“I know there’s some sort of a rule against wearing the same dress to two court functions, but it’s a stupid rule, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t extend across Kingdoms,” I said, dumping my armload of formalwear on the bed. Spike, still watching me intently, rattled its thorns again and chirped. “Okay, seriously, what?”
“It wants to come with you,” said Tybalt, from the bedroom door.
I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you speak rose goblin now. That would be one weird thing too far for my delicate nerves to handle.”
“I do not,” said Tybalt calmly. He folded his arms, causing the red flannel shirt he was wearing to wrinkle interestingly across his chest. “I do, however, speak fluent housecat, which is a frequently nonverbal language. Your resident felines are hoping you will acquiesce to its request and allow it to accompany you on whatever journey you are undertaking, as otherwise it will pace and rattle and disrupt their sleep.”
“Right. Because my cats speak rose goblin.”
Now Tybalt allowed himself a very faint smile, the corners of his mouth tilting almost imperceptibly upward. “They have had occasion to learn, given the close quarters they once inhabited.”
“It’s not my fault I kept them in an apartment for so long! I couldn’t afford the rent on anything larger.” My objections sounded weak even to my own ears, and when Tybalt’s smile grew, so did mine. I shrugged. “Okay. So I liked my apartment. It was the home I made for myself after I came back from the pond. You know? I liked having a place that was mine, that didn’t have to be anyone else’s.”
“But it didn’t remain yours alone for terribly long.” Tybalt lowered his arms and prowled into my room, moving close enough that I could smell the lingering traces of pennyroyal and musk on his skin. It was a heady perfume, and one I had become very accustomed to over the past few years. “It began with the cats—almost immediately—and then came the rose goblin, and then May . . . however did it take you so long to realize that you were not made for solitude?”
“What can I say? I’m a slow learner.” I leaned up and forward, pressing my lips to his. Tybalt’s arms slunk around my waist and pulled me close, until my heels left the floor and I was balanced on my toes. His hands found a home at the small of my back, fingers clenched tight against the ridges of my spine. I closed my eyes, sinking into the moment. We wouldn’t have it for very long. I knew that; I always knew that. Kisses like this were meant to be stolen, captured around the edges of the things we couldn’t run from.
There had been a time when I hadn’t even been willing to admit that I loved him, or more terrifyingly, that he loved me. And now he was going to marry me, assuming we both lived long enough to let that happen.
Spike’s low keening caught my ear and caused me to finally pull away, looking down at the thorny little thing. The rose goblin narrowed its bright yellow eyes and rattled its thorns at me, clearly impatient.
“Yes, you can come along,” I said, removing my hands from Tybalt’s shoulders, where they had somehow come to rest. “Just try not to get me into any trouble I wasn’t going to find on my own, okay?”
Spike rattled its thorns and made a warbling noise before trotting out of the room, presumably to do whatever sort of preparation an animate rose bush needed to do before going on an adventure.
“You’re right about one thing: I’m not good at being alone,” I said, raking my hair out of my eyes as I turned back to Tybalt. “Even when I’m trying to go on a dangerous diplomatic mission, I wind up bringing half the Kingdom of the Mists with me. Walther’s coming, too. He knows Silences, and the Luidaeg thought it would be a good idea.”
“We worry about you,” said Tybalt. He reached out and brushed back a lock of hair that I had managed to miss. “Your predilection for racing headlong into danger has left us reluctant to allow you to wander unobserved.”
“A girl’s got to have a few talents,” I said, with a smile, and took a step backward before turning and opening my dresser. “I’m bringing a couple of ball gowns, but I figure I can probably get away with a few pairs of jeans, too. I look silly in tights, and I can’t fight in a dress.”
“Fashion is ever your nemesis, isn’t it?” asked Tybalt, sounding amused. I glanced over my shoulder to find him studying my open closet. “It’s a miracle we can make you presentable as often as we do.”
I paused, looking at him carefully. He was still considering the bed, but there was a tension in his shoulders that I recognized all too well. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
“I am following my fiancée, an alchemist, a half-trained squire, and a death omen to a hostile Kingdom, currently being influenced by a woman who has every reason to wish the lot of us dead,” he said, sounding oddly subdued. “A woman who, I feel I must remind you, once compelled me to tear your throat from your body.”
“Tybalt—” I began.
He raised a hand, motioning for me to be quiet. I stopped. For a long moment, silence held sway over the room, so thick with what wasn’t being said that I could barely breathe. Finally, he sighed, looking at me gravely. There were shadows in his malachite-banded eyes.
“We have not spoken of this, mostly, I feel, because I did not wish it, and you did not force the matter. You know I was under her control; you know I would die before I would harm you of my own volition. The matter, such as it is, is closed for you. I have known this since the moment you embraced me in Queen Windermere’s hall, and please do not doubt that I am grateful. All I have ever wished is your good regard.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “You were alive for centuries before I was even born.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I needed to say something, and it was the only thing I could think of.
Tybalt smiled. It didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes. “True enough, and I won’t pretend the life I lived before you was somehow the lesser for your absence. There was no hole waiting for you to come along and fill it. I loved often, if not always well. I fought, I fled, I ruled my people, and I thought myself content. But since you have returned to us—since the waters of the Tea Gardens gave you up, and gave you back to me—not a day has passed without my considering the fragility of your smile, or the color of your eyes. You insinuated yourself into my heart like a worm into an apple, and I am consumed by you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I just blinked at him, struck silent by his words. Sometimes I could forget that Tybalt was a contemporary of Shakespeare, that his language wasn’t archaic because he was putting on airs, but because that was the way he’d learned to speak: all flourish and metaphor, and an anguished search for understanding.
“When the false Queen sang, all I heard was her voice; all I knew were her orders,” he said, expression all but begging me to understand. “I could no more have denied her in those moments than I could deny you now. I felt no love for her, thankfully—if I had, I think I might have died on the spot, my heart torn in two by the depth of my betrayal.”
“You did what you were compelled to do,” I said, finally feeling like I was back on solid ground in this conversation. “She was part Siren. You couldn’t help yourself.” She had been part Siren, then. She wasn’t anymore. I had ripped that part of her heritage away from her as cruelly as a battlefield surgeon hacking away a limb. I hadn’t felt bad about it then, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it now. She was the one who had chosen to use her fae gifts to turn my allies against me, and to try to hold a throne that she knew damn well wasn’t hers to have. She’d deserved what I did to her.