The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,109

good of an actor.

“Isla’s dead,” I said.

There was a gasp behind me. I turned. René was staring at me, eyes wide, one hand clutching the front of his shirt, like he thought he could keep his heart from leaping straight out of his chest.

“You were friends?” I asked.

“She’s my sister,” he said. He moved quickly then, crossing the room to reach, not me, but the couch where Mathias sat. The other man opened his arms and René fell into them. He wasn’t sobbing; he was shaking, his entire body rocking with the force of his grief.

Mathias looked at me over René’s shoulder. His eyes were cold. “You had best not be playing some sort of joke on us, or I swear, by Maeve’s grace, I don’t care if the sea witch sent you, I’ll have your bones for bangles.”

“And since I’m a changeling, you wouldn’t be violating the Law,” I said. “I know.”

“I would still gut him like the fish his seal-shape so resembles,” said Tybalt. “I would also prefer you not go around reminding people that your government, such as it is, cares so little for your life.”

“You’re cute when you’re murderous,” I said.

“That explains why you think he’s cute all the time,” muttered Quentin.

Mathias barked a laugh that sounded halfway to becoming hysterical. “The Crown Prince of the Westlands is in my living room. He’s in my living room, having opinions about a changeling knight’s love life. Maybe none of this is happening. Maybe we’re still on our way here from Halifax, and when I wake up, we’ll be able to try all this nonsense again, in a slightly less horrifying fashion.”

“Sorry, but this is real,” I said. “And we’d prefer it if you didn’t spread that whole ‘secretly the Crown Prince’ thing around. Quentin’s with me on a blind fosterage. No one’s supposed to know who he is.”

“But you don’t deny it,” said Mathias.

“No, because I said I wasn’t here to lie to you, and this isn’t the time to start.” René was still clinging to him, shaking. I watched the back of his head for a moment. The Selkie clans were all interrelated; they had to be. How else could their human kinfolk marry and raise families of their own? No one who’d grown up purely in the mortal world would be able to understand them, and even with a geas to stop their tongues and keep them from spilling Faerie’s secrets, there would be gaps. Places where the lies were too apparent.

More and more, what we’d come here to do felt wrong. The Luidaeg’s punishment might have been right and just when it began, but that was generations ago, before any of these people were alive, before the Selkies were a thriving, functional part of Faerie. I couldn’t tell her “no.” I couldn’t stop her. But was I going to be able to live with myself once I’d done what she demanded?

I didn’t know.

“I’m sorry to be the one who tells you this. I’m more sorry that it’s happened. But . . .” I stopped, caught myself, and began again. “When the Root and Branch were young, when the Rose still grew unplucked upon the tree; when all our lands were new and green and we danced without care, then, we were immortal. Then, we lived forever.”

René finally made a sound, sorrow and disbelief and shocked horror bound together in a small, tight gasp. He turned, still clinging to Mathias, to face me.

I continued. It was the only thing left for me to do. “We left those lands for the world where time dwells, dancing, that we might see the passage of the sun and the growing of the world. Here we may die, and here we can fall, and here Isla Chase of Belle Fleuve, leader of the Chase clan of Selkies, has stopped her dancing.”

René nodded, closing his eyes and sagging into the couch. Mathias stroked his arm, even as he glared daggers at me. I’d rarely seen a man that openly embracing his hatred while not actively trying to murder me. It was a nice change, even if I didn’t like the circumstances.

“Why are you telling us this?” he demanded. “The sea witch granted us permission to steal from one another, and to be rendered human against your will is the next best thing to being murdered. My clan’s children are hiding in their rooms, crying, because what happens to them if someone comes to hurt their mommies or daddies? One death