The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,154

the rest of my life. I’ll never be a wild thing again, if I was ever a wild thing in the first place.

My mother—may she rest peacefully among the night-haunts—named me Rajiv in honor of her father, a man I never knew. My father, may he never rest peacefully, recognized the power in me the first time he held me, a mewling infant with my eyes stuck shut and my ears plastered against my head. My mother’s magic was never strong enough to let her transform. She lived, loved, and left us, all in her feline form, and so I’d been born the same way, growing through the early stages of infancy as fast as any kitten.

Sometimes I liked to tease Quentin about how, even though we were technically the same age, I was actually older than he is since I was walking and talking by the time I was four months old, and he was still a helpless burden on his family. He usually responded by hitting me. That was how I knew we were friends.

My father saw what I could be, what I would be, and set out to benefit from it. He changed my name, shortened it to “Raj,” which means “king,” and contacted every Court of Cats in North America that didn’t already have an heir. I could have gone anywhere—could even have grown up in Quentin’s backyard, detesting the secretive Crown Prince of the Westlands—but I ended up here, in San Francisco, in the Court of Dreaming Cats.

Father used to say Uncle Tybalt had offered the best arrangement of any continental monarch, and that he had no interest in traveling abroad. I think, considering my childhood, that it was more a matter of Uncle Tybalt being willing to tolerate my father’s presence. Most Kings of Cats wouldn’t do it; they’d view the presence of another adult male in their new heir’s life as a threat to their sovereignty. After all, had Father killed my uncle after I was named and known as heir, he could have claimed the throne as my regent—the closest he could have come to being a King in his own right.

He tried. After Mother died, when Uncle Tybalt became too openly enamored of October, finally admitting what the rest of us had known for ages, my father attempted to stage a coup. He failed, and I guess I was never as good a son to him as I’d always wanted to be, because I didn’t mourn for him. Not when he died, and not now.

I mourn my mother. I will for years yet, if I ever stop. But my father got what he deserved, and when he’s forgotten, I won’t be sorry.

I slid from my perch—a pile of old orange crates with peeling paint—and stalked deeper into the court. If I had a tail when I walked on two legs, it would have been lashing. Uncle Tybalt says it’s improper for a Prince to look more bestial than necessary. Shade—the Queen of Cats in Berkeley—agrees, so I guess he’s right. Again. It’s annoying how often he’s right about things. Just once I’d like to be the one with the correct answer, while he’s left standing confused on the sidelines.

Shame followed the thought; I hunched my shoulders and walked faster. He’d be standing on the sidelines of the Court of Cats soon enough, when Ginevra judged me ready and told him to come back so I could challenge him. Or when he came back for his throne, let the Court see that his heart wasn’t in it anymore, and I challenged him. Every path ended with claws bared and blood on the floor. Every future led to me sitting on his throne, his crown on my head, his subjects bowing down before me and calling me their King.

I don’t know what else they’ll call me. Princes and Princesses take new names when they claim their rightful places, to make it perfectly clear that we aren’t the children we used to be, that we have to be respected and obeyed even by the people who used to wipe our noses. I don’t know what they’ll call my uncle, either. “Tybalt” is his King-name, and he’ll have to set it aside when he forsakes the crown.

All these changes and choices gave me a headache. I stalked on, down a hallway lined with patches of plywood and through a room filled with bolts of fabric. Some of them looked like they were decades old. I