Rosemary and Rue

“I’ve missed you, too,” I admitted, and turned to face Sylvester. “Your Grace . . .”

“We looked for you,” he said. There was an urgency to his words, like there was nothing in the world I needed to hear more than I needed to hear what he had to tell me. “We looked for you everywhere. You have to believe me. When you vanished, I set Etienne to scouring the city, I sent half my knights with him, I did everything I could, and you were just . . . you were just gone, Toby. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? He was admitting that he’d taken resources away from the search for his wife and daughter— admitting it while his wife was standing right next to him, no less—and he was telling me he was sorry? I gaped at him, not sure what I could say.

Rayseline saved me from answering by stepping up on her father’s other side, sliding her hands around his arm and looking at me. Her eyes were the same gold as her father’s, but while on him the color was warm and welcoming, on her it seemed almost reptilian, the gaze of a predator.

“Oh, look,” she said. “She’s finally deigned to come and see the consequences of her failure. Hello, failure. How’ve you been?”

“Hello, Rayseline,” I said, keeping my tone measured. Whatever relief I might have felt at her interruption died at her words.

We don’t know what happened to Luna and Raysel during the twelve years that they spent missing—twelve years that corresponded with the first twelve years of my own missing time. But while for me, those years were lost, whatever they went through, they lived it. The few people I’d spoken to said that Luna came back a little sadder, a little stranger, but Raysel . . . Raysel came back wrong. Growing up the way she did broke something inside of her, and looking at her now, I began to realize why the whispers said it might never be repaired.

“I wondered when you’d come sniffing around here,” she said. “Looking for something else that you can’t do? I’m sure Daddy has plenty of unsolvable puzzles and quests that can’t succeed. Go do some of those.”

“Raysel, that’s enough,” said Sylvester, sharply. “I’m her liege. October is always welcome here.”

“She wants something,” said Raysel. “I can smell it on her.”

“Rayseline, that’s quite enough,” said Luna. The normal calm of her tone was gone, washed in worry and barely concealed irritation. Raysel’s unpleasantness wasn’t just an act for my benefit, then.

“She’s right,” I said. Sylvester and Luna both turned toward me. Raysel smirked, looking triumphant. “I’m afraid I am here because I want something. Or, well. Because I need to tell you something, and I need to ask for a favor.”

“Anything,” Sylvester said. “You know that.”

“I’m not so certain about that,” I said, glancing from him to Luna and back again.“Have you heard the news?” Please say yes, I prayed. Don’t make me be the one that tells you. If the Queen were reacting at all sanely, her heralds would already have been and gone . . . but everyone seemed much too calm for that, and the Queen had said no one would even speak Evening’s name. That would make it sort of hard for her to send out notices.

If Sylvester didn’t know, it was my duty to tell him. And I desperately didn’t want to.

“We heard there was going to be an end of winter ball at the Queen’s knowe in two weeks,” offered Connor, finally abandoning the dais and moving to stand next to Rayseline—next to his wife. Smirking at me, she transferred her hold from Sylvester’s arm to his. “Please tell me you didn’t finally decide to come visit cause you thought we’d missed the latest exciting issue of the Kingdom newsletter. Hey, Toby.”

“Hey, Connor,” I said, smiling despite the grimness of the news I was about to share. It’s hard not to smile when looking at Connor.

Take your standard California beach bum, give him spiky brown hair streaked with seal’s-fur gray, brown eyes so dark they verge on black, slightly webbed fingers and a baked-in tan, and you’ve got Connor O’Dell. He was the Undersea emissary to Sylvester’s Court when I was serving there. We were . . . friends. Good friends. We might have been more than just good friends, if his family hadn’t objected to the idea of him being involved with a changeling before Connor and I could move beyond a few sweet, fumbling encounters in the gardens that dotted the knowe. He said he was sorry; so did I. And then I let myself get swept off my feet by a human man who would never say he couldn’t love me because my blood wasn’t pure enough.

I never blamed Connor for the way things happened. That’s just the way it goes for a changeling in a pureblood’s world. Coming home to hear that he was married to Rayseline Torquill was a shock, but it didn’t decrease my fondness for the man. Just the likelihood that I was going to let his wife catch me checking out his ass.

Sylvester, meanwhile, was simply looking puzzled. “No,” he said. “There’s been no news—at least, not anything big enough to bring you back to us. What’s going on, Toby? It’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but . . . why are you here?”

I swallowed. “So you haven’t heard anything about the Countess of Goldengreen?”

Sylvester’s look of puzzlement increased. “Evening? No, nothing. Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” I bit back a near-hysterical giggle. “Yes. Something’s very wrong.”

“Is she hurt?”

“No. No, she’s . . . Your Grace, Evening was killed last night. She’s dead.”

Luna’s ears flattened against her head. “Dead?” she whispered.

Raysel’s sudden laughter cut off any answer I could have given. We all turned to stare at her as she released her husband’s arm, sweeping out of the room on the tide of her own merriment.

“What—” I said.

“Connor, go with her,” said Luna. It wasn’t a request.

Nodding dolefully, Connor shoved his hands into his pockets and trailed after his wife. He caught my eye as he passed, and the look on his face was sad, almost beaten. Raysel’s the one with the Kitsune blood, but he was the one who looked like a whipped puppy.

The three of us stood for a moment in uncomfortable silence before Luna glanced to Sylvester and said, “She’s still a little unstable from everything that . . . from everything. My family has always been subject to . . . well. We don’t recover quickly from the sort of things she was forced to go through. It’s just our way.” She shifted as she spoke, refusing to meet my eyes.

No one seems to know what “things” Luna and her daughter went through during their absence, but the haunted look in Luna’s face told me they might have been worse than I’d ever dreamed. “Of course,” I said, feeling somehow embarrassed to have witnessed Raysel’s outburst, and turned to Sylvester.

The color had drained from his face, leaving him pale and shaking. He didn’t seem to have noticed Raysel’s dramatic exit. “Dead?” he said.

“Murdered,” I said, looking down, trying to avoid the shock I knew I’d see in his expression. Too late. “They shot her, then slit her throat with an iron blade.”

A sharp silence fell over the room. I raised my head, meeting Sylvester’s eyes. “Iron?” he said.

“Yes. She died from her wounds.” Not from anything more merciful.

“So there’s no way it was anything but murder.” There was something broken in his tone. The purebloods have to stick together, because they have nowhere else to turn, and so every death hits them hard. Changelings don’t work that way. We’re too scattered and too different, and it can take us years, sometimes, to find out when someone dies. Death is more of a danger for us, and that makes it seem less impossible. That doesn’t make it any better.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.

“I . . . yes. Yes, of course.” His fingers sought Luna’s and gripped them hard. “Oh, Evening. Was there . . . was that all you had to tell?”

“Before she died, she asked me to find her killers,” I said, watching him carefully. “I’m here because I wanted you to know. And because I have to ask for help.”

“I wish you’d come sooner,” said Luna, very quietly. “We’ve missed you, and no homecoming should be darkened by this sort of news. It’s an ill omen.”

Sylvester’s concerns were more immediate than ill omens. Expression sharpening, he asked, “You said yes?” All I had to do was nod. Sylvester knew my word would bind me, whether or not I wanted it to. I didn’t see a reason to tell him about the curse; he was already going to worry enough. “Oh, Toby. Why did you agree?’

“Because I didn’t have a choice.” I folded my hands behind my back. “If you don’t want to help, I’ll understand.”