“Don’t be,” said Patrick firmly. “I know you were probably expecting some things that aren’t generally done at pureblood weddings, like gifts on your actual wedding day, instead of arriving at your house over the next few weeks, but this is the greatest gift you could have given your father. Accepting him and his role in your life.”
A flash of red across the way caught my eye. I looked at it more closely, then blanched. “Well, unless he wants to explain to his brother why he’s crying, this is when the two of you should head somewhere else to finish dealing with all the feelings that were under that rock I just flipped over.”
Simon, still crying, looked alarmed. Patrick handed him both wine glasses before taking his arm and saying, hurriedly, “This was meant to be from Simon, but: may your skies be clear and your roads be kind ones, ever leading you toward the destination you desire. Come along, Simon, we have places to be that Sylvester isn’t.”
And Patrick ushered his crying husband swiftly away, even as my liege bore down on us. I turned to face him, plastering a smile across my face.
“Duke Torquill,” I said. “Come to carry glad tidings upon this, my wedding day?”
It was the kind of archaic phrasing that’s normally catnip for the pureblooded nobility—although I suppose that’s a phrase I should probably be working to strip from my vocabulary, since I’m sure it’s offensive to the Cait Sidhe in some way. Keeping my language from turning unintentionally cruel is more and more difficult as I get older and learn how many ways there are to hurt people unintentionally.
And at least it worked. Sylvester stopped, blinking at me in apparent confusion. I had to be at least somewhat disconcerting to look at, since my hair looked the way it usually did—a mess—while my dress remained absolutely impeccable, thanks to the wonders of several dozen cleaning and stain-repellant charms having combined to make incredibly effective and self-cleaning armor. Add in the contrast between my words and hearing them said in my actual voice, and it was no wonder he was a little bit off-balance.
Maybe that was a new way to approach shit I didn’t want to deal with. Just pretend I was Tybalt until it got confused and went away.
“Was my brother troubling you?” Sylvester finally managed. He looked past me to Tybalt, acknowledging him with a nod and a terse, “Tybalt.”
Tybalt, who was bearing up stoically as Galen rubbed a sparkling white cream into the wound on his shoulder, replied with the faintest sliver of a smile, and no words at all. Given how unhappy I already knew he was with the man, that was probably a blessing. This was one of those situations where the less said, the better.
“No,” I said. “My father was simply performing his duty and congratulating me on my wedding day.” That was also my liege’s duty, and I looked expectantly at Sylvester.
He didn’t meet my eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” he said. He was dressed in red, like most of the guests—Stacy and May had really embraced the “if people are going to bleed anyway, let’s make it difficult to see” aesthetic with their color scheme—but it was a darker, more subdued red than the wedding party, less fresh blood, more dried. It made for some interesting symbolism, even if there was no way they could have predicted this moment, with me looking at him, waiting for him to say that he was done disappointing me. Finally, finally done.
He didn’t. Instead, he finally looked up and met my eyes, his own reflecting weariness and disappointment back at me, so deep and clotted that there was no way I could mistake either emotion for my own. These were feelings he had carried for so long that he no longer had any idea how to go about putting them down, resentments that had festered long enough to turn into weights. If he fell into the sea like this, he’d drown.
Ironic, considering his brother lived there now, but still less than ideal.
“I call him that because that’s who he is,” I said, keeping my voice as steady and measured as possible. “He was married to my mother when she slept with my dad—and yes, I’m distinguishing the two of them on purpose—and the laws in Faerie appear to have been drafted without even glancing at a biologist, much less consulting one, so he’s considered my father in all the ways that matter. Sorry, did I say ‘laws’? I meant ‘traditions.’ ”
“The man you would call ‘father’ has broken the Law,” snarled Sylvester, bafflement fading in the face of a clear path forward. Bully for me. “He killed and stole and cheated, he abducted those I loved and sentenced them to a lightless, airless hell. He deserves your disdain at the very best, and better for us all if you denied him even that.”
“An argument can be made that he did none of those things while he was in his right mind,” I said carefully. “He was in the thrall of the First of all his kind, which he entered for the sake of his own loved ones, and we all know how hard it is to set your First aside.”
“You did it,” said Sylvester fiercely. “If you could—” He seemed to realize, finally, that he was on the verge of saying something truly unforgivable. He stopped himself, taking a half-step back.
I took a deep breath. “I did it, but my First doesn’t have quite the same effect on her descendants. Maybe because I’ve gotten used to her, maybe because I’m just stubborn, I don’t know, but I’ve always been able to tell Amandine ‘no,’ and from what I’ve seen, the Daoine Sidhe don’t have the same freedom when their First—who I will not name, because I don’t want to attract her attention—gets involved. She told him what to do and he did it, or as much of it as he had to do. Some things, he managed to set aside, at least enough to preserve life. She wanted me dead, Sylvester. Because of who my mother was, she wanted me dead. When your brother had the chance to kill me by standing aside and letting Oleander have her way, he intervened. He saved me, because he loved me enough to go against his First.”
Not enough to spare me from spending fourteen years as an enchanted fish, but there was asking for salvation and then there was asking for the moon. I shook my head, keeping my eyes on Sylvester’s. “He didn’t kill Luna or Rayseline when he had the chance. Yes, he left them in a dark and terrible place, and I’m not saying you have to forgive him for that, but unless there’s something you’re not telling me, I have more blood on my hands than he does on his.”
“To be fair, my lady wife seems to view blood as the finest nail varnish available,” said Tybalt, stepping up behind me and sliding his arms around my waist. I glanced back at him. The wound in his shoulder was gone, replaced by a swath of smooth new skin that gleamed a bit too slickly in the light, like scar tissue or someone who had just been exfoliated.
Galen was visible behind him. When he saw me looking he smiled, tapped his temple in a salute, and melded backward into the crowd, leaving a faint trail of pixie sweat in his wake. I love Ellyllon. And if his life here was anything like Jin’s he had probably been glad to have something small and easily treated to deal with, rather than another ridiculous, life-threatening injury.
On the other hand, that was probably unique to Jin.
Sylvester transferred his gaze to Tybalt. “You’ve never liked me,” he said.
Tybalt nodded. “This is true. To be fair, you were once the man who stood between me and the woman I loved, and then became the man who treated the girl I found fascinating without half the respect that she deserved.”
I had known for a long time that Tybalt had been in love with Sylvester’s older sister, September, before she married the man who would go on to become my friend January’s father. Pureblooded fae being functionally immortal means there’s time to develop the kind of tangled webs of connection and relationship that would make a mortal soap opera seem positively straightforward.
It was interesting that I usually thought of Tybalt as a peer and Sylvester as someone enough older than me to have earned his position of authority, although that may have been partially in self-defense. Not thinking about the age gap between me and my boyfriend-now-husband
was a sanity saving measure, and I dare anyone who finds themselves in the same position to do otherwise.
“I have always treated October with respect,” said Sylvester. “I fought for her knighthood. I had her properly trained by my own seneschal. Would I have done that if I didn’t respect her?”
Tybalt made a small scoffing sound. “By the laws of your own kind, which you hold to so very tightly in all other things, she was your niece. Faerie considered her quite literally your own blood. I took in kittens without half the claim to my hearth as she had to yours, and raised them named as niece and nephew to give them some small measure of protection from the cruelty we both know Faerie to be heir to. She was your blood, and you let her think herself all but homeless, let her wander the streets until that wild charlatan Devin could claim her as his own, let her think herself unwanted and unloved, and did damage to her foundations that I will be repairing for the next hundred years if not longer, and you would reach to paint that somehow as respect? As if I could ever see past my love for my lady to answer your claims with anything other than scorn? Had September chosen my hand I would have been forced to call you ‘brother,’ and looking at you now, I am glad in more ways than I ever considered possible that this cruel mockery of fate never came to pass. I know not who holds the remainder of our blessings, but if you are among them, I don’t want it. You may keep it, and let it warm you when you grow cold, for you have cast too much family aside to have any other comfort.”
Sylvester paled. Then, turning his attention back to me, he said quietly, “You made a beautiful bride,” before he turned and walked off into the crowd.
I didn’t even have time to move before someone was whistling next to me, long and low. I turned my head to find the Luidaeg standing there, once again back in her overalls and electric tape pigtails, no longer unveiled as the great and terrible sea witch.
“Who knew kitty-boy had that level of epic burn in him?” she asked. “That was rhetorical, by the way. I knew, and I’m sure a lot of other people who’ve been around for a while would say the same. Still, I am impressed. High-five for the once and future King of Cats!” She held up her hand, clearly expecting Tybalt to slap it.
He did, looking faintly bewildered, and she cackled as she tucked both hands into her pocket. Quentin, still disguised as Cillian the Banshee boy, appeared behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder, blinking pale brown eyes innocently at me.
“How many of you were standing there just now?” I asked.
“Me, the Luidaeg, and Dean,” he said. “Chelsea’s off with Gilly, trying to convince Kerry to let them have some wedding cake before the official cutting. Ormond told her that when a Hob makes a really big cake, they always do tester cupcakes first, to make sure the batter flavors out the way they want it to, so there should be some of those test runs available.”
“She’s been keeping the cake under a stasis spell,” I said, only half-distracted by the thought that my probable next squire was running around the reception with my daughter, who I hadn’t even expected to see today. “I don’t think the cupcakes would have survived.”
“Hearth magic includes a lot of flavors and techniques that wouldn’t be strictly possible without it,” said Quentin. “I’m pretty sure she’d have put the cupcakes under stasis spells, too, to make sure nothing in the batter counteracted the slowdown or curdled when it was under an enchantment.”
I looked at him with blank amusement. “This is your way of saying you support them in their plans to steal my wedding cake.”
“Come on, now, October, you don’t get to get all possessive and proprietary about it when you don’t even know what flavor it is,” said the Luidaeg. “Is it even ‘your’ wedding cake at this point? I think ‘the cake for your wedding’ would be a better way to describe it.”
I fixed her with a flat gaze. “That sounds suspiciously like you’re trying to get me to cede my claim to my own wedding cake, which is one of those things that risks getting me drowned in the bay by my new groom.”
“Come now, I’ll not have these fine people thinking me the kind of man who would even dream to abuse his wife,” said Tybalt, snaking an arm around my waist and pulling me into him, so that our hips bumped together.
Quentin laughed. I eyed him, after first glancing around to be sure no one from the royal household was close enough to overhear me.
“Why do you still look like this?” I asked. “I thought your bargain ended once you saw me get married.”
“Once I saw you get married, I got the option to end it,” he said. “I can have the counter-agent whenever I want it, because you did what you were supposed to do. I thought it would be better to stay this way until we get home. Avoids a lot of potentially awkward questions.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.” And it wasn’t like this was a mortal wedding, with a photographer running around documenting everything for posterity. I might have been sad not to have pictures with Quentin’s real face in them, if that had been the case.
Not sad enough to want to be arrested for treasonous transformation of the Crown Prince, but still sad.
“I do occasionally think things through,” he said, sounding stung. I laughed. So did Tybalt and the Luidaeg. Dean, emerging from behind the Luidaeg at last, just smiled.
“I saw our dads,” he said, looking straight at me. “Is there a reason you made Simon cry?”
“I told him he was my father, and I wasn’t going to let him argue with me about that anymore,” I said. Then I shrugged. “Faerie doesn’t really seem to understand what the word ‘stepparent’ means.”
“I didn’t even hear of the concept until I was old enough to start pilfering human media,” said Dean. “Most people don’t marry long enough to have kids at all, much less get married again after they get divorced, or marry into a relationship that still has children.”
“Hmm.” Put that way, it was an unusual enough occurrence that the lack of vocabulary would have made sense, if not for the fact that Faerie really, really likes stealing human language. We’re like the anti-French that way. Rather than trying to preserve the language as it is, we want every new shiny thing that comes rolling off the word assembly line.
Taking that into account, you’d expect older fae to talk like a bunch of teenagers hopped up on triple espresso macchiatos with too much whipped cream on top, but instead, they all seemed to settle on whatever era felt the most comfortable to them, resulting in formal Courts where people like Tybalt had to argue with people like Countess January O’Leary, who never met a meme she didn’t think belonged in casual conversation, and once had an argument in my presence entirely in Klingon, just to prove she could.
Being fae doesn’t make you immune to being a massive nerd. It just gives you more time to really plumb the depths of your potential nerdery.
“If you’ve decided to accept that Simon Torquill is your father, and he’s also Dean’s father, does that mean . . .”
“It means Dean gets his own housekey, because it would be hypocritical and a little silly of me to try insisting that he’s not my brother at this point,” I said, with a small smile. The two boys grinned at each other before high-fiving. I raised my voice and added, “But that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly approving hanky- panky under my roof.”
“I can’t believe you just said ‘hanky-panky,’ ” said Dean. “You are so profoundly uncool, Toby. I have a big sister, and she’s profoundly uncool.”
“Why not?” asked Quentin. “You and Tybalt are committing hanky-panky under your roof. So are May and Jazz. And don’t even start with ‘we’re all adults,’ I’ve seen the way you eat.”
“Good nutrition is blessedly not a requirement for adulthood, or the Luidaeg would still be considered a teenager,” I said. “We’re responsible for you when you’re in the house, and that means we need to hold you to rules that your parents would approve of. Now, if you want me to conta
ct them and ask if you can have permission slips for sex, I’m perfectly happy to do that . . .”
I was not, in fact, perfectly happy to do that. Just the thought of talking to Dianda Lorden about her son’s sex life was enough to make me suspect that I might not live long enough to ever have sex again.
I was saved from his answer by the Luidaeg bursting into laughter, clapping Quentin and Dean on the shoulders before pulling each of them in for a one-armed hug. It was adorable if I stepped back enough to look at her as the gangly, somewhat unkempt teenage girl she appeared to be. It was absolutely horrifying if I remembered she was one of the most dangerous people alive in Faerie, and could kill them both in an instant if she felt like it was the right thing to do.
I was pretty sure she wouldn’t. She genuinely liked Quentin, and while I wasn’t sure she was that fond of Dean, she wouldn’t want to upset Quentin unnecessarily by killing him. Sometimes with the Firstborn—or any pureblood who’s gotten old enough to stop really marking the passage of time the way the rest of us do—the morality of murder matters less than who else it would hurt. As long as I could use that to my advantage, I wasn’t going to throw myself against the brick wall of trying to change all of Faerie to suit my own weird standards.
“Both of you go and help the others try to talk Kerry out of cake,” she said, pushing the boys away from her again. “The adults need to talk.”
“Okay, sorry Luidaeg, bye Toby,” said Quentin quickly, and grabbed Dean by the hand, dragging him away into the crowd. I watched them go, suddenly wishing I had a drink.
As if summoned—and maybe they had been—a Silene in the household livery appeared at my elbow, offering me a tray of long-stemmed wine glasses, containing bubbling fluid in a variety of colors. I looked at them for a moment before selecting a peach-tinted one that I hoped would taste like something reasonable. Peaches, maybe.
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