Page 81 of When Sorrows Come

“Then, if my lady is prepared, let me take her to her king,” said Nolan. He waved his hand through the air, transcribing an archway. On the other side was the not-a-room we’d seen before, all trees and shimmering sky, and the smell of the wind. It smelled of snow and roses, but somehow that didn’t remind me of Evening at all. She had no place here.

This place was ours.

Nolan led me through the archway, Quentin following behind. Both of them stepped away once we were on the other side, Quentin dropping the train of my dress as he moved up to stand beside me.

“All right, this isn’t about to turn into some patriarchal bullshit about giving me away, is it?” I asked. I couldn’t see the platform from where we were standing, or the chairs, but from the sounds drifting back to us, they were full. Our guests had arrived.

“No,” he said, offering me his arm. There was a faint rush of air as Nolan gated himself away again, presumably to join the rest of the attendees. “I walk you to the fork where you decide which road you’re going to take, and then I go sit down.”

“Which road?”

“There are three roads to Faerie. I’m pretty sure I know which one you’re going to take, but I’m not allowed to influence you. It’s always a squire, a child, or a young relative who escorts the bride to the roads, and then she has to go on alone.”

I frowned. “This is gonna be a lot of pureblood bullshit, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he said, with a solemn nod. Then he grinned. “Shouldn’t have married a king, I guess. Even the Cait Sidhe know what a state wedding looks like. Or, if you had to marry a king, you should have taken more of an interest in the arrangements.”

“Are you punishing me for not caring more about my own wedding?” I asked, disbelieving.

Quentin shrugged. “At least you get to choose who you’re going to marry,” he said, voice going soft. “No one’s going to tell you that you have to marry another Dóchas Sidhe, or that you have to make sure it’s a marriage where you not only get children, but you get a clear line of paternity.”

My breath caught in my throat. I kept moving mechanically forward, following his lead. He’d told me several times that things weren’t that serious between him and Dean—and maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, but who was to say what they could have been if he hadn’t been destined to be High King one day, taking a throne that had to be held, one way or another, with blood? He had known his future since he was old enough to understand what a crown was for. A crown was for him. With all of its perks and obligations, it was going to rest on his head, and he was going to carry the weight of it in every choice he ever made. It could be centuries. It could be the day after he reached his majority.

I put a hand over his where it rested on my arm, squeezing lightly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was ungrateful of me. I know you have expectations to live up to, and I appreciate you explaining this to me, since Tybalt’s happy to watch me stumble through it without a map.”

“He says you do that to him all the time,” said Quentin. The path bent beneath us. I was starting to realize Nolan had dropped us off a lot farther from the site of the ceremony than I’d initially thought. “When you choose your road, I’ll stay behind, and your next escort will see you to the place where your groom is waiting. If you had the higher title, Tybalt would be the one making this walk to you. Too bad ‘my mother was Firstborn, and also awful’ doesn’t supersede ‘actual king.’ ”

“I mean, that’s probably a good thing, all things considered,” I said. “Can you imagine Arden’s reaction if I was in a position to pull rank on her?”

Quentin laughed. The path bent, and then split, dividing into three distinct routes deeper into the glade.

The first of them was broad and pleasant, extending away across a wide expanse of grass and wildflowers. Lilies grew along the path’s edges, and a figure waited there, barely too far away to see, waiting for me.

The second was narrow, choked with thorny briars that dripped with roses redder than my gown, whiter than the violets at Quentin’s lapel. There was no way anyone could walk that way without bleeding. Another figure waited there, distant and obscure.

The third path was the same width as the one I already stood on, winding down a mossy, ferny bank into the shadows of theevergreen trees. A third figure waited there, as impossible to see clearly as the other two. I looked at Quentin, raising an eyebrow.

“So what, I just pick one? What happens to the two I don’t pick?”

“They head for the wedding and probably give you shit about it later, even though this is sort of the definition of an uninformed choice.” Quentin shrugged. “The Luidaeg says that in state weddings like this one it used to be only the right path that led to the wedding, and the other two would lead you up and down for a hundred hours before dropping you back where you started to try again. I know it must be true if she says it, but that seems like a really lousy way to deal with something that’s going to keep half the local nobles from doing their jobs until it’s over. But whatever, we’re not as hung up on being timeless creatures of forest and fen as we used to be.”

He stopped at the point where the paths diverged, pulling his arm away and offering me a small smile. “This is where I go.”

“What if I don’t want you to?”

“Why, Sir Daye, are you proposing?” I must have looked absolutely horrified, because he laughed, shaking his head. “Not an option. I’ll be at the end, along with everyone else who loves you.”

Then he turned and walked away, leaving me alone with three unmarked paths, any one of which would lead me to my future. “This is fun,” I said, and glared at the air. “Some warning would have been nice.”

Faerie and the human world have interacted for as long as they’ve both existed, brushing up against each other and sometimes striking sparks. I recognized the scene in front of me, even if I had never expected to face it quite so literally. It was from the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, lover of the Faerie Queen—although the ballad doesn’t say which one; I’ve always suspected Maeve, if only because it doesn’t shy away from the bloody nature of Faerie—the point when he faced the three roads that would define his destiny.

What a ridiculous, pretentious,purebloodthing to build a wedding ceremony around. I shook my head. “Do you see the narrow road, so thick beset with thorns and briars? That is the path to righteousness, though after it but few inquire.”

I looked to the next path. “And see you next the broad, broadroad that lays across the lily lawn? That is the path to wickedness, though some call it the path to heaven.”

The last path was the simplest, winding down into the ferns and the dark. “And see you not the bonnie road that winds about the ferny bank? That is the road to fair Elfland, that you and I this night must take.”

There was a time when I would have run down that broad lily road without a second thought, trying to move faster than my own demons, racing ahead without looking back. There were dangers there, I knew, and for all that it would be the easiest journey, it would also be the least satisfying.

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