When Sorrows Come Page 4

  “And all your friends are inappropriate by the standards of a true royal Court,” said Dean. “We’re going to cause diplomatic incidents when you have to go back to Toronto with your own face.”

  Quentin looked briefly, almost comically, alarmed. I managed not to laugh, but it was a near thing.

  “He’s not wrong. You’re dating a mixed-blood whose mother likes to punch people in lieu of diplomacy, your best friend is a Cait Sidhe, your other best friend was born half-mortal and still lives with her human mother, and that’s not saying anything about your relationship with my family, which is weird and messed-up at best, and that brings us nicely back to the part where your idea of a solution was going straight to the sea witch. I have broken you.”

  He had the good grace to look chagrined and was inhaling to speak when my phone rang. The screen flashed “unknown number,” which could mean a robocaller, but was more likely to mean someone like Etienne, whose number didn’t technically exist and hence didn’t have a listing to display.

  I gave the phone a baleful look. “You know, once upon a time, this would have been on the wall, not the table, and we’d all be asking each other if we were going to get that, and if you weren’t the one who actually answered, you could pretend not to be home,” I said in a neutral tone.

  “Really?” asked Dean.

  “Really.”

  “Huh.” He looked dubious.

  I sighed and answered the phone. “Hello, October Daye’s phone, October speaking, I was just in the middle of an important family conversation, so if no one’s dead or bleeding, please hang up and call back later.”

  “I think I’m partially responsible for your current family conversation,” said the Luidaeg, sounding amused. “Hi.”

  I sat up straighter, managing not to drop the phone. “Luidaeg!”

  “Yes, I think we established that a few seconds ago,” she said. “I assume this conversation is about your boys.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “Before you yell at me, Quentin may not have his majority yet, but he is an adult, and nothing about my geasa demands people have achieved their majority before I trade with them. Honestly, I think it was set to do the exact opposite. Nothing more harmful to do to a mother who’s lost her children than to force her to treat cruelly with other people’s little ones.” Her voice turned bitter toward the end.

  The Luidaeg is the first among the Firstborn, child of Oberon and Maeve, old enough to have seen most of history unfold in front of her, and to have forgotten more of it than the majority of us will ever know. And a long time ago, for reasons I’ve never pried too deeply into, Eira decided to destroy her. They were sisters. They could have been each other’s greatest allies. Instead, Eira followed her mother, Titania, into hatred of Maeve’s descendants, and orchestrated the slaughter of the Luidaeg’s children and grandchildren, leaving their bodies flayed and broken on the shore while her chosen cat’s-paws wore their flensed skins back to their own families like trophies.

  The Luidaeg had survived the betrayal of her sister and the loss of her family. Honestly, she’d done better than anyone had any right to expect her to, not taking her revenge upon the families of the people who killed her children, not declaring war upon her sister’s own descendants. As far as I’ve ever been able to determine, all she did was make a bargain with the children of the killers themselves, binding them to the skins of her dead descendants to create the Selkies, and then letting them go to the sea. She was more than merciful—she was kind.

  Eira couldn’t have that. She went to her own mother and convinced her, somehow, that the Luidaeg was plotting unspeakable revenge, and Titania set a geas on the grieving sea witch in order to protect her own daughter. From that day forward, the Luidaeg was forbidden to harm any descendant of Titania unless it was because they had voluntarily offered themselves to her as part of a bargain; she was unable to lie; and she was obligated to do anything within her not inconsiderable power to meet any request that was made of her. The only redeeming virtue of this terrible imposition upon her freedom was that she could set her own price, tailoring it to both the size of the request and how much she genuinely wanted—or didn’t want—to help the person who was doing the asking.

  I made a noncommittal noise. Giving Quentin a way to attend my wedding and asking only that he actually do so was incredibly kind for one of the Luidaeg’s bargains. She could have asked for anything. She could have killed him on the spot—the only time her bindings will allow her to harm a child of Titania—and informed him that as one of the night-haunts, he’d be able to attend the whole thing unobserved. Either he’d worded his request very, very carefully, or she’d tied herself in knots to give him what he wanted at the absolute least personal cost to himself. Knowing their relationship, I was willing to bet on the latter.

  Maybe I hadn’t broken our next king. He had come to the Mists as a blind foster, and he’d go home as the beloved honorary nephew of one of Faerie’s greatest remaining monsters. That was a pretty decent upgrade, no matter how you wanted to look at it.

  “This is his second deal with me, in case you forgot.”

  “I didn’t.” His first deal had been for passage into Blind Michael’s lands, before he’d been formally considered my squire. Blind Michael’s hunt had taken Quentin’s mortal girlfriend, Katie, intending to transform her into a horse for one of his new Riders. I had gone to get her and the rest of the stolen children back. Quentin had followed me. Not smart, but definitely heroic. The Luidaeg’s price tag that time had been dismayingly similar to this one: come back with me, or don’t come back at all.

  “Then I don’t understand the problem.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You knew I wasn’t going to like this, or you would have warned me before you literally turned my squire into someone else.”

  “That’s true.” She sounded almost cheerful now. “You don’t like anything that messes with your remarkably staid way of looking at the world. I honestly don’t quite understand it. You’ve been through enough bullshit at this point that I’d expect you to be a little bit more flexible, but whatever. I knew you were going to be pissed. I also knew that this was really important to him, and he was going to push me to do it no matter how expensive I said it was going to be, so I gave him the lowest price tag I possibly could.”

  “While also guaranteeing I was going to do what you wanted me to do.” A lot of people have assumed my relative disinterest in the act of planning my own wedding means I don’t actually want to get married. They’re wrong. There is nothing in this world I currently want more. Tybalt needs to know I’m not going to leave him; I need to know that I’m putting down roots in truth and not just in theory. I need to hold his hands and tell him I’m going to stay.

  I just don’t care about all the ceremony that comes with it—or the giant target that me plus any major formal event will paint on my back. That’s why I’ve been so happy to push all the planning off on the people who care more about it than I do. As long as at the end of all this, Tybalt is my husband in the eyes of the world the way he already is in my heart and I get to spend the rest of my life waking up to him, I’m happy.

  “Yes,” she said dryly. “Attend your own wedding.”

  I scoffed.

  “I’m serious. I know you’ve tried to convince him to take you to the human courthouse, sign a piece of paper, and call that a marriage. I don’t think you fully comprehend how monumental it is for a titled member of the Divided Courts—even a lowly one—to marry a King of Cats. I can’t think of the last time that happened.”

  That was enough to make me pause, and turn my body slightly away from the table, where Quentin was in the process of pilfering the remains of my first scone. Why teenage boys think food tastes better if stolen from someone else’s plate is something I will never understand. We only have one female member of the current teen horde, Chelsea, and she has
better table manners than any of the boys, possibly due to being raised by a single mother who actually had the time to give a damn.

  Nobody reasonable has the time for that. The Luidaeg continued: “This is a historic event, whether you want it to be or not. Cait Sidhe don’t intermarry with the descendants of the rest of Faerie, or if they do, they choose the charmaids and the courtiers, never the higher nobility or the ones who would ever have the ear of a reigning monarch or get themselves labeled heroes of the realm. This marriage matters. The fact that you would happily throw something so pivotal away in favor of being able to wear blue jeans to the altar isn’t just ridiculous, it’s selfish. So yeah, maybe I took advantage of the fact that Quentin understands the situation better than you do, but can you honestly blame me? I need you at that ceremony. I need that ceremony to happen.”

  I blinked. “Why do you, in specific, need it? I don’t follow.”

  “Oh, for my father’s—no, that’s it. For my father’s sake, and the sake of my own descendants, who still shift from feet to fins as it suits them. You may be just a knight, Sir Daye, but you’re a hero, a former Countess, the dearest advisor to the future High King of the Westlands, the daughter of the last of the Firstborn, and the woman who brought Oberon back to us, even if most people don’t know it yet. For you to marry one of the shifting kind and take him to your bed and bower is to change the future of Faerie. If I have to use your squire’s true face as the lever to get you to start taking responsibility for your life and what it means to the rest of us, I will. I won’t feel bad about it for even a second, either, so you can swallow whatever nasty thing you were about to call me. You’re going to wear a pretty dress, you’re going to say whatever that Fetch of yours coaches you into saying, and you’re going to have a proper state wedding if it kills you.”

  I blinked. “Um. Wow. That was a lot.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  “Are you done?”

  The Luidaeg paused. “You know, I don’t know. I didn’t expect you to let me get through that whole thing.”

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Yes, actually. I do.”

  I sighed. “Then it was worth it. Okay, look, I’m going to get married, I’m letting May and Stacy handle the details in part because I don’t want to cock it up, which you know I’d do if I touched anything—”

  Dean was snickering behind his hand, presumably because I’d said “cock.” Sometimes surrounding myself with teenagers feels like a questionable life choice. I glared at him.

  “—and I’ll go to Toronto when they tell me it’s time to go to Toronto. Is there a reason this had to happen now?”

  To my surprise, the Luidaeg laughed. “Guess they figured this was how they were going to get you to show up. Well, if it works for them, it works for me. Tell May I’ll be bringing two guests with me, even if her invitation only says plus one. Poppy’s my date for the evening, and I’m not telling Dad he can’t attend.”

  The phone clicked as the line went dead. I slowly lowered it, setting it back on the table before turning my attention to Quentin and Dean.

  “All right,” I said pleasantly. “Since the Luidaeg has decided to be vague, one of you can tell me why you’re doing this now, without discussing it with me, and why things suddenly seem to be moving on a timetable.”

  The boys exchanged a nervous glance, taking hands once again, as if to ward off some terrible consequence of answering my question. Quentin then looked at the floor, leaving Dean to face me alone.

  “Coward,” I said fondly. “Dean?”

  “I, um. I really don’t think this is my place, and I’d like to be excused from this conversation, please.”

  “Nope,” I said, with malevolent good cheer. “You went with him to the Luidaeg’s, so you’re just as responsible for his bad choices as he is.”

  Quentin looked up, taking a deep breath. “I had to do this right now if I wanted to come to the wedding, because we’re leaving for Toronto tomorrow morning,” he said, in a rush.

  I blinked at him. “Oh,” I said. “Is that all?”

  three

  Moving automatically, my whole body numb, I rose from the table and started for the door. My stomach grumbled, unconcerned by silly things like my apparently impending marriage. I paused at the counter to tuck two more rose lemonade scones into a napkin, carrying them with me out into the hall.

  The scuffle of feet warned me I was being followed. I didn’t stop or look around until I reached the stairs and had the banister firm and solid under my hand. Unlike everything else around me—faces, plans for my own future—it wasn’t shifting, but seemed content to remain good, honest wood, giving me something to lean on.

  “Yes?” I finally asked.

  Quentin shifted his unfamiliar weight from foot to foot, more at ease with his own transformed body than I’ve ever been with any of mine. “Are you okay?” he asked, in a small voice.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Apparently, my entire family has been conspiring to abduct me to Canada because I can’t be trusted to know the date of my own damn wedding. So I’m feeling a little left out and a little disrespected and a lot like I need to go lie down in my bed or stand in a hot shower until I stop wanting to stab you all.”

  “We don’t heal the way you do,” said Dean.

  “Hence the restraint,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  “You said you didn’t want to have anything to do with putting the wedding together,” objected Quentin. “You said it, and you always tell us family doesn’t lie to family, so that means you must have meant it!”

  “That is a bullshit fortune cookie proverb that I have never uttered intentionally,” I snapped. “Not unless I was drunk or woozy from blood loss. Try pulling the other one. Something I did say, and know for a fact I said, was ‘just tell me what to wear and when to show up, and I’ll be there.’ Well, no one’s told me what to wear, and as far as I’m concerned, dragging the date out of you in my kitchen doesn’t count!”

  I turned and stormed up the stairs, leaving them staring after me. Neither one followed, and I was briefly grateful for that. Then again, Quentin’s been living with me for years, and Dean grew up dealing with his mother’s temper. When Dianda Lorden wants a few minutes to cool off, the smart thing to do is to let her have it.

  The upstairs hall was still cool, dark, and empty, undisturbed by the turmoil downstairs. I stalked along it to my room, slammed the door open, and stomped inside, throwing myself onto the bed like I was the petulant teenager and the boys were the supposed parental figures. Just like it had when I was actually a teen and my feelings were occasionally too big for my body, the sheer overdramatic impact of my body against the mattress made me feel a little bit better. Even though it crushed the scones.

  The cats, bounced out of their slumber by physics, raised their heads, opened sleepy blue eyes, and blinked at me. Cagney got to her feet, moving to sniff at my hair, before pronouncing judgment in her creaky Siamese voice with a loud and imperious meow. I rolled onto my back, automatically starting to scratch her ears.

  “It’s your King I’m mad at,” I informed her. “He’s being a controlling jerk.”

  She butted her head against my hand. I sighed and kept petting. Cats are good that way. They’ll care if you’re unhappy, but they won’t let it get in the way of the important things, like getting properly adored by their bipedal servants.

  Sometimes I wonder if the Court of Cats, when in session, isn’t just all the Cait Sidhe taking turns having thumbs and petting each other, since that seems to be most of what the average cat wants out of life. Cait Sidhe aren’t animals. They still have a normal feline desire for cheek rubs and ear scritches, and enough dignity not to go looking for them when other people are around. That’s probably not how they do things, but it’s a way to think about a Court I’ll never belong to or properly attend without focusing on th
e violence that’s haunted it almost every time I’ve been allowed inside.

  The Cait Sidhe live in harmony with their feline kin, which means they fight for dominance with claws and teeth, and no one with any sense gets in the way of one of those conflicts. I’ve felt Tybalt’s claws myself. Scary stuff. So it’s nice to think, sometimes, that there are beautiful aspects to their governance to go along with the terrible ones.

  I sighed, watching Lacey roll over and start to groom her sister’s head with long swipes of her tongue. Maybe I was being unreasonable. Quentin and the Luidaeg were right; I had abdicated almost all decision-making aspects of wedding planning—it was understandable that people might have thought I didn’t care. But they were also wrong. I had specifically said to tell me where to show up and when, and maybe that had sounded flippant, but I said it, and I was supposed to be the bride. Wasn’t it standard to at least ask the bride if she was free to attend the wedding?

  What if I’d taken a job? What if Arden had sent me off to fight a monster or something? What if I’d decided to take advantage of my current freedom of movement and booked that trip to Disneyland after all? I had a car. I liked to drive. I could have been just about anywhere.

  Of course, all parties involved knew me pretty well, and knew the chances of me voluntarily being away from home were slim to none. I like my house. I like the part where it’s solid, and mine, and the roof doesn’t leak, and the wards all answer to me. Before we’d effectively stopped speaking to each other, Sylvester used to devote a considerable amount of time to trying to convince me to move into the knowe in Shadowed Hills. He believed the place of the fae was—and is—in Faerie, and with most of deeper Faerie sealed at Oberon’s order, what we have left is the Summerlands, where the knowes are anchored.

  You know what they don’t have in the Summerlands? Cable television. Until recently, they didn’t have Internet, either, and only had sporadic phone service. No take-out Indian food. It’s no wonder that when given the choice, most of the teenagers I’ve met have chosen to take up residence in one of my spare rooms.