One Salt Sea

“I don’t think we have the same definition of theft,” I said, struggling to keep my voice as level as possible. “Gillian’s my daughter.”

“She’s your daughter, and my honored guest.” Raysel took another deliberate step forward. “We have so much to talk about, after all. You failed us both. Why, we’re practically sisters, aren’t we?”

Gillian whimpered.

“Shut your mouth,” I snapped, all attempts at reason forgotten in the face of the sudden, fierce need to protect my little girl. “Don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be. Put down the bow, call off your Goblins, and come quietly. I’ll ask the Queen to go easy on you.”

“That’s not an option. You know that, or you’d never have made the offer.” Raysel shook her head. I thought I saw a flash of regret in her eyes, there and gone in an instant. “Not even the High King could go easy on me now. Could he?” None of us said anything. Fury contorted her face as she turned to aim her bow at Quentin, shouting, “Could he?!”

“No,” Quentin said. I shifted to get a look at him. He was standing with his chin up and his shoulders squared, staring down the length of his nose at Raysel. “But he could show clemency. You didn’t mean to kill the Selkie. You could be granted a sentence other than death.”

“A century decorating some garden as a marble statue doesn’t appeal to me,” she spat. “I chose this. I’ll see it through.”

“Did you choose it, Raysel?” I asked, shifting my weight to put myself a bit more solidly between her and Gillian. “Or did someone offer it to you? We know you didn’t do this alone. What did Dugan promise you? Did he tell you this would make everything better? It won’t.”

Raysel’s fury slipped as she turned back to me, and for a moment, I saw the little girl I used to know in her face, a child trapped within the prison of her own induced madness. “Whether this plan was wise or not, it’s mine now,” she said. “Something had to be. This will be enough.”

“Will it? Or is he just using you to get what he wants?” I shook my head. “No honor between thieves, remember? He’s going to clean up his loose ends, just like Oleander tried to do.”

“Then he’ll die. Just like Oleander did.” The momentary vulnerability passed, replaced by a smug little smile. “I have to thank you, October.” She put a poisonous spin on the word “thank.” “You’ve collected everyone I need to kill in one place. It makes things so much more efficient.”

I was surprised enough that I laughed out loud before I thought better of it. Raysel’s eyes widened, making her look like a startled child. “Do you really think this is everyone you’ll have to kill? Seriously? Oak and ash, Raysel, stop posturing and think. If you want to make this go away, you’re going to have to kill a lot more than just us.”

“There’s my nephew,” said Tybalt calmly, “and a large percentage of my Court.”

“The Duke and Duchess of Saltmist,” said Connor.

“Danny and Walther,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure Danny knew about the dead Selkie. The look of alarm on Raysel’s face was promising; I just had to make it worse. “Oh, and most of Goldengreen.”

“Shut up,” said Raysel, without conviction. She licked her lips, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Her Goblins murmured behind her, starting to look concerned. Maybe they were realizing how unlikely their promised payday really was. “All of you, be quiet.”

“Your parents,” I said.

That was the wrong card to play. Raysel’s eyes narrowed this time, and her grip on her longbow steadied. “They already chose you over me,” she said, pulling the bowstring tight. “They can rot for all I care.”

I froze. I may be faster than I used to be, but I knew better than to believe I could outrun an arrow. If she let go, I was going down—and worse. Elf-shot is normally small, sized to fit in a handheld crossbow . . . but the tip of Raysel’s arrow glittered poisonously. Clearly, she’d been making some adjustments.

Raysel smiled at the terror on my face. “So maybe killing you won’t make this go away. So what? I’m going to be Queen when the war is over, and there’s plenty of space on the battlefield to arrange for an ‘accidental’ death or two. You’ve given me a list to work from. I’ll just think of it as a challenge before my coronation.”

Still not daring to move, I asked the only question I could think of that might buy us a little more time: “How were you planning to kill the Luidaeg? She’s Firstborn. I only know one person who knows how to kill a Firstborn, and you’re talking to her. If you kill me, the Luidaeg lives.”

“Even the Firstborn can be . . . incapacitated for a little while. I only need a hundred years or so. After that, she can say whatever she likes. I’ll have my throne. She won’t be able to hurt me.”

“Then there’s May, and the night-haunts—I mean, this is a lot of killing.”

Raysel scoffed. “The night-haunts are nothing. I own flyswatters.”

“The Court of Cats will hunt you to the farthest marches and beyond,” said Tybalt. He sounded almost bored. That was a dangerous tone coming from him. A cat that looks bored is a cat that’s getting ready to pounce.

Please, Tybalt, be careful, I prayed silently, unsure, as always, if anyone was listening. There’s no telling what she has on that arrow. Elf-shot, treated with a little something extra to make waking up impossible, if Walther was right.

“I don’t care,” said Raysel. She drew the bowstring back a little farther. Tybalt glanced at me, and nodded, almost imperceptibly. This standoff couldn’t last forever. Raysel’s attention was on me. All I had to do was keep it there.

I said the only thing I could think of that would guarantee I held her attention. “If you’re going to kill us anyway, you should know that Connor and I have been sleeping together since the day I came back from the pond.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Liar.”

“Oh, no. I called him from the motel. He came right over—said you wouldn’t notice, that you were too stupid to see that he was cheating on you.” I took a deliberate step forward, baiting her. “We laughed at you.”

“Liar!” shouted Raysel. Her fingers tensed as she swung her bow up, shifting her aim from my shoulder to my throat.

“She’s telling the truth,” said Connor. Raysel’s aim wavered, like she couldn’t decide which of us she should kill first.

“Now!” shouted Tybalt, and leaped for Rayseline.

He wasn’t moving as fast as I knew he was capable of, but he was still moving fast enough to slam into her before she could react. The impact knocked her off-balance, and she released the arrow, sending it flying to embed itself harmlessly in the ceiling. She shrieked, hitting him with her bow. The Goblins lunged for him, their knives out and gleaming wickedly.

I pulled the pixie from my hair, whispering, “Help us, please,” before hurling it toward Raysel and the others. It rang stridently as it tumbled through the air. That must have been the pixie equivalent of sounding a cavalry charge, because more pixies came swarming from their hiding places, biting and scratching as they dove into the fray.

One of the Goblins went for Quentin, and was promptly dissuaded by a baseball bat to the side of the head. Not to be outdone, Connor drew his own bow and shot the Goblin in the arm. It howled and dropped its knife.

I wanted to help them, but more, I wanted to get Gillian away from all this madness. I turned and knelt by her chair. “Just hold on, baby, I’m going to get you out of here,” I said, starting to saw through the rope binding her ankles.

“Mom? What are those things?” She sounded terrified.

“Close your eyes, Gilly,” I ordered. Tybalt was snarling, which meant he’d probably abandoned at least part of his human form in favor of a cat’s claws and fangs. Even my allies probably looked like monsters to her. “This is all going to be over soon, but I need you to close your eyes, because you don’t want to see this.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered—but she turned her face away. Thank Oberon for that. She’d already seen too much.

I’d worry about that later. For now, my biggest concern was getting her out of the shallowing alive.

The rope holding her feet gave way. I moved around to the back of the chair. “Just keep them closed, baby,” I said, keeping my tone soothing, like I was trying to coax the toddler I remembered her being back to sleep after a bad dream. “I’m almost done here, and as soon as I’m done, I’m going to take you home. I’m going to get you out