The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,107
create a population in exile, not quite human, not entirely fae? She was a monster, by her own admission and by her sister’s design. I’d never really considered her cruel. If she hadn’t known, if she hadn’t been able to wrap her immortal mind about the fast, impatient way that mortal beings lived their lives, that was one thing. But if she had done this on purpose . . .
If she had done this on purpose, she was more of a monster than I ever could have believed she’d be.
Liz led us down the row of houses to one identical to her own, raised her hand, and knocked. A long moment passed before the door was cracked open, just wide enough for a man to peer suspiciously out at us.
“It’s Elizabeth Ryan, René,” she said—snapped, really, with a hectic, impatient air that wasn’t going to make this any easier. “I need to talk to your husband. Let me in.”
“There’s a war on, in case you missed the news,” said the man—René—in a mild voice. He had a French accent, as maritime as the winter is long, and a wary air about him, like he expected Liz to shove her way inside. Which maybe he did. I had no idea how she ranked among the Selkie clan leaders, whether she was considered one of the stable ones or whether she was the one the rest of them warned their children about. She was the unfriendly drunk who had mourned for Connor, who had loved the Luidaeg, who had gone to sea to get herself a daughter with eyes as green as an untouched forest. Everything else had been someone else’s problem.
“It’s not a war so much as it’s a series of uncoordinated assassinations, and people are mostly being polite about it,” said Liz. “This is Sir October Daye from Shadowed Hills. She’s a hero of the realm back in the Mists, where my clan is unfortunate enough to rest our rookery, and she has something she wants to say to Mathias. Now are you going to let us in, or are we going to stand out here and make a scene until someone decides they can use the distraction to sneak through your window and steal a few skins?”
Quentin leaned closer to me. “She makes you look like you have manners,” he murmured.
“Quiet, you,” I said.
The door opened wider, revealing a stocky man with blond hair streaked in Selkie gray, and the deep sea eyes characteristic of his kind. The sealskin around his shoulders was almost an afterthought. He could never have been anything but a Selkie.
“You’re Toby Daye?” he asked, focusing on me. His eyes seemed to skip over Quentin, like he didn’t dare look directly at my squire. I swore inwardly. Beacon’s Home was in Halifax. I didn’t know enough about Canadian geography to say for sure how close that was to Toronto, but from the way René was trying not to admit he could see Quentin, I was willing to bet it was close enough that he’d seen the High King and his family at least a time or two. He knew what the Crown Prince looked like.
If this was how Quentin’s blind fosterage was finally spoiled, I was going to laugh until I cried.
“I am,” I said. “Hi.”
“My name is René Lefebvre, but I was born René O’Dell,” he said. “Connor was my cousin. Second cousin, on my father’s side. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
He sounded so sincere, and so genuinely sad about the man I’d mourned and moved on from, that I felt unexpected tears spring to the corners of my eyes. I swallowed my grief, taking what comfort I could from Tybalt’s proximity. Connor was gone. Connor was never coming back. But that didn’t mean I was alone, or that I was ever going to be alone again.
“I appreciate that,” I said. My voice hardly shook at all. Something else to be grateful for, under the circumstances. “Is Mathias home?”
“As if I’d allow him to be anywhere else, or he’d allow the same for me, given the circumstances?” His sadness faded, replaced by exhaustion. “Neither of us is leaving this house for any reason short of danger to the clan itself, and even then, we’ll go together. Why should we let you inside? Connor was a Ryan, by the end. You could be here because you want them to be the last clan standing, and help their leader strip the skins from our bodies.”