Page 6 of When Sorrows Come

“And all your friends are inappropriate by the standards of a true royal Court,” said Dean. “We’re going to cause diplomatic incidents when you have to go back to Toronto with your own face.”

Quentin looked briefly, almost comically, alarmed. I managed not to laugh, but it was a near thing.

“He’s not wrong. You’re dating a mixed-blood whose mother likes to punch people in lieu of diplomacy, your best friend is a Cait Sidhe, your other best friend was born half-mortal and still lives with her human mother, and that’s not saying anything about your relationship with my family, which is weird and messed-up at best, and that brings us nicely back to the part where your idea of a solution was going straight to the sea witch. I havebrokenyou.”

He had the good grace to look chagrined and was inhaling to speak when my phone rang. The screen flashed “unknown number,” which could mean a robocaller, but was more likely to mean someone like Etienne, whose number didn’t technically exist and hence didn’t have a listing to display.

I gave the phone a baleful look. “You know, once upon a time, this would have been on the wall, not the table, and we’d all be asking each other if we were going to get that, and if you weren’t the one who actually answered, you could pretend not to be home,” I said in a neutral tone.

“Really?” asked Dean.

“Really.”

“Huh.” He looked dubious.

I sighed and answered the phone. “Hello, October Daye’s phone, October speaking, I was just in the middle of an important family conversation, so if no one’s dead or bleeding, please hang up and call back later.”

“I think I’m partially responsible for your current family conversation,” said the Luidaeg, sounding amused. “Hi.”

I sat up straighter, managing not to drop the phone. “Luidaeg!”

“Yes, I think we established that a few seconds ago,” she said. “I assume this conversation is about your boys.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Before you yell at me, Quentin may not have his majority yet, but heisan adult, and nothing about my geasa demands people have achieved their majority before I trade with them. Honestly, I think it was set to do the exact opposite. Nothing more harmful to do to a mother who’s lost her children than to force her to treat cruelly with other people’s little ones.” Her voice turned bitter toward the end.

The Luidaeg is the first among the Firstborn, child of Oberonand Maeve, old enough to have seen most of history unfold in front of her, and to have forgotten more of it than the majority of us will ever know. And a long time ago, for reasons I’ve never pried too deeply into, Eira decided to destroy her. They were sisters. They could have been each other’s greatest allies. Instead, Eira followed her mother, Titania, into hatred of Maeve’s descendants, and orchestrated the slaughter of the Luidaeg’s children and grandchildren, leaving their bodies flayed and broken on the shore while her chosen cat’s-paws wore their flensed skins back to their own families like trophies.

The Luidaeg had survived the betrayal of her sister and the loss of her family. Honestly, she’d done better than anyone had any right to expect her to, not taking her revenge upon the families of the people who killed her children, not declaring war upon her sister’s own descendants. As far as I’ve ever been able to determine, all she did was make a bargain with the children of the killers themselves, binding them to the skins of her dead descendants to create the Selkies, and then letting them go to the sea. She was more than merciful—she was kind.

Eira couldn’t have that. She went to her own mother and convinced her, somehow, that the Luidaeg was plotting unspeakable revenge, and Titania set a geas on the grieving sea witch in order to protect her own daughter. From that day forward, the Luidaeg was forbidden to harm any descendant of Titania unless it was because they had voluntarily offered themselves to her as part of a bargain; she was unable to lie; and she was obligated to do anything within her not inconsiderable power to meet any request that was made of her. The only redeeming virtue of this terrible imposition upon her freedom was that she could set her own price, tailoring it to both the size of the request and how much she genuinely wanted—or didn’t want—to help the person who was doing the asking.

I made a noncommittal noise. Giving Quentin a way to attend my wedding and asking only that he actually do so was incredibly kind for one of the Luidaeg’s bargains. She could have asked for anything. She could have killed him on the spot—the only time her bindings will allow her to harm a child of Titania—and informed him that as one of the night-haunts, he’d be able to attend the whole thing unobserved. Either he’d worded his request very, very carefully, or she’d tied herself in knots to give him what he wantedat the absolute least personal cost to himself. Knowing their relationship, I was willing to bet on the latter.

Maybe I hadn’t broken our next king. He had come to the Mists as a blind foster, and he’d go home as the beloved honorary nephew of one of Faerie’s greatest remaining monsters. That was a pretty decent upgrade, no matter how you wanted to look at it.

“This is his second deal with me, in case you forgot.”

“I didn’t.” His first deal had been for passage into Blind Michael’s lands, before he’d been formally considered my squire. Blind Michael’s hunt had taken Quentin’s mortal girlfriend, Katie, intending to transform her into a horse for one of his new Riders. I had gone to get her and the rest of the stolen children back. Quentin had followed me. Not smart, but definitely heroic. The Luidaeg’s price tag that time had been dismayingly similar to this one: come back with me, or don’t come back at all.

“Then I don’t understand the problem.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You knew I wasn’t going to like this, or you would have warned me before you literallyturned my squireintosomeone else.”

“That’s true.” She sounded almost cheerful now. “You don’t like anything that messes with your remarkably staid way of looking at the world. I honestly don’t quite understand it. You’ve been through enough bullshit at this point that I’d expect you to be a little bit more flexible, but whatever. I knew you were going to be pissed. I also knew that this was really important to him, and he was going to push me to do it no matter how expensive I said it was going to be, so I gave him the lowest price tag I possibly could.”

“While also guaranteeing I was going to do what you wanted me to do.” A lot of people have assumed my relative disinterest in the act of planning my own wedding means I don’t actuallywantto get married. They’re wrong. There is nothing in this world I currently want more. Tybalt needs to know I’m not going to leave him; I need to know that I’m putting down roots in truth and not just in theory. I need to hold his hands and tell him I’m going to stay.

I just don’t care about all the ceremony that comes with it—or the giant target that me plus any major formal event will paint on my back. That’s why I’ve been so happy to push all the planning off on the people who care more about it than I do. As long as at the end of all this, Tybalt is my husband in the eyes of the worldthe way he already is in my heart and I get to spend the rest of my life waking up to him, I’m happy.

“Yes,” she said dryly. “Attend your own wedding.”

I scoffed.

“I’m serious. I know you’ve tried to convince him to take you to the human courthouse, sign a piece of paper, and call that a marriage. I don’t think you fully comprehend how monumental it is for a titled member of the Divided Courts—even a lowly one—to marry a King of Cats. I can’t think of the last time that happened.”

That was enough to make me pause, and turn my body slightly away from the table, where Quentin was in the process of pilfering the remains of my first scone. Why teenage boys think food tastes better if stolen from someone else’s plate is something I will never understand. We only have one female member of the current teen horde, Chelsea, and she has better table manners than any of the boys, possibly due to being raised by a single mother who actually had the time to give a damn.

---