Prince just say he hopes you get me pregnant?” I asked in a low voice. The knowe’s entrance hall was long, paneled with carved wood panels that showed important moments in thekingdom’s history. They had a tendency to change based on what was happening around them—that’s one of the nice, if occasionally frustrating, things about knowes. They’re alive, even if not everyone believes that, and at least somewhat self-aware, and that means that as long as they have the resources to do it, they can redecorate on a whim. Sometimes it’s charming.

Other times, like tonight, it’s an excuse to show me every major wedding, as judged by a building, ever to have happened in the kingdom. One nice thing about it: my acts of bone-stupid heroism featured less heavily than they usually did.

“It is a traditional blessing for a pureblood’s wedding,” said Tybalt. “You should expect far more interest in the condition of your womb and its potential contents than you are accustomed to in the next several days.”

“No one asked Dianda aboutherwomb,” I grumbled.

“Ah, but when the Duchess Lorden took a second husband, she had already been a hundred years with her first, and borne him two sons, both fine and strong and suitable in the eyes of the land,” said Tybalt. “Further, her wedding was something of a surprise to all assembled and should not form your basis for comparison to our own. If we had declared our intent to wed immediately on the heels of a divorce, and had the ceremony spontaneously performed by one of the Firstborn, we would have been permitted to skip over a great deal of the pomp and ceremony which is likely to attend us.”

“You say ‘likely’ as if you didn’t arrange the whole thing,” I said. Tybalt shrugged but didn’t contradict me. “And what, are Firstborn like Unitarian ministers? They’re allowed to just say ‘guess you’re married now’ and then you are?”

“That’s a very crass way of putting it but, essentially, yes,” said Tybalt.

I stared at him. “The Luidaeg has beenright herethis whole time,” I said. “Why do we have to go to Toronto? All we had to do was tell her we wanted to be married and we could have been. Ages ago!”

“She knew of our engagement and did not volunteer. Does that not tell you something of the etiquette in play here? And I know she has informed you of the import of this occasion. She would no more have interfered with something that might improve the lot of her own descendants than she would have voluntarily moved away from the sea. In our case, the pomp and circumstance is the point.”Tybalt sighed and gave me a pained look. “As to why we must go to Toronto, we must go because we agreed to do so. To stand aside now would be to offer grave insult to the monarchy which dictates so much of your life, and always will. Moreover, as I am about to enter politically unusual waters—not uncharted, as Kings and Queens have stepped aside before, myself included—but strange, there will be some argument to be made that they have command over my actions as well once Raj takes the throne.”

I knew Raj would never be comfortable telling the man who had raised him as uncle and regent what to do, but I hadn’t considered that exiling himself from the Court of Cats could potentially put Tybalt under the control of the Divided Courts. I blinked, looking at the wood-paneled wall. We were walking past the carving depicting the marriage of Sylvester and Luna Torquill, him tall and proud, her wrapped in her stolen Kitsune skin and draped in roses. Seeing her like that made my eyes sting with the threat of tears I knew I wouldn’t shed. I missed the Luna I’d grown up with, the one who loved me.

That Luna wasn’t dead because she had never really existed at all. But she was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

“You’re giving up so much more than I am,” I said softly. “I know you’re worried about offending the High King, but I can make it right with him if I have to. Are you sure you want to do this?” As the words left my mouth, I was briefly gripped with the terrible fear that Tybalt would suddenly agree with me and declare our marriage a bad idea, leaving me alone in the middle of the hall. And then High King Sollys reallywouldhave good reason to be mad at me, since his son and heir would never have his real face returned to him, and I would have to go back to the house by myself. It was an impossible, incredibly painful thought, and I had no one else to blame for it.

Thankfully for my nerves, Tybalt only laughed, low and soft, and put his hand over mine where it rested on his arm, squeezing lightly. “You don’t escape me so easily, and if anyone’s having regrets about this union, I assure you, I am not the one. Calm your concerns, little fish, and we’ll be on our way soon enough.”

We stopped outside the doors to Arden’s receiving room. They were unattended, maybe because there were guards at the gate. We still hesitated a moment before I shrugged and knocked, the sound echoing through the hall. That was an effect of bothacoustics and a clever amplification spell built into the wood itself. One more advantage to big old knowes: they’re not only self-aware, but they’ve also had time for the people who care for them to layer and refine the magic that makes them good homes. It’s a symbiotic relationship. They like to be lived in, and the people who live in them like to be comfortable.

There was a long enough pause to make me wonder whether the absence of guards was because Arden was elsewhere in the knowe when a voice shouted, “Come on in!”

So we did.

Having a queen who spent decades hiding in the human world, hired a changeling as her chatelaine, and hired a Cu Sidhe equally familiar with and comfortable in the human world as her seneschal means that in some ways, Arden runs a more casual court than most. We entered the receiving room to find her sprawled across her throne like it was a coffee shop easy chair, dressed in jeans and a well-worn green hoodie, flanked on the dais by two familiar figures. One of them was expected. The other was not.

We were in the presence of a queen, however informal she was being. That was her choice, and it shouldn’t impact ours in the slightest. That didn’t stop me from blurting, “Walther, what areyoudoing here?”

Walther Davies, alchemist and chemistry professor and once potential heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Silences, lifted his head and smiled, languid and smug as the cat who got the canary. And I’m marrying a cat. I know that expression pretty damn well.

“Coming to your wedding as the escort of Miss Cassandra Brown,” he said, indicating Arden’s chatelaine with a lazy wave of his hand. “If I honestly believed you had been in any way involved with sending out the wedding invitations, this is where I’d be offended at you for not thinking I ranked my own.”

“And this is where I would remind you that bringing our own alchemist could be seen as an insult to the High Throne,” said Tybalt mildly. “Be glad we embraced the modern concept of the ‘plus one.’ When I was young, no one who hadn’t been thoroughly vetted and approved would have even been considered to be allowed within a hundred feet of a royal wedding, much less the disowned scion of a royal house.”

Walther snorted. “I wasn’t disowned, please. I forsook my claimto the throne. I offer about as much threat to the Sollys line as Cassandra does.”

I made a noncommittal humming sound. High Queen Maida was born a changeling, daughter of a fae man and a human woman. She gave up her mortality in order to marry Crown Prince Aethlin, and that had eventually placed her at the head of a continent. No small trick, for someone mortal-born, and not something commonly known. But it made Walther’s statement funnier than he probably intended it to be.

“Regardless, the High Queen herself agreed to the practice of including ‘plus one’ on the invitations,” said Tybalt. “Bringing you ourselves would have been an offense. Bringing you as Cassandra’s escort avoids insult, puts you close enough to call upon if the need arises, and is the tactically sensible choice.”

“He’s right, you know,” said Arden. “I haven’t been doing this as long as he has, or as long as the Sollys family has, and even I would blink if a visiting dignitary, invited or not, wanted to bring their own alchemist.”

“You sent me to Silences,” said Walther.

“Because you used to live there,” said Arden. “That connection made your presence logical. Sending you literally anywhere else could be construed as an insult, and I’m not up for insulting random monarchs this week.”

She snapped her fingers. The smell of redwood sap and blackberry flowers rose around her, along with a slight sparkle in the air, and she was gone, leaving her throne empty.

That’s a trick not all Tuatha de Dannan can pull off. Most of the time, they use their teleportation magic to open doorways they can step through or allow other people to use. What Arden had just done was effectively open a doorway beneath herself to fall through, without doing any of the usual hand gestures or being able to see her destination. I raised an eyebrow, quietly impressed.

It was nice to have a queen who didn’t actively want me dead. It was even nicer to see her starting to relax and blossom into the person she should have been able to be all along. I would never have tried to take her years in the human world away from her—they were too vital a piece of her identity, and theymattered—but I did enjoy seeing her become as casual about her magic as the rest of the nobles I’d known.

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