I stared at her. Then I threw my dress on the bed and put my arms around her, pulling her close. She pressed her face into my shoulder and sobbed.
Growing up as a changeling in the Mists was hard. I had never considered that other Kingdoms might have it even worse.
Tybalt’s hand landed on my free shoulder. I twisted to look at him. His mouth was set in a thin, disapproving line, and I was reminded—not for the first time—that part of the conflict between the Court of Cats and the Divided Courts was the way that we treated our changelings. Cait Sidhe didn’t care so much about blood purity. They cared about strength, and how effectively you knew how to use it. Everything else was secondary.
“I won’t claim to be as angry as I know you must be. That frightens me, because I’m furious, and I can’t stop worrying about what you may choose to do next,” he said. “You must dress. We cannot insult this king at our first meal in his home.”
“I’d like to do more than insult him,” I said. May pulled away, and I let her, turning to face Tybalt instead. “If things here are as bad as May says, something has to be done.”
Tybalt nodded solemnly. “Yes. And yet, nothing will be done if we begin by offending the king. No.” He raised his hand as I was inhaling to object. “I am sorry, but no. This is, for once, a situation that cannot be resolved with blunt force, cannot be reconciled through bullheadedness or refusal to participate. We are here to play their game, to go through the dance steps that define the political waltz of the Divided Courts. We cannot refuse. You must put your dress on. You must dry your eyes. And you must ride to battle of a different sort.”
I looked at him. I turned to look at May, who was still crying, and at Quentin, standing white-faced and silent in his doorway. I couldn’t let them down, no matter how much I wanted to.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get ready to meet the locals.”
NINE
WE WALKED ALONG THE deserted hall like prisoners on our way to our own execution. Tybalt had his arm locked into place, held out and bent just so, allowing me to rest my hand on the inside of his elbow. Walther and Quentin walked three feet behind us, as was appropriate for servants attending on a diplomatic mission—at least according to Quentin, and I had no reason to argue with him.
May had decided to skip lunch in favor of staying back at the room. She was already approaching the point of total exhaustion, and she needed to sleep more than she needed to eat. The last I’d seen, she’d been crawling into the bed in Quentin’s room, where she could sleep without fear of the door opening and someone trying to drag her back to the servants’ quarters. I had the feeling Quentin was going to wind up sleeping on the floor for at least part of our stay. I didn’t think he was going to object.
“You are digging your fingers into my flesh, little fish,” said Tybalt mildly. He was wearing a rough silk shirt and brown leather vest that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. For once, his trousers weren’t leather, but brown cotton, and tight enough that they would have been indecent if not for the length of his vest. It was a shame I was too tense to really admire the view.
“Sorry,” I said, and didn’t relax my hand.
Quentin and Walther were wearing generic jerkin and trousers combinations in shades of blue and gray similar to the ones that May had been wearing. I suspected some minor illusions had been used to change the color of their clothes, since the last time I’d looked in Quentin’s wardrobe, he hadn’t owned that much that coordinated with the banner of the Mists. I was in a long gray silk gown so pale that it would have looked white if not for the braided red belt that rode low on my hips. It wasn’t the belt that had come with the dress—that one had been bright, bloody red, unrelenting and almost gaudy. This one was new, made by May, and it alternated arterial red with a darker, quieter shade, the color of blood allowed to dry on a marble floor.
Matching ribbons were twined through my hair, pulling it up and back into a complicated crown braid that I was going to be wearing until someone else took it down. My makeup was understated enough that I was unlikely to destroy it by mistake, but it played up the human roundness of my features more than the fae sharpness that had been overtaking it in recent years. It was May’s subtle way of making sure no one could look at me and forget what I really was, and I loved her for it.
We stopped outside the closed doors to the banquet hall, waiting to be allowed inside. A muffled voice spoke from the other side of the doors. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could make out the tone, and it was the loud, measured cadence of a herald announcing an arrival. I straightened, tightening my grip on Tybalt’s arm. To his credit, he didn’t say anything.
The doors swung open. We stepped inside.
The banquet hall was as austere as the rest of the knowe, all plain wood and stone floors, like something from a movie full of knights and wizards and dragons to be slain. The nobility of his court looked almost laughably out of place in their silks, velvets, and other fine fabrics, perching on the long benches that ran along either side of the equally long banquet tables. Servants in the livery of Silences circulated with trays of sliced meat, eggs, baked goods, and juices.
All of the people in silk and velvet were purebloods. Daoine Sidhe, Tuatha de Dannan, Tylwyth Teg, and Ellyllon. All of the staff were changelings.
There was a smaller table positioned on a low dais at the head of the room, presumably for the king and his companions. There were two chairs there, and an assortment of foodstuffs had already been set out, waiting for Rhys to arrive. I narrowed my eyes, glancing back to the banquet tables. The nobles already seated there were watching us, expressions calculating, taking our measure. None of them had touched their food. This was a “no one eats before the king does” court, then; good to know.
There was a space open at the end of one bench on the banquet table nearest the dais. Tybalt and I walked over and sat, with Quentin and Walther waiting to see that we were settled. Walther leaned forward, in the guise of straightening my skirt, and pressed a small vial of silver-blue powder into my hand.
“Everything you eat or drink,” he murmured. “Don’t forget.”
I nodded. He retreated, along with Quentin, to a table at the back of the room.
We had barely settled ourselves when the herald posted by the door announced, in that same loud, ringing tone, “His Majesty, by Grace of Oberon, King Rhys of Silences, and his honored guest, the rightful Queen of the Mists.”
The nobles around us stood. Tybalt stood, the narrowing of his pupils betraying his unhappiness. A heartbeat later, I followed the rest to my feet, gathering my skirts in my hands in an effort to keep myself from shaking. I didn’t expect it to work, but at least it was something I could do, however small, however useless.
A door I hadn’t seen before opened in the wall at the back of the dais, and King Rhys appeared. He had his arm held out at his side, just the way Tybalt always held his when he was escorting me. And there, walking next to him, calm and cool and serene as ever, was the former Queen of the Mists.
She was a mixed-blood, part Sea Wight and part Banshee, and her heritage showed in everything she was. Her skin was the color of a dead, waterlogged sailor’s flesh, and her hair was the color of sea foam, long and fine and perfectly straight, even as it fell past her feet to trail along the floor. Her eyes were like moonlight shining off the sea, blank and cold and halfway mad. She was smaller than she used to be, thin and frail and fragile-looking. That was my fault. She’d been part Siren, once, and when I’d taken that part of her heritage away from her, I had taken more than a foot of height and all the color she had once possessed.
I should have felt bad about that. I had changed her body without her consent, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be taken back: so far as I knew, not even my mother could have restored the old Queen’s Siren blood. I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything more than faintly triumphant. She had tried to kill me. She had tried to destroy the people I loved. All I’d done was what I’d had to do.