Page 76 of When Sorrows Come

“Ask him where the Seer is,” I said.

Tybalt tightened his hand further on King Shallcross’s shoulder, claws breaking the other man’s skin. The smell of blood snaked its way through the room, savory-sweet and far more appealing than it had any right to be. I refused to turn my face away. This was part of my job more than it was part of Tybalt’s. This was my squire’s family and the throne I was ultimately sworn to.

“Your people have been replacing the loyal members of this household,” said Tybalt, and as he spoke his voice leveled out, teeth shrinking back toward their normal size. I guess now that I wasn’t in immediate danger of taunting my way into getting stabbed again, he didn’t feel the need to be quite as threatening. That was almost flattering. “Have they been killing them?”

“Not for the most part, and never directly,” said King Shallcross.

“The Doppelganger who replaced Nessa had set some pretty deadly traps in her quarters,” I said.

“Bah,” said King Shallcross. “Traps are not the same as murder, under the Law.”

I stared at him. “Peopledied.”

“Yes, but they pulled the trigger themselves.” He turned toward me, expression unnervingly triumphant. That smug smile made me want to punch him right in the middle of his pretty, pretty face. “No one can be said to be responsible.”

Faerie doesn’t so much have a definition of “negligent homicide,” and I didn’t so much have a reasonnotto be punching him. Sure, he was a King, but he had no Kingdom, and I had an assortment of people with crowns who’d willingly pardon me for assaulting the man.

The feeling of his nose crunching under my fist was surprisingly satisfying. Tybalt actually let him go as he reeled backward, knocked off balance by the blow. Blood cascading down his face, King Shallcross lifted his head and stared at me.

I smiled at him, making deliberate eye contact as I raised my hand and licked the blood off my knuckles. It tasted of spruce and hazelnut, echoing the magic that eddied around the man when his illusions were released, and when I closed my eyes, I could see myself through his eyes, plain, unassuming knight of a backwater kingdom, named hero for political reasons, with a reputation all out of proportion to anything I could possibly have achieved. All those stories of me deposing corrupt monarchs and consorting with Firstborn were just that—stories, and the people who took them seriously deserved to be exploited and overthrown.

“What’s wrong with her?” demanded Absalom. “A changeling shouldneverlay hands upon their betters!”

“I didn’t, and stay quiet, because if I lose this blood memory, I’ll have to hit you again,” I said calmly. “I may do that anyway, for the fun of it.”

He stopped talking.

“He heard we were coming because it wasn’t a secret, and he’s been waiting for a while for an opportunity,” I said, not opening my eyes. “Please understand that by ‘for a while,’ I mean ‘since the fall of Ash and Oak.’ Man’s been hiding in the royal kitchens fordecades. They need to vet their people better.”

Especially considering that he couldn’t have done it withoutillusions and enchantments to make himself look like something other than one of the Daoine Sidhe. Even assuming no one in the knowe would have recognized the former king, which was a pretty big assumption, no one would ever believe a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe’s greatest aspiration was to serve under a Hob in someone else’s kitchen. It went against everything Eira had decreed for her descendants. He’d been hiding for well over a century.

The thought brought another rush of memories, feeling thwarted, overlooked, relegated to a place well below what he deserved by both the fall of his kingdom—brought about by its human occupants, and not his fault, no, not his fault in the slightest—and the knowe policy of hiring courtiers and guards from among the ranks of the nobility. He couldn’t even serve as a page without a household to support him, and so he’d been forced to clear tables and serve people whose station was below his own.

His rage and resentment, which had been building for years, had been given plenty of time to swell, curdle, and sicken him, destroying any vestige of the man who had once been noble enough to be considered for the high throne. Even his lady wife, the lovely Vesper, had left him alone in the wake of his kingdom’s fall, slipping away in the night without a—

I gasped, breaking free of the memory and opening my eyes. Tybalt was staring at me, visibly concerned. He had hold of Absalom again, one hand clasping each of the man’s shoulders. Absalom’s nose had stopped bleeding.

That was too bad. I needed more blood.

“Are you all right?” Tybalt asked, eyes never leaving my face.

“I’m fine, but I need more blood,” I said. “I lost the memory, and what I saw—I need to see more.”

“Very well.”

“No, not ‘very well,’ ” snapped Absalom. “I am a pureblooded descendant of Eira Rosynhwyr! I demand to be treated as my position demands!”

“You are a king who ignored the warning signs when iron poisoning began to seep into your people, who allowed far too many to die when they could have been saved,” I said. “You are a small man rendered corrupt by power, only to see that power stripped away when you failed to protect it as you should have done. It’s not enough to convince people to put their faith in you. You have to keep earning it every day. You have to be good enough tomorrowfor the people who chose you yesterday to know they were right and make the same choice again. You lost everything when Ash and Oak fell, and I can’t say yet whether I’m sorry or not. But people have died here, in this knowe, because of actions you took and choices you made, and I’d be a poor hero if I didn’t press on and verify the scope of the harm you’ve done. Youwillbleed for me. The only question is how voluntarily—and how much.”

Tybalt shifted his hand from one shoulder to wrap around Absalom’s throat, claws pricking against the skin. Absalom swallowed hard and thrust one arm out toward me, wrist turned toward the ceiling.

“Do as you must, filth,” he spat.

“Not sure I’d call me that with Tybalt holding onto you like that, but sure, you do you.” I drew my knife as I stepped forward, reaching out to take his hand. Carefully—more carefully than he deserved—I pressed the edge of the blade against the place where his hand met his arm, slicing shallowly across. Blood welled to the surface, and I pulled my knife away.

This time, I got a mouthful, and the memories washed over me in an immediate, bloody tide. As always, they carried a certain confusion with them—was I October Daye, daughter of Amandine, or Absalom Shallcross, son of Vitus? And did it matter, either way?

She is lovely, my lady, framed against the moon in the window of her bower, and I would die for her. I would kill for her—I have killed for her, a dozen men, to see the crown safely settled on my brow and its twin upon hers. She carries it as a queen should, my Vesper, my lady of the evening hour, with her pearly skin and her hair as black as polished coal, her manners finer than silk, her touch more precious than pearl—

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