The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,17

I am a selfish man, but I prefer a world that has you in it.” He leaned closer, until his nose actually touched mine. “Must I begin quoting sweet William before you’ll believe me?”

“How did I wind up falling in love with such a nerd?” I asked.

He smirked. “Luck.”

I laughed. “Right. Luck. Luck, and bleeding all over you way too many times for comfort, and a lot of other unpleasantness, but we’ll roll with the one that doesn’t ruin the upholstery.” I sobered, looking at him. “Don’t you wonder, sometimes, what it would have been like if we hadn’t lost them? If, I don’t know, Janet had broken the Ride but not so badly that Maeve . . . well, that whatever happened to Maeve happened? Maybe things would be better.”

“Or perhaps you would never have been born because your mother would have been treated as a proper Firstborn princess, regardless of her maternity, and never encountered a human man, nor deigned to let him touch her.” Tybalt ran a hand almost reverently down my cheek. “I am younger than the loss of the Three, but older than you.”

“Very aware, and just human enough that it sort of creeps me out if I think about it too hard, so if we could not talk about your age in bed, that would be awesome,” I muttered.

Tybalt laughed, once, sharply. “Oh, October, I look forward to the day when there are so many centuries between us that the existence of the years I spent without you is no longer of any importance or concern.”

“That day is not today,” I said.

“Indeed.” He stroked my cheek again. “When I was a boy, quests to find our missing King and Queens were common. A good way of burning off extra, unwanted heirs, on the chance that your bed was blessed enough to get them. Too many good fae were lost, and not only from the Divided Courts, for with the loss of the Three, the surviving Firstborn began to go as well, and we were not as settled in the idea of ruling ourselves then as we are now.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there has never been a High King of Cats, but once, men such as my father would have been unable to run their Courts as petty dictatorships. Malvic himself would have stepped in and stopped the cruelties, and he would have been allowed to do so, because we were in the habit of obedience. Our Firstborn, when they walked the world, did so as judge and jury—and while they may have kept us kinder with one another, they also kept us as children. We never learned the ways of self-control, for there was no need to do so.”

“Huh,” I said. “Evening must have loved that.”

“Given her descendants, I’d suppose she still does.” He offered a small smile as he sat up. “Now that you’re well and truly distracted, are you prepared to tell me what’s actually bothering you, or shall I dredge up more ancient history and pretend it passes for pillow talk?”

“Bastard.” I swatted him in the arm as I sat up.

His laughter was sincere, and enough to melt away a bit more of the tension in my shoulders and back. If Tybalt was laughing, the world couldn’t be that bad. “My father took no wife, and I never met my mother. He bought me from her when I was but a kitten, and my eyes not yet opened. My sister went back when she was older, after I was King in my own right, but it was too late; the woman who bore us had already stopped her dancing.”

Meaning, in the often complicated parlance of the pureblooded fae, that she’d died. I blinked once, trying to decide whether saying I was sorry would be appropriate. He didn’t seem upset, and there was no way of knowing how many centuries ago this had happened. Not without asking, and that would take us even farther down the path of “things I really would prefer not to discuss in the bedroom, thanks” than we’d already gone.

Pushing the covers back, I swung my feet to the floor and looked at my knees as I said, “I’m out of time. I have to go see Gilly today, and I’m not ready. I was . . .” I hesitated. Admitting this felt like cowardice; lying to Tybalt after everything he’d been through at my mother’s hands felt even worse. “I know she’s been going