The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,129

able to blackmail her into lying and claiming she’d committed treason if he had the boys, but Dean and Peter are safe with Patrick, and there’s no way she’d take his word for it if he said he was going to hurt them. He’d have to show her proof. He doesn’t have proof. She’s got to be resisting whatever he wants her to do, and that’s slowing him down.”

“Why do you think he has a time limit on prosecuting treason?” Tybalt asked.

“Pete left as soon as he got here, because she doesn’t like to involve herself in Merrow affairs,” I said. “Okay, fine. That works. But what if Torin’s not actually here to involve himself in Merrow affairs?”

Tybalt frowned. “Now you’ve lost me.”

“Torin has never made a claim on Saltmist before. It’s pretty clear he and Dianda’s parents had a ‘just until we get some heirs’ marriage. Right?”

“I suppose.”

“So he never expected to get Saltmist through legitimate means. He filled the duchy with troops who are loyal to him, and he expected Dianda’s people to go along with it because that’s how things are done in the Undersea, but honestly, why now? Dianda has left Saltmist before. He could have taken the Duchy during my bachelorette party, or when she was in Goldengreen having dinner with Dean. Honestly, if he wanted her to give up easy, he should have taken it one of those times. Peter can breathe water. Peter can take care of himself. Patrick can’t. She would have given in and done whatever he wanted, if her husband was in danger.”

Tybalt frowned slowly. “Perhaps he didn’t desire it before now.”

“Please.” I waved a hand. “You don’t assemble a force like the one we saw in Saltmist overnight, not even in the Undersea. You don’t decide to gamble everything on a whim—and he is gambling everything. Dianda isn’t going to forgive this.”

“Merrow fight. Perhaps this is their equivalent of a family squabble.”

“Except, again, he involved her children. Can you honestly tell me you’d forgive any Cait Sidhe who endangered our kids in an ordinary dominance challenge?”

Tybalt froze. For a long moment, he stared at me, eyes wide and strangely, painfully hopeful. Finally, he asked, in a small voice, “You would consider having children with me?”

I managed, barely, to suppress my wince. It helped that I still felt shaky from blood loss, which made most of my responses a little sluggish. “I don’t think this is the time for that conversation, do you?”

“No. No, of course not. I simply . . .” He kept looking at me, hope still bright and visible in his eyes. “I never thought you would want that with me.”

We were in an unstable Court of Cats. An enraged Merrow was stalking the Duchy of Ships, and since we still didn’t know his exact motives, we had no way of knowing whether he was going to try taking his fury out on our friends and loved ones. Somewhere on the nearby sea, two Firstborn were deciding whether or not they were going to come back and help us. This wasn’t just not the time for a serious talk about our relationship, this was practically the textbook definition of the worst time possible.

But there’d been a time, not that long ago, when I’d been afraid I was losing Tybalt forever, thanks to my mother’s unwanted interference in our relationship. Faerie doesn’t have anything as sensible as a modern conception of therapy; every inch of ground Tybalt had gained back, he’d gained by leaning on his friends and trusting that we were telling him the truth when we said that we still loved him, treasured him, and wanted him to be a part of our lives. And yeah, a lot of that heavy lifting fell to me, as the woman who was planning to marry him. Whether or not this was a good time didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that he was vulnerable, and had been for quite some time.

What mattered was that he was mine.

“Not right this second, no,” I said. “But once we’re married? Once Raj is the King of Dreaming Cats, and you’re free to be my husband and figure out what you want to do with your days? I think yeah. Yeah, I do. If you do.”

This was not the time or the place for this conversation. But Tybalt’s face lit up, suddenly relieved, relaxed, rejoicing, and I knew there had never been a better time, or a better place, for