Page 44 of When Sorrows Come

The Luidaeg laughed. Her magic began to gather, the smell of the sea, brackish and sweet at the same time, a living contradiction. The corners of the room darkened and swelled with unspeakable power, and what felt like a wave of pressure crashed down on all of us, weighing and compressing the room as the spell was finished and the magic broke. The Luidaeg took her hands away from Nessa’s face.

“There you go,” she said. “Perfectly safe, until I release you. Iwillhave to charge you if you want your lake water purified and rendered safe for use, but the price will be small—a lock of hair, or a rude word said in the High King’s presence. I swear to you, the price will be small.”

Nessa nodded to the Luidaeg and turned to face the rest of us. She looked like the illusion of herself the Doppelganger had worn, the woman robbed of her supernatural power to hurt us with a glance. She sagged slightly, wobbling, and I realized how tired she had to be. This was a woman who had been ambushed in her home, taken captive, and held herself in magical stasis for three days while believing she was responsible for the death of her liege.

“Please,” she said, and there was a world of pleading in that single word.

I shook my head. “He’s alive,” I said. “No one blames you for what happened. We all know you didn’t do this willingly. But I’m afraid I can’t let you rest yet.”

She blinked. Whatever response she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “He’s truly alive?”

“He’s alive,” I echoed. People who aren’t used to being knocked out by Doppelgangers and stuffed into closets sometimes need a little more reassurance when that kind of thing happens to them. For me and most of the people who spend any amount of time with me, this was sort of a best-case kidnapping. Nessa hadn’t been seriously hurt and neither had the High King. She’d just taken a stressful three-day nap.

Of course, two members of the guard were dead, and that was going to be heartbreaking for everyone who knew them, but I hadn’t. I could keep moving forward like this was any case, and I’ve found that when I do that, I tend to drag the investigation along behind me.

Nessa blinked again. “I thought... when that creature took me, I thought...”

“Near as I can guess, it was waiting for us to show up so that it could assassinate the High King with a known king-breaker in the knowe,” I said grimly. “No one with any sense would look at that situation andnotbelieve we’d either smuggled the Doppelganger in with us or hired them in the first place—if people even believed there had been a Doppelganger. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t forced the issue, the plan was to replace one of us during the day, and then have the Doppelganger perform the assassination while they looked like me, or May, or Stacy.”

Depending on how much the Doppelganger knew—which hadn’t been all that much, as such things went—it could have decided to target the Luidaeg, or even Oberon. I couldn’t quitedecide whether that would have ended with Oberon locked in a supply closet, still unwilling to be anything more than a silent tagalong, or whether it would have ended with the King of Faerie returned and the Doppelganger in pieces all across the Eastern seaboard. Either way, it would have been a disaster, and I was incalculably relieved by my own inability to let anything go.

“Ah,” said Nessa. “I see. It may also have been waiting to see if you brought the Crown Prince with you.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I apologize if you didn’t know,” she said. “As I said before, the rumor in the knowe is that he was sent to the Mists, to place him as far from Toronto as possible while Their Majesties addressed the pressures that had demanded a fosterage to begin with. Further, the rumor states that he has been squired to begin his proper knightly training, and that he serves a king-breaker.”

“Huh,” I said. “Don’t know of any other king-breakers active in the Mists right now. We’re not the only Kingdom on the Pacific Coast, you know. He could be in Silences, or Angels, or shoveling cow shit on the Golden Shore. I brought my squire with me.” I gestured for Quentin to step forward, in all his faded Banshee glory.

Nessa looked at him without recognition, studying his face for a moment before she sighed and turned away. “Then the rumors were wrong,” she said. “But believing them may still have motivated the timing of this attack. Kill the Crown Prince and the High King at once—and change the course of a continent.”

“Um, isn’t the High Queen considered an equal ruler?” I asked. “And then there’s the little sister—she could inherit.”

“But not for years yet,” said Nessa. “If Quentin were to be killed, Penthea would require a regent to hold the throne, and war would surely follow, for those who seek power are not going to sit idly back while a little girl plays at being High Queen. And there are... aspects of the High Queen’s past that would preclude her taking the throne in the eyes of many of the same individuals.”

Meaning Nessa knew that Maida had been born a changeling, and even though she hadn’t been mortal in decades, maybe centuries, the prejudices in Faerie can run deep enough and be arbitrary enough to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. Kill the sitting King and his eldest heir, make sure the truth about the High Queen gets out, destabilize the Westlands.

I was going to have to give Quentin an extra slice of wedding cake to thank him for realizing he needed a new face if he was going to attend the wedding.

“But it’s all right, it didn’t happen, and October here is a hero and a busybody, meaning she’s going to do everything in her inconsiderable power to annoy whoever arranged your abduction into giving themselves up,” said the Luidaeg, soothingly. Nessa turned to look at her. “Now, where can we take you that you’ll feel safe? Your quarters are out of the question, I’m afraid. It’s going to take a while to clean and search them and verify that they’re safe.”

“Can I stay with you?” asked Nessa. “Please, I won’t be any trouble, I won’t ask for anything else if you allow it, but please...” She was looking at the Luidaeg the way the Roane did, eyes bright and wide and filled with depthless pleading, like this was the only thing she had ever really wanted in her entire life. Like the Luidaeg could make her dreams come true by saying yes.

The Luidaeg sighed. “I’m not your First,” she said. “I love you, but not the way she would. I don’t have that in me anymore for anyone who isn’t already mine. I’m sorry. I know how lost you have to feel, not knowing your beginnings, but I can’t be your harbor. You can stay with our group, for now, unless the High King calls you, but I can’t promise I’ll be there the whole time.”

Nessa nodded. “That will be... more than I have any right to have asked you for.” She bent until her forehead nearly brushed her knees. “Thank you,” she said, in a very small voice.

The Luidaeg grimaced. “And with that settled, Toby, we should get back to your room, both so you can help with searching it for traps, and so your kitty cat can see some actual proof that you’re not deadbeforehe starts a diplomatic incident.”

I felt my eyes widen. That was something I hadn’t considered. If Tybalt lost his temper inside the seat of the Westlands... “Let’s go,” I said, standing hurriedly.

The Luidaeg smirked. “Yes,” she agreed, “let’s.”

eleven

Quentin getting back soquickly with the Luidaeg made more sense once we were in the hall and I started to understand the geography slightly better. From the storeroom where we’d found Nessa to the hallway where the guest quarters were linked was less than a ten-minute walk, and he hadn’t been walking. He’d been running as fast as his legs would carry him, anxious to resolve a bad situation that managed to touch on both sides of his life at the same time.

Poor kid. I’d always known my getting married in Toronto would be hard on him, but I hadn’t expected quite this level of difficulty.

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