Page 27 of The Unkindest Tide

ALL THE MEMBERS of our party—save Gillian, who was still off with the Selkies—had been assigned quarters carved from the belly of the same cargo ship, with individual apartments made from sections of hull. They radiated out from the tiny courtyard that had once been the ship’s upper deck, making it impossible for any of us to sneak away without the others knowing. I found that oddly comforting. This was a big, unfamiliar place, and while I was statistically the most likely to wind up covered in blood, I liked to have a sense of where they were.

Tybalt and I had taken the apartment closest to the gate on the left-hand side of the entrance, with the Luidaeg taking the apartment on the right-hand side. Quentin was next to me and Tybalt; Dean and Marcia were next to the Luidaeg; Poppy and Cassandra were on the other side of them, and Nolan had an apartment entirely to himself. Small tables made from a ship too damaged to be repurposed as housing dotted the courtyard, accompanied by mismatched chairs and lovingly crafted planters. Each played host to an assortment of plants, ranging from kitchen herbs to lush tomatoes to patches of strawberries the color of candied violets that glowed with their own strange inner light.

The Luidaeg saw me eyeing the strawberries and said, “Those found their roots first in Emain Ablach, which was my sister’s country before our father decided we had to be exiled to the Summerlands. They’re not like goblin fruit. They won’t hurt you. But they do make excellent jam. Breakfast here is going to be a treat.”

“See, you say ‘my sister,’ and I can’t help thinking of Evening,” I said.

The Luidaeg shook her head. “Here, I’ll mostly be referring to Amphitrite. You can trust her, for the most part.”

“For the most part?”

“There’s no one in this world you can trust all the time. Not even the people you love, not even the people who love you.” The Luidaeg looked briefly, terribly tired. This had to be so hard on her. She had moved among the Selkies for centuries, pretending to be their loving, uncomplicated Cousin Annie, a woman whose ancestry contained some life-extending fae heritage but whose shoulders would never be draped in a Selkie’s skin. They had loved her and pitied her and let her into their homes, and now she was betraying them. She had never been the woman they believed her to be.

What we were going to do would bring the Roane back to Faerie’s oceans, and it was difficult not to see that as a good thing. Evening had wanted them destroyed, and Evening played a long, brutal game. Maybe she’d been trying to hurt her sister; maybe she’d been doing something more complicated. The Roane could see the future, after all. By arranging their destruction, she had closed the eyes of prophecy, and those eyes had been open for a reason.

I don’t like prophecy. I don’t like anything that smacks too much of destiny, of needing to follow someone else’s template for what’s to come. But it turns out I like Evening even less.

And despite all that . . . bringing back the Roane wasn’t going to bring back the Luidaeg’s children. These new Roane would still be the people they had been when Faerie was something they could set aside and walk away from. They would have their own families and their own histories, and they wouldn’t be hers, not really. Maybe in a generation or two, she could have a relationship with them. But it wasn’t going to happen right away, and it wasn’t going to happen on this floating duchy.

Her elbow caught me in the ribs, knocking me out of my woolgathering. I turned to blink at her. She looked impassively back. Her eyes were green again, the color of sunlight in the shallows.

“You were getting ready to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I could see it. Don’t. I made this bed for myself, a long damn time ago. If there’s anyone you should feel sorry for, it’s the second sons and the dutiful daughters who always thought their day would come, and are about to find out they’ll never have the waters after all. They’re who I’m worried about.”

“Worried how?” I asked carefully.

“I bet we find some bodies floating under the dock before sunrise, no matter what promises I make to my sister.” Her reply was calm, matter-of-fact: she’d had plenty of time to think about it. “The Law has always been a little shaky when it comes to the Selkies because a Selkie without a skin is just a human. The only way to know when one of them was killed, and whether they were wearing their skin when it happened, is to ask the night-haunts. Most reasonable people don’t consider that an option.”

My ears and cheeks grew hot. “I don’t talk to the night-haunts that often.”

“You talk to them often enough that one of them chose to give up her wings and move in with you; I’d call that pretty strong evidence that you have no sense of self-preservation.”

I wrinkled my nose but said nothing.

Faerie has wondered for millennia where Fetches come from, how they’re called, and why they’re so rare. They supposedly appear for heroes and great rulers, but I’ve been through the records at the Library of Stars, and it seems like Fetches just sort of happen, usually around people who bleed a lot—which, yes, is a group that’s going to include heroes and people who ride the assassination attempt express. Turns out, Fetches are what happens when a night-haunt ingests the blood of the living. Just a little gift from Oberon, who wanted them to stick to devouring the dead. When they feed from the living, they become perfect mirrors of those people, with their faces and their memories and a direct tie to their lives. The sort of person whose blood is likely to wind up in front of the night-haunts is also the sort of person who’s likely to die in the near future, and thus the connection between Fetches and death is reinforced, until seeing someone with your own face is almost as good as an executioner’s ax.

May has been living with me for several years now. It turns out that while I may be pretty good at dying, I’m equally lousy at staying dead.

“People will die tonight because of what we’ve come here to do,” said the Luidaeg implacably. “More people will die tomorrow, when the sun is in the sky and there aren’t any witnesses around. I wish I could say I had a plan in place to stop it, but honestly, I don’t think there is one. I think this is the sort of thing that has to play out in its own way, in its own time, because I waited too long for the bargain to come due.”

“Why—” I began, and stopped when she fixed me with a cold eye.

“A hope chest couldn’t do what I need you to do, and your mother wouldn’t do what I need you to do, and she made sure your sister wouldn’t do it either, because she didn’t like the idea of destiny,” she said. “She thought if she made the future unknowable, she could keep it from happening. She didn’t understand.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I know, and this isn’t when I’m going to tell you, so I guess we’re both going to be unhappy for a while yet.”

I opened my mouth to argue. A door slammed, and I turned instead, watching Marcia emerge into the courtyard. She grinned when she saw me, walking over with only a quick nod for the Luidaeg.

“So how much are we going to pretend my liege isn’t sleeping in your squire’s room, and how much are we going to ask them to stay focused?” she asked.

“Okay, first, I don’t need to know that, and second, they’re adults. They can do whatever they like, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the reason that we’re here.” I glanced at the Luidaeg. “It’s not going to interfere, is it?”

“Sex complicates things, but no, it’s not going to interfere,” she said dryly. “The only people who need to be here are you, me, and the Selkies. Everyone else is a politically necessary extra, or an annoying additional complication.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And where are you filing Tybalt?”

“I think you know the answer to that.” She shook her head. “Amy’s on the loose, and Dad only knows what she thinks she’s doing when she messes with you. I know she was trying to protect you once, but these days it feels like she’s trying to punish you for refusing to be protected. I wouldn’t leave my lover behind where she could get to him if I were you. But that doesn’t make him necessary to what we’re going to do, or even relevant. When the time comes, you and I will stand alone.”