Page 5 of When Sorrows Come

“—but is definitely a factor of my life, I need to consider what it looks like when my squire goes off and pulls this sort of ridiculous stunt for no good reason whatsoever.”

“But Ihavea good reason!” protested Quentin.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what could that good reason possibly be? And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you still haven’t told me the terms of your bargain with the Luidaeg. I’m about thirty seconds away from calling her and demanding she transfer your debts to me.”

He blinked. “I don’t really know how that would work...”

I put a hand over my face. “By Oberon’s balls, I need you to tell me that you didnottrade your firstborn child to the Luidaeg in exchange for the ability to attend my wedding.”

“I didn’t. And it’s really weird hearing you swear by someone we’ve met. Even if he still hasn’t really acknowledged that I exist, or talked to me, or anything like that.”

I lowered my hand. “Noted. Tell me what you paid first, and then tell me why you thought this was a good idea.” Dean made a sound of protest. I held up one finger, signaling him to silence, while continuing to glower at Quentin. “Now, please.”

“I, um, I traded her my identity for a new one, and I get the counter-draught that gives my real face and everything else back after I see you get married. Which means I have to attend the wedding, and we both have to be alive when you take your vows. And it seemed like a good idea because...” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “Because you’re mymom, Toby. I have a mother, I love her, but she stopped being there for me seven years ago, and it’s been you almost the whole time since then. You’re my knight and my responsible adult and mymom. I know someone’s going to try to kill you at your own wedding! I’ve met you, I know how your life works, and you’re mymom. I have to be there. I’m your squire. I’d be failing you completely if I wasn’t there.”

I stared at him, barely aware that my eyes had started to burn with unshed tears. Then I blinked and they were rolling down my cheeks, salt painting my lips and overwhelming the taste of lemon sugar. I put my coffee cup down again and leaned back in my chair, opening my arms.

That was all the invitation Quentin needed. He flung himself out of his own chair and into mine, sending me rocking back, although the counter was close enough that we didn’t—quite—topple to the ground. He pressed his face into my shoulder as he slung his arms around my neck, and I closed my own arms around him, and held that boy as tight as I dared. I was still crying, a slow leak that felt almost insufficient for the moment. This should have been a huge, dramatic thing, all racking sobs and blood.

Maybe my standards are skewed.

So Quentin clung to me and cried, and Dean sat awkwardly, looking on without saying a word. He did eventually lean forward and steal the second scone off my plate, something I supposed was within his rights as my younger brother. I didn’t say anything, just kept holding onto Quentin and breathing in the unfamiliar gorse and vetiver scent of his magic, which rolled off his skin like sharp perfume. It wasn’t unpleasant. I hoped I wasn’t going to have time to get used to it.

Although thatdidmean I’d need to get involved with the wedding planning, at least enough to make sure the actual date arrived as soon as possible. Dammit.

Quentin finally sniffled and let go, pulling back and gathering his wounded dignity around himself at the same time. It was such a ridiculously feline gesture that I snorted despite myself, and he blinked at me, a hint of hurt flashing through his eyes.

“No, sweetie, no, no,” I said, reaching up to run my hand quickly over the surface of his hair. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at myself, and the situation. Sometimes I feel like I’ve ruined you.”

“You couldnever,” he protested. “I’m going to be a better king because of what I’ve learned from you. I’m going to make you so proud of me. I swear I am.”

“I’m already proud of you,” I said. “I’ve been proud of you since the day you demanded to be my squire if you had to be anyone’s—and you did have to be someone’s; there’s no way you’d be able to hold the throne without a knighthood at your back. But no, youjust looked so much like an offended cat for a second there that I realized when you do take the throne, you’ll be taking it as someone who’s spent way more time with the Cait Sidhe than is standard for one of our monarchs.”

“Is that a bad thing?” asked Dean, who had finished my scone and apparently took the fact that we were no longer crying as permission to speak. I turned to face him. He shrugged. “I don’t know alotabout land history, but I know from some of the things Dad and Marcia have said that there are people who look down on the shapeshifters and treat them like animals.”

“It used to be a lot more acceptable to treat them badly, back before the purebloods had as many changelings to kick around as they do now,” I said carefully. It’s not that talking about Faerie’s failings makes me uncomfortable. It’s that I naturally approach them from a semi-mortal perspective and think most of them are incredibly stupid, which can be a problem. For all that Dean and Quentin were my family, they were also titled nobility. Dean already held his demesne. Quentin’s would eventually include the entire continent. That made it important for me to put things as delicately as I could, while also telling them the truth.

We can only improve if we face the things we’ve done wrong. But if I was too blunt, anything I told them would just get contradicted by the rest of their adult advisors, and it would do nothing but make them trust me less.

Tybalt has never been entirely open with me about what it had been like for him in the centuries before I was born, and honestly, I’ve never pressed the issue too hard. The part of me that still thinks like a human doesn’t like to dwell on the fact that I’m about to marry a man whose age is measured in triple digits, and the part of me that’s fae is incensed and embarrassed by the fact that a vague disdain for “beasts” is still so culturally common that it flavored many of our early encounters.

No one likes to realize they’ve been an asshole. Even after they’ve been forgiven and learned to be better, it’s a hard stone to swallow, and it weighs heavy in the stomach.

“But why?” asked Dean.

“Transformation magic flows through water,” I said. “Titania did her best to position herself as Oberon’s true queen, the one shining light of Faerie, and she wove her workings with flowers.” Three roads to magic: water, blood, and flowers. They branch andbraid and blend together, and none of us is untouched by at least one of them. People like me, who carry only one path in their veins, are rare. Oberon is my grandfather, and both my grandmother and my father are—were, in my father’s case—humans. I got none of Titania’s flowers or Maeve’s water. My illusions are fragile things compared to someone even partially descended from Titania, and my blood yearns for the transformations that come so easily to my grandfather, making it easy for Maeve’s water-workers to twist and change me, with or without my consent.

“So we don’t like shapeshifters because they’re descended from Maeve?” Dean asked, incredulous. “Mom’s a shapeshifter, and Merrow are pure Titania. Not even Oberon was involved in making them.”

“Yes, and Pete said her own siblings basically abandoned her for being too ‘bestial’ when they saw that she had fins and scales and shifted shapes as it suited her,” I said. “When you’re judging things on appearances, it doesn’t always matter what’s true. And Titania was big into encouraging her descendants to be assholes.”

“Like Eira,” said Quentin.

“Yes, like Eira. So you have one Queen of Faerie doing her best to destroy another, saying anything that’s too animal is bad and tainted and wrong, and then you have Oberon, who’s kinda part animal himself—the antlers were a surprise—but also super protean. He could make himself the perfect man for Titania. And that probably just fed into the story she was trying to tell. If being part-animal was bad, and the King unchallenged was only animalistic when he was with the Queen Titania wanted everyone to hate, it would be easy to shift the story to one where Maeve was corrupting him. You know how much the purebloods like to believe the easy answer.”

Dean scowled. Quentin looked down, ashamed. I chucked him under the chin with one finger.

“Hey,” I said. “You got so much better, bud. Don’t think you didn’t. You’ve learned to listen to the people around you, to see everyone as a vital part of Faerie, and to listen to the things we’re trying to say. That’s amazing. You’ve come so far.”

---