He hugged me. “I know.”
Mistral and Frost were with Rhys now. They did not approach us, and again I wasn’t sure why. They waited, as if they needed permission to come closer — the way they would have waited to approach Queen Andais.
I thought it was me they waited on, but I should have known better. Sholto said behind me, “The sidhe do not usually stand on ceremony, but if you need permission, then I give it. Come closer.”
Mistral said, “If you could see yourself, King Sholto, you would not ask why we stand on ceremony.”
The comment made me look back at Sholto. He was sitting up, but where he had been lying was an outline of herbs. Peppermint, basil — as I recognized them, I smelled their perfumes. But the herbs spreading out from where he had lain, where we had lain, wasn’t what made the men stop. Sholto was wearing a crown; a crown of herbs. Even as we watched, the delicate plants wove like living fingers through his hair, creating a wreath of thyme and mint. Only the most delicate of the plants, entwining themselves as we watched.
He raised a hand, and the moving plants touched his fingers as they had touched my ankle. I was wearing an anklet of living thyme, gold-flecked leaves, smelling of green life and lemons. The tendril wrapped around his fingers like a happy pet. He lowered his hand and stared at it. The plant wove itself into a ring as we watched — a ring that bloomed on his hand, the delicate spray of white blossoms more precious than any jewel. Then his crown burst into bloom, shades of white, blue, lavender. Finally, the blooms spread across the island, so that the ground was nearly solid with tiny, airy flowers, moving not in a breeze — for there was none — but nodding as if the flowers were speaking to one another.
“A crown of flowers is not a crown for the king of the sluagh!” Agnes shouted, harsh, from the shore. She was on hands and knees, hidden completely under her black cloak. I saw the flash of her eyes, as if there was a glow to them; then she lowered her head, hiding from the light. She was a night-hag. They didn’t travel at noon.
Ivar spoke, but I couldn’t see him. “Sholto, King, we cannot approach you in this burning light.”
His uncles were half-goblin — which, depending on the type of goblin, might make sunlight a problem. But they were also half-night-flyer, and that definitely made sunlight a problem.
“I would that you could come to me, Uncles,” Sholto said.
Doyle’s arms tightened around me, a warning. “Be careful what you say, Sholto; you do not understand the power of the words of someone whom faerie itself has crowned.”
“I do not need advice from you, Darkness,” Sholto said, and again there was bitterness in his voice.
The sunlight faded, and a soft twilight began to fall. There was the sound of splashing, then Ivar and Fyfe came up upon the island. They were nude except for enough clothing to hold their weapons. They fell to one knee before him, heads bowed. “King Sholto,” Ivar said, “we thank you for sending the light away.”
Sholto said, “I didn’t…”
“You are crowned by faerie,” Doyle said again. “Your words, perhaps even your thoughts, will shape what will happen this night.”
I said, “I thought — only thought — that there is more than one variety of thyme, and it changed the herbs. What I thought about became real, Sholto.”
Agnes called from the shore, “You have freed us from the light, King Sholto. You have given us back the Lost Lake and the Island of Bones. Will you stop there, or will you give us back our power? Will you remake the sluagh while the magic of creation still burns through you, or will you hesitate and lose this chance to bring us back into ourselves?”
“The hag is right, Your Highness,” Fyfe said. “You have brought us back the magic of making, wild magic, creation magic. Will you use it for us?”
In the dying light I watched Sholto lick his lips. “What would you have of me?” he asked carefully. I heard in his voice what was beginning to be in my mind, a touch of fear. You could police your words, but policing your own thoughts — that was harder, so much harder.
“Call the wild magic,” Ivar said.
“It is here already,” Doyle said, “can you not feel it?” His heart sped under my cheek. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what was happening, but Doyle seemed both frightened and excited. Even his body was beginning to react, pressed against the front of mine.
The two kneeling figures looked at Doyle. “Do not look to Darkness,” Sholto said. “I am king here.”
They looked back at him, and bowed again. “You are our king,” said Ivar. “But there are places we cannot follow you. If the wild magic is real again, then you have two choices, king of ours: You can remake us into a thing of flowered crowns and noonday suns, or you can call the old magic, and remake us into what we once were.”
“Darkness is right,” Fyfe said. “I can feel it like a growing weight inside me. You can change us into what she wants us to be” — he pointed at me — “or you can give us back what we have lost.”
Sholto then asked something that made me think even better of him than I already did. “What would you have of me, Uncles, what would you have me do?”
They glanced first at him, then at each other, then carefully down at the ground again. “We want to be what we once were. We want to hunt as we once did. Give us back what has been lost, Sholto.” Ivar held out his hand toward his king.
“Do not remake us in the sidhe bitch’s image,” Agnes yelled from the shore. It was a mistake.
Sholto yelled back at her, “I am king here. I rule here. I thought you loved me once. But I know now that you only raised me to take the throne because you wished to sit upon it. You cannot rule, but you thought you could rule through me. You and your sisters thought to make me your puppet.” He stood and screamed at her. “I am no one’s puppet. I am King Sholto of the Sluagh, I am the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows. Long have I been lonely among my own people. Long have I wanted some to look as I do.” He slammed a hand into his chest. It made a thick, meaty sound. “Now you tell me I have the power to do just that. You have envied the sidhe their smooth skin, their beauty that turns my head. So have what you envy.”
A wail came from Agnes, but it was too dark to see what was happening on the shore. She screamed, a horrible sound — a sound of loss, and pain, as if whatever was happening to her hurt.
I heard Sholto say, softly, “Agnes.” The sound in that one word let me know that he wasn’t so terribly certain of what he wanted, or what he had done.
What had he done?
His uncles abased themselves, faces pressed to the herbs. “Please, King Sholto, we beg you, do not remake us into sidhe. Do not make us only lesser versions of the Unseelie. We are sluagh, and that is a proud thing. Would you strip us of all that we have kept over the years?”
“No,” Sholto said, and there was no anger in his voice now. The screams from the shore had taken away his anger. He understood now how dangerous he was in this moment. “I want the sluagh to be powerful again. I want us to be a force to be reckoned with, negotiated with. I want us to be a fearsome thing.”
I spoke before I could think: “Not just fearsome, surely.”
“I want us to have a terrible beauty then,” he said, and it was as if the world held its breath, as if the whole of faerie had been waiting for him to say those words. I felt it in the pit of my stomach like the chime of a great bell. It was a beautiful sound, but so large, so heavy, that it could crush you with the music of its voice.
“What have you done?” Doyle asked, and I wasn’t sure whom he had asked it of.
Sholto answered him. “What I had to do.” He stood there, stark and pale in the growing dark. The tattoo of his tentacles glowed as if outlined with phosphorus. The flowers of his crown looked ghostly pale, and I thought they would have attracted honeybees, if it had not been dark. Bees are not nighttime creatures.