Page 18 of When Sorrows Come

I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s always hard when you come home after a long time away.”

It was going to be even harder for him, since he was coming home looking like a complete stranger, and he wouldn’t be able to admit who he was to anyone without potentially getting both of us in serious trouble. “Allowed the Crown Prince to sell his face to the sea witch,” not exactly in the big book of good knightly behavior.

Footsteps approached from the far side of the room, which was a neat trick, as there were no visible doors. They drew closer, and two of the vast wood panels peeled apart and swung seamlessly inward, revealing themselves to have been perfectly carved into the shape of two interlocking maple trees, complete with delicately pronged leaves. I swallowed several snarky comments about leaning too hard into the aesthetic. I was already insulting the crown by showing up in their knowe in jeans and a sweatshirt, with all my luggage. I didn’t need to insult them out loud.

A woman walked through the opening, and the paneled trees swung shut again behind her. Even knowing they were there, they still vanished completely once they were closed. Maybe they only actually existed when they were open.

The woman drew closer, and I found myself looking away from her, unable to force my eyes to focus on her face, which was so impossibly lovely that it made me feel bad about myself even before I had taken in its details. How could I expect Tybalt to marrymewhen she existed? It didn’t even matter if she was available. She was proof that women could be so infinitely more than I was that she made me extraneous to any needs my lover could possibly have had.

Describing her is literally beyond my capacity because she was too beautiful, and it crossed a line into the kind of beauty the mind is not fully meant to comprehend. Her skin was a few shades darker than the polished maple around her; her hair was a dark, glacial blue, almost as if it had somehow been scooped from some body of living water, and it fell to her waist in a cascade of curls,unbound and effortless. Her ears were pointed, and her fingers were long, and that was where my eyes refused to sully her any further with their attention, turning resolutely and irresistibly away.

“Nessa,” murmured Quentin, voice low, intended for my ears only. “She’s my father’s seneschal, and one of the Gwragedd Annwn.”

A lake maiden? That explained the beauty. Gwragedd Annwn are meant to be seen at a distance great enough to blunt the impact of their appearance, which can be literally deadly if they’re not careful. Indeed, as she drew closer, Nessa wove her fingers through the air the way I always did when I was casting a human illusion and pulled a veil of nothingness down over herself. There was a brief sensation, like a soap bubble being popped, and I was suddenly able to look at her without the almost irresistible urge to look away.

To be honest, I had always expected the Gwragedd Annwn to be... more. That degree of aversion could come from particularly pretty Daoine Sidhe when they went without any masks at all. I’ll get better when I give up the last of my humanity, but for now, occasionally being unable to look at someone seems like a small price to pay.

She was still beautiful, and her hair was still impossibly blue, but she didn’t hurt my heart by existing anymore. She had blunted herself somehow, making herself comprehensible in the same way Oberon made himself ordinary, not an illusion so much as it was a reduction, a necessary lessening to fit within the limitations of this world.

“Hello,” she said, and her accent was pure Nova Scotian, thick as maple frosting and just as delicious. “Welcome to the seat of the Westlands. We’ve been expecting you. In the name of His Royal Majesty, High King Aethlin Sollys, and his honored consort, High Queen Maida Sollys, it is my honor to extend to you the hospitality of this house for the customary seven days as we host and house your nuptials.”

Her gaze fell on the Luidaeg, drawn there by whatever force guides terrible mistakes and misassumptions. She smiled, and it was a lovely thing, despite the illusion that brought her down to the level of the rest of us. “Sir Daye, I presume?”

Quentin stiffened beside me, his body going rigid under myhand. So something about that greeting—casual and friendly as it was—didn’t sit right with him. Well, it didn’t sit right with me either, mostly because I didn’t feel like watching the Luidaeg commit murder in the royal knowe of the Westlands.

“What was your first clue, the fact that I’m wearing electrical tape in my hair like some sort of fashion-deficient mortal teenager, or the absence of a bra?” The Luidaeg sounded as startled as I felt.

Nessa kept smiling in the face of such obvious rudeness, her gaze flickering to Oberon, who loomed next to the Luidaeg like some sort of marble obelisk doing a poor job of pretending to be a fae man of indeterminate bloodline, the horns on his forehead implying that he was probably some sort of Satyr or Glastig cross. One thing was for sure: he was no Cait Sidhe.

Nessa tried anyway. “King Tybalt?” she ventured. “We are very grateful to you for accepting Queen Maida’s offer to hold your wedding here.”

That was when Kerry’s squeal split the air and saved us all from a situation that could easily have gone from embarrassing and faintly humorous to horrific in an instant, judging by the looks on Tybalt’s and the Luidaeg’s faces. Oberon, for his part, looked more politely baffled than anything else. He wasn’t going to carpet the room with the little Gwragedd Annwn’s entrails. That was good. At this rate, there was going to be a line.

Pretty much our entire group turned toward the sound of Kerry’s jubilant yell. She had appeared through another of those puzzle-piece doors on the opposite side of the room. She bounced to her toes and waved vigorously, then launched herself in our direction like a friendly, chubby, hug-seeking missile.

May stepped forward to take the first hit like the sister-slash-Fetch-slash maid of honor she was, wrapping her arms around the barreling Kerry and allowing the momentum of the impact to spin them halfway around, Kerry’s feet actually leaving the floor in the process. Nessa blinked, bemused, as May laughed.

“Wrong Daye!” she chided, letting Kerry go. “Not the bride!”

“There are no bad Dayes in this week,” said Kerry, and launched herself at me.

She had bled off some speed in her little dance with May, and the impact didn’t spin me around, just knocked me back a step. As always, Kerry was short, solid, and as much pure muscle as she was fat. Like most Hobs, she had long since decided the best way toapproach the world was head-on with a smile on her pretty, round-cheeked face.

Her hair was a wild cascade of dark brown curls streaked liberally with white—a sign that she’d been baking, not of age, since she’s as much a changeling as I am and still looks like she’s in her mid-twenties. She’s probably more of a changeling than I am at this point, after everything I’ve done to change the balance of my own blood. Kerry is still three quarters, the way she was born, daughter of a Hob mother and a half-hob changeling father she never knew and never particularly wanted to. She made her choice, and she’s always been happy with it.

Not much of one for second thoughts and regrets, our Kerry.

“I told you I’d bake your wedding cake one day, and wait until you see it, you’re going to swoon and sigh and tell that brute of a man youthinkyou’re marrying that you’re terribly, heartbreakingly sorry for his loss, but you have to marry the cake instead,” she said, barely pausing to catch her breath. “The sugar workaloneshould get me knighted.”

“Being knighted is more trouble than it’s worth, believe me,” I said, laughing. Quentin sighed and nodded his agreement. His own knighthood was still a few years off, but he had already more than learned the cost of it.

“Then I’ll take a nice little barony somewhere, especially if it comes with a nice little baron to keep my bed warm at night.” Kerry leered, the expression rendered almost comic by her obvious affability, then whirled toward May, who was standing next to Jazz and watching our interplay with amusement. “And you! Second Daye extension! I’ll have you remember that I promised to bake your wedding cake as well and give me the chance to show how incredibly deep the well of my skills extends sooner than later!”

May blinked. Jazz leaned around her, a polite smile on her face.

“Am I also allowed to leave my potential spouse for a cake?” she asked.

“You, I like,” said Kerry. “You’ll have a bride’s cake of your own. It’s a foolish custom when you’re paying for it, but when you have a master baker offering their labor for free, you may as well have as many cakes as you can squeeze out of the kitchen. Which reminds me, the kitchen is gearing up for dinner, and Stacy’s asked me to tell you she’ll need at least twenty minutes to deal with,” shewaved her hands vaguely in the direction of my torso, “all of this. That means you’re on the clock!”

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