Two men in full Silences livery were standing outside the receiving room doors when we walked up. One of them looked me up and down, not making any effort to hide his dismay at my blue jeans and bodice. I thought I actually looked pretty good, all things considered. They were dark jeans—the only formal way to wear denim, according to my ex-boyfriend, Cliff, who had worn jeans every day while we were together—and my bodice was a lovely shade of wine red, holding everything in place without turning my breasts into the stars of the show. It seemed more inspired by mortal ideas of the Middle Ages than by actual pureblood fashion, and I appreciated that, too, since the entire point of the outfit was reminding them that they weren’t dealing with their own kind. They were dealing with me, and I was done playing around.
“Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words and diplomatic representative for Her Majesty Arden Windermere, Queen in the Mists,” I said, without preamble. “I am accompanied by King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats, and attended by my alchemist, Walther. I would like to see your liege now, if you would be so kind as to open the doors for us.”
The guard who had been sneering at my clothes blinked. Apparently, whatever he’d been expecting me to say, it hadn’t been that. “King Rhys is otherwise occupied,” he said.
“Does he get to do that?” I raised an eyebrow as I glanced to Tybalt, my tone making it clear that my question wasn’t really a question. “I don’t think he gets to do that.” I turned back to the guard. “I am the diplomatic representative for Queen Arden Windermere, recognized by High King Aethlin Sollys as rightful ruler in the Mists. Your King has declared war on her Kingdom, which makes her sort of cranky. That’s why I’m here. We’re hoping this can be resolved without resorting to actual bloodshed since, well, blood is so messy, don’t you think?” I took a step toward the guard, who shrank back.
The Luidaeg would have been so proud of me in that moment. Her little troublemaker, all grown up and complicating lives on a grander scale than ever.
“So here’s how this is going to go,” I continued, not giving the guard a chance to speak. “You’re going to open the door. You’re going to let us through. You’re going to remember that we’re here under the rules of formal hospitality, and that barring our way could be viewed as an act of aggression against the Mists. Do you really want to do that? Aggress against us when we’re in that polite three-day period between you being dicks and us being allowed to kill you for it?” I was bluffing. I wasn’t sure aggressing against us was a bad thing at this stage, since Silences had declared war—it seemed a little unrealistic to expect them to worry about our feelings when they were planning to march in and start slaughtering us.
Thankfully, the guard didn’t call my bluff. He fell back another half step, shooting a glance at his compatriot, who seemed to be doing his best to ignore what was going on. I guess when you’re not the person being advanced on by the scary changeling, there’s very little motive to intervene.
“Apologies,” said the first guard. He stepped to the side, grabbed the door handle, and pulled.
I didn’t say anything. I just offered him a thin smile, placed my hand back on Tybalt’s arm, and proceeded onward.
The receiving room was the room where we had been taken upon first arriving in Silences. Velvet and tassels threatened to strangle the walls. The hardwood floor was polished bright as a mirror. I had to take extra care not to slip as we made our way across the room to the dais where Rhys waited. The last thing I needed was to fall on my face in front of him. He presented exactly the picture I’d been expecting, seated proudly on his golden throne. What I hadn’t been expecting was the woman who sat beside him on one of the dignitary’s chairs, although in retrospect, I should have been: the false Queen wasn’t the sort of woman who would allow herself to be left out of a war of her own devising.
Marlis was standing at attention to the left of the dais. As we approached, she said, loudly, “Sir October Daye of the Mists. King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats.” Walther, it seemed, did not deserve an introduction. I searched her face, looking for any flicker that she recognized the man she was failing to announce. It wasn’t there.
“Ah, Sir Daye, how lovely to see you again,” said King Rhys, before allowing his eyes to travel the length of my body. He raised his eyebrows slightly, as if surprised. “Were you unable to pack sufficient clothing for your trip? My court tailors would be happy to help you with any deficiencies in your wardrobe. Simply send your lady’s maid to them, and they will provide whatever your heart desires.”
“I’m good,” I said. “It’s sort of hard to do much in the kind of dresses people keep trying to put me into, you know? Jeans are much more convenient.”
“Convenient, yes; respectable, no,” said the false Queen. She leaned back in her chair and snapped her fingers, a cold smile on her face.
The changes I had made to her blood had echoed through her flesh and into her magic. Some of those changes were good ones. She could no longer command people with her voice, could no longer compel us to attack our loved ones or forget our places in the world. Some of those changes were less positive. A cloud of mist enveloped me, so sudden and thick that I found myself separated from Tybalt even though I would have sworn that I hadn’t moved at all. I realized, to my dismay, that I didn’t really know what Sea Wights were capable of. They were technically Undersea fae, and I had never encountered a pureblood.
“He’ll leave you before this is done, you know,” murmured the false Queen’s voice, from deep inside the mist. The air smelled of rowan and tasted of the sea, an indefinable flavor that was salt and rot and petrichor and a thousand other things, all of them mingled into a single element. “He’ll leave you to drown, and he won’t be there to save you.”
“I’ve never needed to be saved before.”
“Oh, my dear. My dear, my delusional darling, no. That’s where you’re wrong. You have never been the golden-haired girl in skirts of green, and you are always the one who must be saved.”
As suddenly as it had come, the mist was gone. My hand was back on Tybalt’s arm, and he was frowning at me, eyes narrowed in anger and suspicion. I forced myself to keep my chin up, not allowing myself to look down at my clothing. I could already tell, from the feeling of fabric hanging around my legs, that it had been changed.
“You know I hate it when you do that,” I said, eyes fixed on the false Queen. She was reclining in her seat, a smug expression on her face. There was a time when that look would have caused me to compare her to a cat, but I had gotten to know the Cait Sidhe a lot better since then—all sorts of Cait Sidhe, not just my childhood friend, Julie—and I knew no cat could ever match her for underhanded treachery. They could be deceitful, sure, but it wasn’t the same thing.
When the Cait Sidhe came to kill you, they did it with tooth and claw, and they did it in the open. They didn’t do it with words and dresses and slander.
“Do you?” she asked, her eyes widening theatrically. “I don’t believe you ever told me so. Then again, perhaps that’s because in the past, when I gave you the gift of a better wardrobe, I was still recognized as rightful Queen of the Mists. It’s rude to argue with your monarch, isn’t that so? So you must have stayed silent, and now I have overstepped. How terrible. Imagine how this could have been avoided with better communication. Then again, many things could have been avoided with better communication. You could, for example, not have gone looking for an imposter to steal my throne away from me.”
I blinked at her, momentarily nonplussed. To cover the silence, I looked down at myself, finally giving her the satisfaction of acknowledging what she’d done.