Page 23 of The Unkindest Tide

The Luidaeg lowered her eyes to the deck, holding that position for several long seconds. When she glanced up again, looking at him through sooty lashes, her irises and sclera had blended into a single fathomless darkness, not black, not exactly, but layer upon layer of translucence leading to the same inevitable conclusion. I like to think of myself as relatively fearless where the Luidaeg is concerned. I couldn’t look at those eyes for more than a second before I turned away, searching for something—anything—less terrifying.

There was a clatter of hooves as Rodrick stumbled back, away from the Luidaeg, away from her graveyard gaze.

“Does anyone ever really know anyone else, or do we act like cartographers, drawing maps of unfamiliar shores, pretending it teaches us their secrets? You’ve met me, Mate Rodrick of the Duchy of Ships, master of the Jackdaw, wind-chaser and wave-chaser and son of the sea. You’ve seen my shores from a distance, through a fog. But to claim to know me? That’s the purview of greater hearts than yours, and it’s not a burden you’ve ever been called upon to bear. Now announce me, so we can end this little passion play and move on to the business at hand. The fog is clearing. My capital city can finally be named.”

Rodrick cleared his throat, still staring at her with a mixture of fascination and horror, like a hiker seeing their first venomous snake. “Y-yes, my lady,” he said. His voice was a shipwrecked whisper, the ghost of his former sonorous tones. He cleared his throat a second time, and in that same hollow voice, announced, “From the Kingdom of Albany, in the High Demesne of Albion, most recently in the Mists, Firstborn to Maeve by Oberon, the fair and hallowed lady known as the Luidaeg, called sea witch by all who would avoid her wrath.”

Somehow, despite its broken hollowness, his voice carried, silencing the crowds around us. I glanced to the Luidaeg. Her eyes were green again, and she inclined her chin ever so slightly, confirming that the spell which carried Rodrick’s voice throughout the Duchy had been hers. I knew, in that moment, that it had penetrated even the smallest and most private of rooms, reaching the ears of every citizen and every visitor. She was coming before them in her truest guise, and that was a sacred, terrifying thing. They deserved to be warned.

Some of the people on the docks began weeping. Others put their hands over their mouths or turned their eyes away, unable or unwilling to look at her, to face the judgment they had to be certain was upon them. The Luidaeg offered Rodrick a smile. He trembled and bowed.

He didn’t know her well enough to see the softness in her expression, but I did. She was being gentle. It didn’t look like it—it looked like some dire portent suddenly suspended over an entire people, like the sword of Damocles, only waiting for the final thread to break—and yet I knew she didn’t need any of this pomp or circumstance. She could have risen out of the sea like the avenging hand of Oberon himself. She could have swept this entire Duchy away, leaving only wreckage and legends behind. She was, in her terrifying way, trying to be kind.

She didn’t let go of my hand as she turned and descended the gangplank. The crowds pulled back as we passed, too frightened to stay close, too aware of what offending the sea witch could cost them to flee. When we reached the bottom, Quentin rolled his eyes at us.

“Are all Firstborn overly dramatic, or is that a special gift you have?”

Dean looked horrified. The Luidaeg laughed. I eyed Quentin.

“You won’t call Arden by her name, because her title is more important, but you’ll back-talk the Luidaeg? I just want to be clear on where your sense of self-preservation fails you.”

He shrugged. “The Luidaeg isn’t a reigning monarch. She won’t get mad at me for being disrespectful. Not in that way, at least. She might get mad at me for being disrespectful in other ways, but I’m pretty good about knowing where my boundaries are.”

Dean’s horror deepened, until he looked like he might be sick over the idea of what the Luidaeg was going to do to his boyfriend. I offered him a sympathetic smile.

“You get used to it, honest,” I said.

A murmur ran through the crowd, sounding relieved and worried at the same time. They began to pull away, and this time, they didn’t let fear of offending the Luidaeg stop them. In a matter of moments, they had opened a clear path along the dock, leading deeper into the ramshackle conglomeration of ships and shanties and more permanent structures.

There, at the exact center of the newly-opened path, was a woman. She was about the same height as the Luidaeg, and like the Luidaeg, she looked innocent and ancient at the same time, like a girl barely out of her teens who had nonetheless somehow seen more than any single person should have to see. She was dressed like a pirate from a summer blockbuster, down to the ludicrously large white feather in her battered hat and the cutlass belted at her nipped-in hourglass of a waist. Her shoulders were narrow and her hips were wide and she walked toward us like the rolling ocean, like she had nothing to worry about in the world, like the sea witch came to visit every day.

She was a stunning beauty, in every sense of the word “stunning”: she was gorgeous and terrifying at the same time, with skin the color of a shark’s belly, streaked here and there with lines of tiny scales that glittered with mother-of-pearl rainbows, shimmering and strange. Her hair was long and black and filled with oil-slick echoes, almost matching her scales. It covered her ears and the lines of her neck, making it impossible for me to tell whether she had gills. I couldn’t name her type of fae on sight, and with so many other fae still clustered around us, I couldn’t try to breathe in her heritage; I would have knocked myself on my ass again if I’d even considered it.

She smirked as she drew closer, like she knew what I’d been considering. Then she focused on the Luidaeg. “Gentle winds and kind tides to all who come to my realm with peaceful hearts and honest hands.”

The Luidaeg raised an eyebrow, looking briefly amused. “We’re doing this the formal way, are we?”

The nameless woman looked placidly back at her.

The Luidaeg snorted. “All right, Petey. Clear skies and trackless shores to all who keep their signal fires burning, guiding home sailors from the sea.”

The woman—Captain Pete, I presumed—suddenly grinned and, to my utter shock, swept the Luidaeg into an embrace. Even more shockingly, the Luidaeg returned it.

“It’s been too long,” said Pete.

“I’ve had my reasons,” said the Luidaeg, and pulled back, shooting a smile at the rest of us. I braced myself. She never smiled like that unless she was about to say something upsetting.

“Pete, this is my retinue for the duration of our stay, along with a few assorted nobles and hangers-on. Retinue and otherwise, this is Captain Pete, keeper of the Duchy of Ships, protector of these waters, and my sister. Count Lorden, you may know her better by her given name: Amphitrite, Firstborn daughter of Titania and Oberon, Mother of the Merrow.”

I stared, open-mouthed. Quentin did the same. Tybalt kept his composure better than either of us, offering the Luidaeg’s newly-revealed sister a deep, formal bow.

Marcia squeaked in dismay. I turned to see that Dean had hit the dock in a dead faint.

“Okay,” I said. “Business as usual, then. Good to know.”

SIX

PETE DIDN’T SHARE THE Luidaeg’s feelings about interior decorating, thank Oberon. I wasn’t up for sitting in waist-deep garbage, pretending not to see the roaches. Her quarters were spacious, airy, and meticulously decorated in a mixture of “pirate queen” and “fae noble” that May would probably have admired and taken notes on, before running the hell away, because my Fetch has more sense than to sit down with an unfamiliar Firstborn for tea and cookies.