The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,62
in small glass beads that shimmered blue and green and crystal clear. His hose were pale gold, and he carried no visible weapons. He didn’t need to. Everything about him radiated quiet power. His arms were thick with muscle, and would have looked entirely out of proportion if not for the breadth of his chest and the thickness of neck. This was not a man who’d spent a single day of his life sitting idly, not when there was something else to be done with his time.
His hair was dark and his skin was golden brown, and I didn’t have to ask to know he and Dianda were related. Technically, all Merrow are related, but he looked enough like her that it was jarring.
The man smiled without warmth. It was the cold smile of a predator, something rising out of the deeps to snatch its prey. “Open waters and kind tides to you, Dianda Lorden, Duchess of Saltmist.”
“Torin.” The name fell from her lips like a stone. “I’m afraid I don’t know your current title, little brother, and so can’t offer it to you as a peaceful hello. You’re looking . . . well.”
I swallowed my shock at the word “brother,” although I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening. This complicated things. As my own experiences with August proved, siblings complicate everything.
“I stand heir to the Duchy of Bluefish, as you well know,” snapped the other Merrow. His eyes skated across the rest of us, smile twisting into a scowl. “This is the company you keep? Landers and animals and creatures of the air? You shame yourself and your father’s name with your behavior.”
“It’s my name to use as I like, since I’m the one he kept,” said Dianda. “Get your own name, if you’re so worried about the dishonor done to mine. It’s not my fault our mother carries no family name to give you.”
Torin’s lip curled. He said nothing.
So there’d been a separation. That at least made his existence—and the lack of mention—make sense. When married fae have children, divorce is impossible until those children are old enough to choose which parent’s family line they want to claim as their own. Maybe that’s part of why fae children tend to come reasonably close together. A couple can be married for hundreds of years with no luck at conceiving an heir or a spare, only to get both in less than a decade.
It’s hard to say, in Faerie, whether our social customs stem from our biology, or whether our biology has been shaped by our social customs. Honestly, it could go either way.
Some fae, especially among the noble houses, have been known to marry solely for the sake of conceiving that all-precious heir. Once the first child comes along, there’s a decent chance of having a second in an irrelevant number of years, and then it’s only a few decades before they can separate and get on with their lives. This doesn’t mean divorces can’t be messy—and while supposedly, parents aren’t allowed to pressure their children to choose one over another, that’s not how it works in reality. That’s never been how it worked.
It looked like Torin, who had chosen to be his mother’s son sometime in the deep past, was having second thoughts now.
Dianda yawned luxuriously, stretching her arms above her head, before planting her hands on her hips and looking, narrow-eyed, at her brother. “Well?” she asked. “You brought a lot of guards for a friendly visit. You here to start something with me? Because if you are, you’re a coward who knows he can’t take me in a fair fight. You couldn’t do it when we were children, you couldn’t do it when I was sent to school to become a better warrior than you, and you can’t do it here.”
“Technically, dear, he’s not allowed to do it here,” said Patrick, in the mild voice that meant he was genuinely annoyed. “The Duchy of Ships has strict rules about such things, and attracting the wrath of Captain Pete is less than desirable.”
A briefly stricken look crossed Dianda’s face at the thought of even being in the vicinity of her Firstborn’s wrath, mirrored by a look of abject horror on Dean’s. Torin, on the other hand, continued to sneer. Either he didn’t realize who Pete was, or he somehow didn’t care. Looking at the number of heavily armed guards he’d brought with him, I thought it could go either way. This was a man who didn’t believe