“She can’t stop Karen if she wants to go, since that girl is under my protection, and I outrank you both last time I looked,” said the Luidaeg, gesturing with a pickle spear. Not to be left out of the bad style choices, she had several strands of Mardi Gras beads around her neck, and a stack of cheap bangles on one arm. That party supply store had enjoyed its time with May’s credit card.
“And the rest aren’t Seers, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. Stacy looked away, not meeting my eyes. I blinked, hard, and decided that cornering her on the issue in front of everyone else wasn’t going to do us any good. But we were going to have a conversation about this as soon as I could get her alone.
Poppy snorted and waved at me from the other side of the table, chirping, “Get a plate and make a sandwich. You’ve not eaten since before I ate last, and I’ve had three!”
“She hasn’t eaten, and she’s been bleeding again,” said Tybalt, nudging me toward the trays. I looked between the two of them and sighed, moving to pick up two slices of bread.
“I don’t need the entire world telling me I need to eat more,” I objected. “I’m a grown woman and I can feed myself just fine.”
Tybalt made a scoffing noise. “Perhaps it’s for the best the court Adhene has gone off with his liege lord for the interrogations,” he said. “Since a lie that blatant would surely have roused him to attempted murder.”
“I’m pretty hard to kill,” I said, stuffing roast beef and sliced melon between the bread.
“Hence the ‘attempted.’ ”
“You know, my sister will be thrilled when I get home and report the day’s events to her,” said Nolan easily. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You all know I’m here as an observer for Queen Windermere. She only has one hero of the realm right now, and one presumptive heir. She wouldn’t allow us both to go off at the same time if she didn’t have good reason, and being sure Sir Daye is neither plotting insurrection against her nor overthrowing anyone else absolutely qualifies. She’s going to be so happy to hear that you don’t vex her on purpose, you’re just like this. All the time. No matter how important the people you might be insulting are. Sir Cat,” he switched his attention to Tybalt, not missing a single beat of his sentence, “are you quite sure you wish to marry the Lady October? She does seem rather akin to the month she was named for, and will no doubt cause you no end of troubles. It seems like a marriage to her is a poor way to guarantee a peaceful future.”
Tybalt blinked at him, expression more amused than offended, but before he could say anything, a new sound introduced itself. It was low and rich and slightly gravely, with a strange kinship to hoofbeats racing across the open moor. Faerie is remarkably good at presenting itself in complicated metaphors, but this metaphor was incredibly simple, for all that it was also inescapable. It was a sound no one had heard in centuries, except for maybe the Luidaeg, maybe Poppy, locked up as they were in their apartment by the bay.
It was the sound of Oberon laughing.
“A peaceful future is never guaranteed,” he said, dark eyes bright below the crown of his antlers. Everyone was silent, listening raptly, as if he were saying the most important thing ever spoken in these halls. And as he was the father of us all, who was to say he wasn’t? He represented our past and our future, all tangled up in a single confusing, often nondescript man.
“The right wife doesn’t somehow magically buy you peace and plenty,” he said. “I found the right wife twice over, or thought I did, and found no peace there, only endless conflict. My beautiful ladies are stories now—to most of you, anyway,” and there he glanced to the Luidaeg, infinite warmth in his expression, “but to me, they were the most wonderful women in the world. The only women in the world, when first we met, but I would have chosen them out of millions. I would choose them for the first time today if that choice were set before me. And they never brought me peace or plenty, not one day in our long, long days together, and I would have all those days over again if the world allowed it to me. Do not try to direct your heart’s desires based on presumption of peace. It will never once bring you joy, and it will never lead you home.”
“Daddy,” sighed the Luidaeg, sounding every inch the teenager she appeared to be, like she belonged with the teens who swarmed my living room almost every night of the week, laughing and teasing each other and throwing food even when they knew they’d be expected to clean up after themselves.
Nessa startled, looking at the Luidaeg with new understanding in her terribly widened eyes. “Did you call him . . .” she began, only to taper off into silence as those same eyes, still wide, seemed to glaze over. There was a long, silent pause before she slumped forward, her head hitting the table only inches from her sandwich-laden plate.
The Luidaeg sighed and moved one of Nessa’s arms so that it was cradling her head, giving her something to rest upon. “Sorry,” she said. “That was my fault.”
“Wait,” I said. “I thought no one noticed him because he didn’t want to be noticed. Are you putting the whammy on people who figure out that he’s your dad?”
Oberon picked up his sandwich, seemingly unconcerned by the scene unfolding around him. The Luidaeg sighed.
“He’s not entirely himself yet,” she said. “He doesn’t want people demanding things from him before he’s finished the process of pulling himself back together.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in some serious shit here!” I gestured wildly with my sandwich. Tybalt caught my wrist and gently guided it back down in front of me.
“Eat,” he said. “Don’t attempt to conduct an orchestra.”
I shot him a quick look, then returned my attention to the Luidaeg. “So you’ve been wiping the minds of anyone you don’t feel deserves to know that he’s here?” That answered a lot of questions. It raised almost as many more, like how could she do that? Titania had bound her powers long before she disappeared, making everything something to be paid for.
“I’m allowed to act when it’s for selfish purposes, and wanting my father to be left with the time he needs to heal is about as selfish as it gets,” she said. “You have to understand, October, I’m so much older than anyone else you know. Only Eira comes close, and I had a century without her, when it was just me and my sisters—my true sisters, the ones who knew me and loved me exactly as I was, who worked no conspiracies against me, who laid no plans to make themselves sole heirs to our parents’ love—and the moors, and nothing to come between us and the heart of Faerie. So no, you don’t understand my loneliness, or my selfishness. You’ve helped the former in the last few years, you and Quentin and your Fetch and Poppy.”
“That’s me,” chirped Poppy.
“But you can’t understand it, not the way my father can—my father, who left me, and came back to me, and he will have the time he needs to heal before Faerie starts beating down his door again, demanding he settle every petty problem they’ve created for themselves. He will have all the time he wants.” She glared at me, eyes as black as pitch and somehow bright with sorrow at the same time, a sorrow I knew better than I wanted to, because she had been showing it to me since the day we met. The Luidaeg couldn’t lie, but she didn’t have to say everything she felt unless she wanted to—unless she was compelled to. She could keep her secrets, and so she did, when it suited her. When they were things she didn’t want to share.
“Hey,” I said uncomfortably. “It’s cool. I didn’t say it was wrong for you to be stunning people, just that I was surprised. I’d been wondering how it was no one seemed to notice him. The High King swallowed some of my blood, and he saw Quentin in my memories, but he didn’t see Oberon. And that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless something’s hiding the actual, you know, One King of all Faerie.”
“Why was the High King drinking your blood?” asked the Luidaeg. Everyone else leaned a little closer, clearly anxious for my answer.
I added some cheese and a few slices of tomato to my sandwich. This was more like normal, solid ground, and I was going to enjoy standing on it, for however long it lasted. “Oh, because he’d been stabbed in the kidney,” I answered, voice light.
The Luidaeg narrowed her eyes. “What.”
“Turns out there’s more than just the one Doppelganger—that’s why Walther and Cassie are helping with the interrogations, by the way, the Sollyses have to interview all the members of their guard and anyone else who might have access to the royal family, which pretty much means all the staff in the knowe—and the second one managed to stab High King Aethlin before committing suicide to avoid interrogation. The High King was going to bleed out, but he was still breathing, which meant he could still borrow magic.”
“So what, you just gambled with bleeding?” asked Stacy. “That seems a little bit extreme.”
“It was that or gamble on a healer showing up fast enough to do something to save him, and that pretty clearly wasn’t going to happen.” I shrugged. “It worked, he healed himself, I didn’t get accused of regicide. Now I have a sandwich, and as soon as Nessa wakes up, she’s going to show us where in the knowe I’m supposed to be getting married.”
Stacy blinked. The Luidaeg blinked. A whole lot of blinking happened from the rest of the group, all at pretty much the same time, which made noting them all individually both pointless and more work than I felt like doing right now. I took a bite of my sandwich. It wasn’t my best work, but the ingredients were fresh, and it had been so long since the last time I’d eaten that I had to resist the urge to shove the entire thing into my mouth and gulp it down like a snake. I’m pretty sure I made an inchoate noise of delight before taking my second bite, barely pausing long enough to swallow the first one.
Nolan was the first to recover. “The High King was assaulted in your presence, and your concern is for the venue of your marriage?” he asked.
“Yes.” I looked up from my sandwich to focus on him. “I owe the High King exactly as much loyalty as anyone else on the continent does. I don’t want him to die, and did I mention I saved his life. But I owe Tybalt a great deal more, and I promised him we’d actually be getting married this week, which means I need to stay halfway focused.”
Nolan blinked. “I think my mother would have liked you,” he said, in a dazed tone. “Whether that is compliment or dire criticism, I leave to the judgment of those who knew her before she stopped her dancing.”
The Luidaeg actually laughed. “All right, so you’re finally marrying the kitty-cat, and the High King’s not dead, and I’m guessing you’re missing the Ames girl because she’s gone to get the rest of your guests, as you continue your campaign to put everyone in one place for the first time. A single dragon of sufficient size and my sister could take care of everybody you care about at the same time.”
“She’s asleep,” I said stiffly.
“She is,” the Luidaeg affirmed. “If she wakes, I’ll know. Unless she wakes due to magic so far outside my experience or so much greater than mine that I can’t perceive it, I’ll know, and you know you’re the first call I’ll make. But she could still have agents, and I can’t find them unless they do something to make themselves apparent.”
“We have enough trouble already without trying to borrow more.” I leaned across the table to gently prod Nessa in the arm. “When’s she going to wake up?”
“When you finish that sandwich, make another one, and drink something,” said the Luidaeg. “You can lose a lot of blood without suffering the consequences that would come for a person who lacks your specific gifts, but you still need to hydrate. Eat, drink, and she’ll wake up.”
I rolled my eyes. As Sleeping Beauty clauses went, “you just need to eat something, not kiss anybody” was reasonably mild and probably nicer than it had to be, but it was still annoying. I settled myself to consuming the rest of my sandwich in bites as large as I could manage without choking, and Tybalt began assembling a sandwich of his own. He was old enough not to overly judge my fondness for combining fruit and meat, thankfully, something which had been much more popular in his youth than it was in modern America. It was one of the few habits I’d picked up from my mother that I didn’t mind holding onto. Amandine was bad at raising children and bad at being a decent person, but she was great at building a sandwich.
Maybe that’s a mundane virtue for a daughter of Oberon, but when you have as few of them as she does, I guess you need to do what you can with what you’ve got.
Tybalt settled beside me with his own plate, smiling warmly. I smiled back. Everything else aside, we were getting married. He was finally going to stop worrying that I somehow didn’t want him, and I was going to stop getting ambushed with bridal magazines every time I entered my own kitchen. What were matters of dynastic succession compared to that?
Quite a lot, actually. My second sandwich was sliced chicken, spicy mustard, and nectarine, giving me the salty-savory-sweet combination I preferred, and I ate it almost too fast to taste, before filling a glass to the brim with what I assumed was orange juice. I took a large gulp and managed to swallow rather than aerosolizing it. Melon juice. Of course it was. Faerie doesn’t do anything normal when we can find a way to make it weird.
“Good enough?” I asked the Luidaeg.
“What’s your hurry?”
“Sedition, still don’t know who on the staff is trustworthy, a bunch more of our friends are about to arrive here, and they won’t know what’s been going on.”
“Hell, I barely know what’s going on,” said Stacy. “You haven’t been exactly forthcoming, October.”
“You know as much as I do,” I said. “High King got stabbed. Doppelgangers in the knowe. Apparently, there’s a question of legitimacy of the throne, thanks to King Shallcross being an asshole.”
“There’s only a question in his own mind,” said the Luidaeg, before leaning over and tapping Nessa twice on the forehead. The Gwragedd Annwn gasped and sat up, eyes suddenly very wide.
“Did I fall asleep?” she asked, pushing her hair out of her still-illusioned face and looking around the table. “I’m so sorry, that was so unprofessional of me. You’re guests in this knowe, and it’s my duty to remain attentive to your needs—”
I took another swig of melon juice to pacify the Luidaeg before putting the glass down. “Well, right now, what we need is to be shown to the place where we’re getting married tomorrow. I want to know that the Doppelganger didn’t make a mess of everything.”
Since I had no idea what the decorations were supposed to look like, or even what “everything” entailed in this situation, the request was somewhat more pressing than it might have been under normal circumstances. Nessa rose. So did Nolan. I blinked at him.
“I will be accompanying you,” he said solemnly. “Not to fault the choices of your swain or this sweet maiden fair,” he somehow managed to make that sound endearing, rather than sexist and a little creepy, “but I doubt the King of Cats has attended many pureblood weddings among the Divided Courts, and I do not know the Lady Nessa’s qualifications.”
Nessa giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand. “I would be delighted to have you accompany us,” she said.
“I admit, I have an ulterior motive of sorts.” Nolan offered his hand, helping her to her feet. “Tuatha de Dannan are limited by our ability to visualize the place we want our portals to open. Our journey here was possible primarily due to the fine mortal art of photography and the assurance of the courts who helped us on our way that the pictures were clear, accurate, and recent. By visiting the wedding hall myself, I will be able to return there in an instant, should trouble arise.”
“You kids have fun with your little coup,” said the Luidaeg, waving a baguette vaguely in our direction. “I’m going to stay here and hold down the table.”
“I’m going to go make sure you haven’t managed to bleed on the rest
of your wardrobe, and also be seen being a possible decoy,” said Stacy. She rose, brushing her hands against her hips to knock the crumbs off. “That way I’m there when the rest of my family arrives.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I glanced over at Poppy, Oberon, May, and Jazz, but all of them seemed content to remain exactly where they were, munching their way through an actual meal. It wasn’t sophisticated, but sometimes that matters a lot less than being made of food. I offered them a little wave and took Tybalt’s arm, pulling him to his feet along with me.
“Well, we’re off,” I said. “Be safe, all of you, and if someone approaches without being verifiably themselves, throw things.”
“No one’s sneaking up on us today,” said May. “Come find me when you need a decoy. Otherwise, I’m going to stay here and use bride privilege to demand more snacks.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and followed Nessa, on Nolan’s arm, back the way we had come.
The kitchen seemed smaller now that we knew where we were going, or maybe that was just me feeling less leaden and weighed-down after putting something in my stomach. Nessa paused to exchange a few words with the Hob who had directed us to the others in the first place, smiling at the other woman’s reply, and then led us onward, out of the kitchen.
Once we were safely outside, the door closed behind us and the maple-and-amethyst walls of the hall enveloping us, Nessa looked at me. “When you said the High King and Queen would be verifying the identities of their staff, you meant . . . ?”
“The entire staff,” I said, and watched as some of the tension left her shoulders, replaced by an ease that seemed far more natural to her. She was someone who liked rules and order enough to have risen to the position of seneschal of a royal knowe. This must all be very upsetting for her.
“Thank Maeve,” she sighed. “It’s all too common for the higher nobility—no offense, to any of you—”
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