When Sorrows Come Page 26

  “Do you really want an angry, resentful, known king-breaker being held captive in your knowe when you’re already dealing with an outside enemy?” Artyom tensed, raising his sword. I looked at him flatly. “That was not a threat. That was a question. Believe me when I tell you that you’ll know if I start making threats. They’re pretty damn hard to miss, coming from me.”

  The High King groaned before Artyom could respond, shifting in Maida’s lap, lifting one hand to rub his forehead before he opened his eyes and blinked unsteadily at the ceiling. Maida leaned forward slightly, making sure he could see her face as she smiled.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “Welcome back.”

  High King Aethlin gasped and sat upright, causing all three of the guards present to tense. They were primed for a fight. Pity they were also massively outmatched. Aethlin looked frantically around, eyes finally settling on me.

  “You!” he bellowed. “Take me to my son!”

  Well, crap.

  fourteen

  “How could you do this? Don’t you understand the danger this places the entire Kingdom in? I trusted you to behave responsibly when I allowed you to stay in the Mists! Not to do—” High King Aethlin gestured frantically with both hands, trying to encompass all of Quentin in one gesture. It wasn’t working.

  Arms crossed, Quentin looked at him flatly.

  “—whatever this is,” Aethlin concluded. He dropped his hands, glaring. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I wasn’t planning to say anything. You weren’t supposed to know.”

  “Obviously, that didn’t work the way you planned it. This is disrespectful to me, to your mother, and to your Kingdom. That woman has been a terrible influence on you, and I should never have allowed you to stay in her custody. I should—”

  “Fuck you,” said Quentin, voice bright and almost chipper. Aethlin stiffened.

  “What did you just say to me?”

  “I’m sorry, was that disrespectful? I meant fuck you, Your Majesty.”

  On the other side of the room, Dean put a hand over his mouth to cover his smile. Chelsea had acquired a movie theater-style bucket of popcorn somewhere and was sharing it with Raj. Most of the rest of our company had decamped for the kitchen while Tybalt, Cassie, and I were off with the Doppelganger, leaving only Walther and the assorted teens. Walther looked as amused as they did.

  High King Aethlin didn’t look amused at all. He looked like he was about to give himself a heart attack through sheer rage.

  “You do not speak to your father in such a disrespectful manner, young man! You were raised better!”

  “Yes, I was, but not by you.” Quentin balled his hands into fists and glared at his father. I suppose the difference in his transformed height didn’t make any real difference, since it wasn’t like they’d spent much time together since he was a child. “Not even when I was here, not even when people knew me by name and smiled at the sight of me. No, you left the raising to Nessa and the rest of the staff, except when it was convenient to trot out the proof that you were virile enough to have produced an heir and a spare. So impressive! You think I didn’t hear the way your courtiers talked about us when we were supposed to be in bed?”

  “You were supposed to be in bed,” said Aethlin.

  “I was a kid! Kids sneak out of bed to see what their parents are doing while they’re not around! Kids get into mud and mischief and messes, and they’re not pretty little accessories that you can just pack up and mail to California when you don’t want them anymore!”

  Aethlin froze. “Is that . . . is that what you think happened?”

  “I think you sent me away, and you sent Penny away, and you couldn’t even bother to send us away together,” snapped Quentin. This had been brewing for a while, clearly, and I wasn’t going to interrupt it. Beside me, Maida was stiff as an iron bar, her eyes locked on the stranger who was her son, her hands buried in the folds of her skirt and her nails, I was sure, digging into her palms. I could smell blood.

  “She was my only friend and the only person who knew me, really knew me, who I was when I wasn’t ‘the Crown Prince,’ and you sent her away like I wouldn’t care. You left her alone in the world and you shipped me off to a bunch of strangers.” Quentin shook his head. “Did you ever even bother to check and make sure I was okay in Shadowed Hills? Did anyone bother to tell you the Duke was mad, or that his wife and daughter had been kidnapped, leaving him tearing at the walls as if it would somehow bring them back?”

  “I didn’t—Countess Winterrose made the case for your fosterage, and she was . . . she was very compelling,” said Aethlin helplessly. “Before she came, we had never even considered the virtues of sending you and your sister away.”

  “I think this is one where you have to back down a little, kiddo,” I said. “You’ve been in a room with her, you know what it’s like to have her full attention focused on you. Daoine Sidhe literally can’t say no to their First, and when she stops talking, everything she said sounds so reasonable that you’ll justify anything to yourself to keep from contradicting her. I don’t know how long the effect lasts.”

  “Not long enough if it’s something you really care about,” said Maida. “I started regretting what we’d done before the end of the first year. I started asking your father to call you home before the end of the second.” The look she gave Aethlin’s back was nothing like the adoring glances she’d been directing his way back in the Doppelganger’s cell. This was the face of a mother who’d been denied access to her children by the man who was supposed to help her protect them, and I was glad, for Aethlin’s sake, that he couldn’t see it. He might have started to worry about his marriage.

  Fortunately for everyone involved with this little family disagreement, Aethlin’s guards had agreed to wait out in the hall while he spoke with Quentin, and hopefully they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut, since they definitely knew Quentin was in the knowe. The High King’s disorientation upon waking up hadn’t lasted long, and he’d realized that if Quentin was safely hidden, he should probably be allowed to stay that way. Even if Aethlin still wanted to yell at him for possibly muddling the lines of succession.

  It seemed to me that there was a long tradition of using magic to conceal princes and princesses until the time was right to reveal them, and with both Fiac and the Luidaeg on hand, no one reasonable would dare to contradict them if they were to say Quentin was the Crown Prince—not that they were going to. The fact that he was currently a Banshee would be secondary to the woman who can’t lie identifying him in front of the man who reacted to falsehoods with aggression. But no, the High King needed to yell, I guess.

  And he was doing an admirable job of it.

  Had I not been distracted by the fact that he was dying at the time, I would have thought more about the fact that Quentin’s father would get enough of my memories with the blood that healed him to realize the Banshee boy who’d accompanied me from the Mists was actually his son in a very good, nigh-unbreakable disguise. I would still have given him the blood—you don’t sit by and watch the High King bleed to death, causing a potential crisis of succession, when you have a choice in the matter—but I would have tried harder not to think about Quentin while I did it.

  Then again, the best way to make someone think about elephants is to tell them not to think about elephants. I supposed I was lucky he’d only twigged to the location of his son, and not to the fact that the nondescript, somewhat boring man following the Luidaeg around like a really tall antlered puppy was actually Oberon, King of all Faerie. That would have been a lot harder to explain.

  Of course, this was distracting from both the matter of the coup at hand and the need to finish getting ready for my oft-delayed wedding, but it was still better than outing Oberon before he wanted to be.

  “I know what that woman can do,” said Quentin. “She’s done it to me. I als
o know that if you’re loyal enough to something other than her, the effect is blunted. Dean shrugged it off entirely.”

  “To be fair, I’m only half Daoine Sidhe,” said Dean, looking faintly alarmed at being dragged into this. “I have two Firstborn to answer to. Resisting one of them wasn’t as hard as it could have been.”

  “Remind me to tell you a funny story about your other Firstborn,” I said. Maida blinked at me. I shrugged. “Long story.”

  “We went to the Duchy of Ships to do a favor for the Luidaeg, and we met the Merrow Firstborn while we were there,” said Quentin. “Her name’s Amphitrite, but she mostly goes by ‘Pete,’ and she’s kinda awesome but kinda annoying, too. Which describes most of the Firstborn I’ve met, I guess.”

  “Okay, I guess it wasn’t that long of a story,” I said. “But it illustrates why you should stop being pissed at your parents, Quentin. If they hadn’t sent you away, you would never have met Pete, or the Luidaeg—or Dean.”

  “Or Toby,” contributed Raj, who had clearly been silent for too long and was starting to feel left out. “Or me.”

  “So many wonderful people to enrich and endanger your life,” said Tybalt dryly. “Are we quite done with the family dramatics? I would like to resume the process of preventing a coup before it interferes with my wedding date.”

  “I want that also, honey,” I said. “But this feels like a fight that’s been a long time coming, and it needs to happen.”

  “Do you have any idea how many years I spent feeling like no one in the world wanted me?” asked Quentin, attention back on his father. “Like I must have done something wrong, or you wouldn’t have separated me from Penny? There was no one in Shadowed Hills who was equipped to be the kind of adult I needed to have in my life. A couple of the Hobs tried, but I was enough of a pampered prince not to recognize kindness as sincere when it came from the staff. I was drowning when October came along. I didn’t know who I was or where I stood or how I was going to survive long enough to prove to you that I was worthy of coming home, and then there was this woman—this ridiculous, careless, rude woman, who didn’t want me any more than anyone else did, but at least she was honest about it. At least she didn’t lie to me.”

  “Quentin . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know what else to say, honestly.

  “Oh, don’t pretend you wanted me around in the beginning. We both know you didn’t.” Quentin smiled a little, shrugging. “It’s okay. You were still sad, and I was sort of a spoiled brat. We weren’t good for each other yet. We learned how to be good for each other, and we did it together, which made it even better.”

  “I’ve always liked you,” said Raj. “Of course, the circumstances of our meeting were traumatic enough without adding abandonment issues to the mix.”

  “Yeah.” Quentin focused back on his father. “If I wanted someone to love me, I had to force them to see me for who I was under all the fear and resentment and propriety, and I did this to myself so I could be here to see Toby get married without endangering your precious throne in the process. So I’m not going to apologize to you because I’m not sorry.”

  They glared at each other, and although they currently looked nothing alike, there was no mistaking the fact that they were family. Only family can look that angry, in that specific, focused way. Family means never having to say, “I forgive you.”

  Aethlin was the first to look away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Last time I saw you, you were . . . you seemed well, and you told us you loved us, and I thought things were all right between us. I didn’t really have a choice about sending you away, not given who was making the suggestion, but I could have kept you and Penny together, or I could have found a way for you to contact your sister without invalidating the protections of a blind fosterage in the process. I’m the High King. I could have found a way, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” said Quentin. He released some of the tension in his shoulders, not sagging, precisely, but becoming less of a sculpture in the shape of a Banshee boy. “I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you who I was. How did you realize who I am?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t actually know.” Aethlin looked back to Quentin, frowning again, but this time with confusion. “I remember pain, and then blackness, and then redness filled with moving figures and places I had never been, people I had never seen. I think . . . I think I saw Annwn.” His voice took on a lilting note of awe, like the idea of catching even a glimpse of deeper Faerie was something to be treasured and dwelt upon.

  I might have felt that way once before it had actually happened. There was nothing like seeing deeper Faerie to make me never want to do that again.

  “Toby, did you bleed on my father?”

  “Had to,” I said. “He’d been stabbed in the kidney and he was bleeding out. I needed him to be able to heal before his injuries killed him.” And possibly even immediately after those injuries killed him—if his magic had still been capable of working fast enough.

  That’s something I have no interest in advertising. I made that mistake at Tamed Lightning, allowing Li Qin and the rest of the staff to realize I could occasionally, under the right circumstances, raise the dead, and my repayment had been an invitation to bleed myself virtually dry to bring back their loved ones. It’s not the sort of thing I can, or should, be doing on a regular basis. Death is a part of the order of things, even in Faerie, or we wouldn’t have the night-haunts.

  If I raised all of Faerie’s dead, what would the night-haunts eat? I would be condemning an unknown number of them to a slow withering away, and all for the sake of denying the way things were meant to go. And I would still do my best to save the people I cared about . . . if I had the opportunity.

  I guess I’m as much of a hypocrite as everyone else. I’m just a hypocrite who admits it.

  Quentin rolled his eyes. “I was all prepared to yell at you for telling on me, but you didn’t, did you? You just didn’t think.”

  “In my defense, if I’d stopped to think, he would have bled out on the floor,” I said. “That would have been worse, I think.”

  “Maybe,” muttered Quentin. He shot his father a sharp look. “Maybe not.” Then he thawed and sighed, and admitted, “Yeah. It would have been worse.”

  Aethlin took a half-step backward, visibly stung, but didn’t object. Instead, he turned back toward me and Maida, hands by his sides and still covered in flecks of dried blood—whether his or mine, I couldn’t possibly have said.

  “Now what, Sir Daye?” he asked plaintively. “My kingdom is under threat, my son rejects me, my staff is infiltrated and cannot be trusted . . . what more can I lose for your sake?”

  “Hey,” I objected. “Don’t you blame any of this on me, unless you’re blaming a general shortage of eggs in your kitchens after Kerry finishes baking the wedding cake, or blood in the carpets after I’ve been allowed into a room. I didn’t send your children away, I didn’t foment a coup, and I certainly didn’t replace your staff. If we can help you—any of us except for the Luidaeg, since her services are not mine to promise, and must be paid for whether you’re a king or not—you need only to ask. If we can’t, we’ll stay out of the way. I have a wedding to prepare for.”

  Any unease I might have felt at talking back to the High King—which admittedly, wasn’t much—was washed away by the surprised, grateful look Tybalt shot my way, his whole face softening, like he couldn’t quite believe I was still focused on our wedding. I smiled at him. He deserved this. Everything else aside, he deserved this.

  “That’s my cue,” said Walther, and levered himself out of the short couch where he’d been reclining. “As I have no official wedding-related duties to perform, and some experience with the intrigues of royal courts, I volunteer myself to assist in interviewing your staff.”

  “Really?” asked Maida.

  “Really,” Walther confirmed. “If yo
u have access to a stocked alchemy lab whose owner won’t object overly much to my presence, I can even brew up a decent draught of truth to give to anyone whose motives seem in the least questionable.”

  “You were able to brew the elf-shot countercharm in this room,” said Aethlin, dubiously.

  “That formula is my own creation, and probably the single thing I’ve been called upon to brew most frequently since I was in training with my alchemy instructor,” said Walther. “I carry the base ingredients whenever I travel with Sir Daye. I could mix it in my sleep at this point although you probably shouldn’t swallow anything mixed by a sleeping alchemist, no matter how much you trust us. Doing it out of a suitcase with people breathing down my neck was no big deal. Draught of truth involves ground castor seeds and pressed iris blossoms, as well as several other moderately toxic compounds. If I don’t have the proper equipment, I’ll kill half your staff. And it won’t be murder, it will be negligence. I doubt that will make it any more forgivable for their families.”

  Aethlin stared at him for a long moment. Walther looked implacably back, going so far as to reach up and adjust his glasses.

  “Cassandra can assist me,” he said. “She’s been spending a lot of time in my lab, and she knows her way around a mortar and pestle.”

  “Mom will probably be happier if I’m off doing alchemy with Walther, and not wandering around playing decoy with you and May,” said Cassandra apologetically. “Sorry, Toby.”

  “No worries. You do what works best for you,” I said.

  “All right,” said Aethlin. “A lab can be found, and basic supplies. We would welcome the assistance.” He looked back at me. “I’ll send someone we’ve verified as trustworthy if we need you.”

  “All right, sire,” I said, and offered him a cursory bow.

  “Hmm,” he said, and started for the door. Maida grabbed my arm instead of following.