He had to be. He knew me well enough to know what I was, and what he’d married. But maybe he was going to realize he didn’t actually want to spend the next hundred years sharing a makeshift motel with my Fetch, her girlfriend, and whatever teenagers we had managed to collect that season. Maybe he was going to want everything to change.
I was so distracted by my own whirling thoughts that I almost didn’t notice when he pulled away enough to look into my eyes. The feeling of his hand smoothing the hair that had been knocked loose from Stacy’s careful twist snapped me back into the present, and I blinked, fighting back the urge to look away from his intently focused gaze.
“There you are,” he said, sounding faintly amused. “I lost you for a moment, but now you’ve returned to me. What horrible concerns now plague your traitorous mind?”
I blinked at him. He still wasn’t letting me go.
“Nothing new,” I said, somewhat weakly. “Just the sudden worry that you don’t really know who you just married, and that when you figure it out, you won’t be happy.”
“Since falling in love with you, I have been elf-shot multiple times, died repeatedly, been stabbed, slashed, burnt, and betrayed, gotten both feet and fur wet more times than I can count, and learned far more ways than I had ever known possible for getting blood out of fabric. And I didn’t fall for you the first time we met, either.” He smiled, pulling me a little closer, although not so closely that it hurt. “That took years. Years and years of knowing precisely who and what you were. Calm your worries, little fish. You’re stuck with me now, and being so stuck, you get to endure what happens next.”
“And what’s that, exactly?”
His smile turned feral. “The wedding reception,” he said, and dragged me with him as he stepped backward into the shadows.
* * *
• • •
The Shadow Roads are incredibly cold and unwelcoming to anyone who isn’t Cait Sidhe, but they can’t be closed to the cats, and with Tybalt carrying me, they couldn’t be closed to me either. I held myself as far away from his torso as I could manage when I couldn’t breathe or see, trying to be mindful of the injury he’d sustained to his shoulder when King Shallcross’s men had attempted to shoot us all to death. They’d mostly failed, succeeding only in shooting us to severe annoyance.
At least one member of the High King’s guard had died, but as far as I knew, none of the wedding guests had been more than injured. That wasn’t something to celebrate, especially not if the guard had been a friend of yours, but it was better than it could have been. Tybalt had taken an arrow to the shoulder before I ran off to engage the archers in as close to single combat as was feasible when surrounded by people who actively wanted me to keep breathing as long as possible.
I would have been fine even if my wedding dress hadn’t been so wreathed in blood-repelling enchantments and cleaning charms as to effectively become magical armor. I heal like there’s a global competition and I need to win to be truly happy. Tybalt, on the other hand, heals only somewhat faster than a human man in good health, and was going to be dealing with the repercussions of getting shot on his own wedding day for weeks if not months. So yeah, I was a little concerned.
That wasn’t going to stop me from enjoying cake.
Distance is malleable in the shadows, but thankfully usually seems to be compressed from what it would be in the bright world beyond them. We had only been in motion for a short while—less than two minutes, if the ache in my lungs was anything to go by—when Tybalt was emerging from darkness into light, carrying me with him.
As almost always, ice had formed on my eyelashes, effectively gluing my eyes closed. I blew upward out of the side of my mouth as he set me gingerly back on my feet, one more sign that we hadn’t gone very far. Long trips tended to strain him more, and could result in me being dropped upon arrival at our destination as his arms gave out and his knees buckled. If he was feeling well enough to let me down gently, he was fine.
I kept blowing, trying to thaw my eyelashes before someone got the bright idea to jump out from behind something and shout “surprise!” really loudly, an action that was likely, under normal circumstances, to result in someone getting stabbed. Not that I currently had a knife, since apparently brides weren’t supposed to be armed. I would have been annoyed about that, except Tybalt hadn’t been allowed to carry a weapon either.
Then again, he didn’t really need one, what with the whole “having claws, fangs, and the reflexes of a hunting cat,” but it’s the principle of the thing that matters. So there would be no stabbing. Didn’t mean I wanted to be startled again. Not when I’d already been shot at on my wedding day.
“Peace, October,” he said, almost laughing as he settled a hand on my shoulder. “There is no one here but us. You may take your time at recovery.”
I relaxed a little, but kept on blowing, until the warm air thinned the ice enough that it broke and gave way, allowing me to open my eyes and blink into the twilight wonderland around us.
We were in another natural—or curated so flawlessly as to seem natural—amphitheater set into the side of the mountain, surrounded by towering evergreens. Their branches glowed bright with balls of witch light and the tiny, multicolored bodies of pixies, their wings sending faint chimes across the area as they fanned them. Unlike the clearing where the wedding itself had been held, there were no chairs here, no dais. Instead, long tables skirted the outline of the clearing, laden with food. I blinked and glanced at Tybalt, quizzically.
“There is a cake, but at Kerry’s request, it has been concealed from view until she can be here to watch your reaction. She’s well aware that you can dismantle illusions when you choose to do so, and asks most sweetly that you not dismantle this one, as she would feel compelled to kick you in the ankles and cry if you did. She seemed to think you would find this a very dire threat indeed.” Tybalt wrinkled his nose, clearly amused. “As to the rest, Stacy and May were in agreement that you would be happier with finger foods and napkins than with a sit-down dinner, and as Queen Windermere has assured me that a wedding banquet will be awaiting us on our return home, I acquiesced.”
I managed, barely, to swallow my groan. I could dodge a formal meal when it was presented to me by my friends. From my Queen, not so much. “That was very kind of you,” I said instead, neutrally.
“The modern wedding celebration came after my time. We were fond of feasting when I was a boy, but the feasts were less formal, and less regimented in the components. When Stacy began explaining salad forks to me, I’m afraid my eyes may have glazed over. So this is for the both of us, in truth.” He stepped close again, beginning to gather me back into his arms.
Then he winced, hissing between his teeth, and I snapped out of whatever messed-up “new bride” stupor he had been lulling me into.
“Right,” I said. “You’re going to let me see that shoulder.”
“It’s nothing,” he said.
I fixed him with a steady, disbelieving stare. “You got shot. In the shoulder, with an arrow, which I seem to remember telling you to leave alone, and which is no longer there, meaning you didn’t listen.”
“In my defense, I neither pulled it out nor pushed it through,” he said, raising his hands appeasingly. It might have been a smarter move if he hadn’t winced again in the process, causing me to narrow my eyes and glare. “The Luidaeg said she didn’t like watching me pace around with an arrow jutting out of me like some sort of half-slaughtered boar, waved a hand, and transformed it into water. It ran down my arm and washed the wound out in the process.” His smile was small, and short-lived. “It wasn’t even saltwater. I think she may like me.”
“She hasn’t killed you yet, so it seems likely.” The Luidaeg’s magic is tightly bound to the point where she can’t do things for other people unless they pay, or unless her motivations are selfish ones. As a consequence, she’s gotten very good at c
oming up with the selfish reason behind absolutely everything she does. Sometimes “I wanted to” can be selfish enough for the geasa that bind her.
“She didn’t heal it, though.”
“I don’t know if she could spin that into being a selfish enough act to allow. We’ll have Walther and Galen take a look when they get here.” I was fairly sure I’d seen the High King’s Ellyllon healer in the crowd at the wedding. Walther was a more familiar face, having traveled here with us from the Mists.
Tybalt wrinkled his nose. “Must we?”
“Well, that depends. If I stopped healing at an unreasonable speed, would you let me attend our wedding reception without getting patched up? Be honest.”
“That is an unfair comparison to draw and you know it.”
“Is it? Because to me it sounds like not wanting your shoulder to get infected and gross before we can make it through the reception.” I threw my hands up, stepping away from him.
Tybalt sighed. “If you insist, then, yes, I will allow the healers to look at my injury.”
I smiled as brightly as I could. “I insist. And I appreciate it.”
He closed the distance between us, leaning close, and murmured, “When we’re alone, you can thank me, and I can thank you. For there are no more debts between us.”
It says something about the cultural norms of Faerie that he made the option of saying “thank you” sound deliciously obscene. I blushed, not pulling away, and he smirked at me.
Which was, naturally, when the smell of smoke and calla lilies drifted through the air, followed closely by the smell of cedar smoke and lime, and I pulled away, plastering a smile on my face as I turned to face Chelsea and her father.
Chelsea was wearing a red dress a few shades lighter than the ones I’d seen on the members of the bridal party, the hems picked out with darker red embroidery of briars and berries. I glanced back to Tybalt. “Did you choose all the wedding colors to show as little blood as possible?”
He shrugged, unrepentant to the end.
Etienne, who was one of the only people I’d seen recently not wearing red, either in cloth or due to bloodstaining, cleared his throat. “We have been sent ahead to inquire as to whether you are done enjoying one another’s company and prepared to begin the reception,” he said. “Bess has ordered me to tell you that whichever answer you give is the correct one, as today is your wedding day and my lovely lady wife seems to believe the entire Kingdom of Faerie has no manners whatsoever.”
“In Mom’s defense, she’s usually right,” said Chelsea. “And I want cake, so I don’t care which answer is right, as long as I get the one that feeds me sooner rather than later. Nice job not getting stabbed more than absolutely necessary, Tobes!” She flashed me a thumbs-up.
I returned it discreetly. “I figured it was bad form to give the groom a heart attack before he could put a ring on it. Not that he did, since that’s apparently not a pureblood thing.”
“Purebloods are weird,” Chelsea cheerfully agreed, earning herself a heatless glower from her father, who was as pureblooded as they come. They both are, now, but Chelsea was born half- human, and raised in the mortal world until she was well into her teens, which has made her rather more aware of the oddities of pureblood society than is strictly normal for fae kids in her position. “I’m gonna go get the boys now, okay, byyyyeeeee.” And she was gone, stepping through a circular portal in the air through which I caught a glimpse of the clearing where we’d been married. Someone had picked up the fallen chairs and cleared away the bodies, although they hadn’t been able to do anything about the blood.
There was so much blood. And ichor, thanks to the Doppelgangers who’d done most of the dying. I looked away, focusing on Etienne instead.
He was watching me with a small, odd smile on his face, looking like he’d never seen me before. I blinked. “What?”
“I know it is an old-fashioned perspective to take, and one that may seem odd to you, young and still mortal as you are, but I am almost of an age with your groom. I saw this county born. I saw my Kingdom founded, flounder, and find new means by which to prosper. I counted my time in decades, for years seemed too brief to make any meaningful measure, and I remember when you were a squalling babe that Amandine didn’t want any of us to see. I thought to see you settled in the human world, oblivious to the family you had on this side of the hills, and never sparing us a second thought. I never thought to see you here in all your glory, gowned in red and standing beside a man who was never your better, but only ever intended to be your equal.”
He reached forward, seemingly impulsively, and seized my hands in his. “May your nights be long and your days be peaceful,” he said. “May you and the heirs of your house always be as well-loved as you deserve.”
Then he let me go and stepped through his own portal in the air, leaving me to blink after him as Tybalt chuckled and set a hand on my shoulder.
“I would have expected the first of the formal blessings to come from your liege, or your father,” he said. “Not from the man who was so unwillingly your knight. Still, it’s good to have it thus delivered, and from an auspicious source.”
I turned to look at him, narrow-eyed. He blinked back, the very picture of innocence. “If this is going to be a thing, I need you to warn me about it,” I said, poking him in the chest. “We’re a team now, and teams don’t let their members get ambushed when there’s another option. Do you understand me?”
“There are seven formal blessings for a newly-married couple,” said Tybalt hurriedly. “They are traditionally delivered by people who have known the pair, or a member thereof, for as long as possible. Most are given to the bride, assuming there is one, but some are intended specifically for the groom, again assuming there is one. We’ll receive them all before the night is through, and they’ll have been pre-arranged by the ones who carry them.”
“Is this one of those traditions where if someone stabs the person who has the seventh blessing, we’re magically not married anymore?” I asked suspiciously.
Tybalt laughed. “October, I’ve told you dozens of times that you’re not escaping me now. If there were any tradition, however ancient, that could wrest you away from me after we’d been joined by one of the Firstborn, I would never have allowed it within a hundred miles of our nuptials. You are mine, always and entire, and I’ll let no tradition change that.”
His pupils expanded as he spoke, blackness growing to swallow the green of his irises, and I shivered, leaning in for a kiss.
A kiss I never got, as the sound of voices raised in conversation, some chattering, some laughing, poured in from the east. Tybalt pulled away as we turned to face our guests.
They poured in like a wave of bodies, more of them dressed in red than not, although only a handful were in the specific combination of wine red and starkest white that graced the wedding party and adjuncts. It should have looked Christmassy, like we were all trying to emulate the mighty candy cane, but somehow it managed to have weight and gravitas and a thousand shades of scarlet all at the same time.
Stacy hit me like a guided missile, wrapping her arms around me and laughing uproariously. Kerry was only half a beat behind, her own embrace hitting me in the midriff and knocking the wind out of me despite the corset I was still wearing under my wedding gown. Not even whalebone can stand up to the enthusiasm of a half-Hob changeling who wants to hug one of her oldest friends with all the strength and enthusiasm granted to her by her hearth spirit heritage.
Julie followed them, substantially more slowly, her hands tucked into the pockets of her pants, which were skin-tight red leather a few shades brighter than Tybalt’s, but otherwise almost identical. Cait Sidhe have standards when it comes to fashion, I guess. She met my eyes, lifted her chin in a small nod, and smiled.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I replied, trying not to be disappointed that she hadn�
��t joined in the hug. It wasn’t that long ago that she’d been doing her best to slaughter me on sight, so this was a big enough improvement to be impressive. I’d had one hug from her today. That was more than enough. “Good job not getting shot or stabbed or anything.”
“We checked,” she said, and I nodded grave approval.
Shock may seem like an action movie cliché, and it is to some degree, but like most clichés, it got its start in reality. If the trauma is severe enough, sometimes the body will simply refuse to acknowledge it for a while, usually until the danger has passed and the adrenaline starts to go away, creating a situation where it’s safe to collapse. It’s more common among the fae than it is among humans, because we tend to be somewhat more resilient to start with, but it’s not even that uncommon among humans. Pain so big that it fills the world is sometimes easy to leave unacknowledged.
Checking yourself thoroughly for injury after a big fight isn’t just a good idea: it’s standard procedure for anyone who sees a lot of action. Which wouldn’t normally include people like Stacy or Kerry. As a member of the Court of Cats, Julie was a bit more accustomed to playing rough.
“I’m so proud of you,” said Stacy, and planted a kiss on my cheek before letting me go. She turned to Tybalt. “You, too, kitty-boy. You got her to hold still long enough to marry her, which I wasn’t going to bet on. Now let’s see if you can get to the end of the honeymoon with both of you still breathing.”
“We’re not going on our honeymoon right away,” I objected, as Kerry let me go and mumbled an excuse about checking on the cake before darting off across the open space between us and the tables. Interesting. “We have to get home and get settled in, now that Tybalt’s officially moving into the house. After that, we’ll talk to Arden about when she thinks she can spare me for a few days.”
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