Page 35 of Be the Serpent

I sighed heavily. “To tell the Queen we have a murderer in our midst. Again.”

The fun never stops, even if sometimes, the dancing does.

NINE

Arden was back in the receiving room, although the Court had cleared out. It was just her and Nolan, her on her throne with her laptop balanced on her thighs and her legs curled up to brace her heels against the arm, him sitting on the floor, leaning up against the spot where the interior designer would probably have expected her feet to go. Not even Madden was in evidence; the royal siblings were, for once, entirely alone.

Arden looked up when we slipped into the room, concern writ broadly across her face. “Is Stacy all right?” she asked, half-closing the screen of her computer.

“No,” I said. “How could she be? Her daughter just died.”

“You’re right. That was a terrible question.”

The knowe had provided a pitcher of hot water and several soft facecloths on a small table near the door. I grabbed one, using it to wipe the foxglove out of my eyes, gesturing for Simon and Quentin to do the same before I turned my attention back to Arden.

“If you have any more lousy questions, ask them now,” I suggested. “I can take it, and that way you’re not asking Stacy.”

Arden pursed her lips and exchanged a glance with her brother. “How are you?” she asked.

I laughed unsteadily. “Well, I have to take the girl who tried to murder my daughter home and get her settled in my guest room, and then I have to find out whether my best friend since childhood needs me to help her organize her own child’s funeral. I assume you’ve already given Cassie whatever time off she’s going to need?”

“I told her she was relieved of her duties until such time as she felt capable of taking them on again, and she got that look she gets when the air’s trying to tell her something and she doesn’t want to listen, and told me it wasn’t going to take as long as I thought it would, unless it was going to take all the time there was left in the world.” Arden shook her head. “I wish we hadn’t lost so many of the oracles. I feel like Cassandra would be a lot easier to understand if she’d been able to train under another Seer.”

“And if she’d been able to openly admit to having the gift,” I said. I didn’t need to explain to Arden why Cassandra being a changeling Seer meant she was in even more danger of abduction and compelled service than a pureblood would have been. Any noble who wanted to command her loyalty could just threaten her family, without concern that they’d be breaking the Law if they made good on their threats.

That horrifying thought led me to a question I hadn’t wanted to consider, much less ask: “Has anyone been asking about her recently? Or Karen?”

Cass’s talents were still relatively unknown outside Arden’s circle of close friends and advisors. Quentin and Simon both knew, as did Nolan; if they hadn’t, I had all faith Arden would have waited until she got me alone before saying anything. She’s careful with her people. Careful enough not to make that sort of a mistake. I guess having your parents assassinated and your brother elf-shot for decades teaches the value of discretion.

Karen, on the other hand, had appeared at the convocation of Western nobles as the Luidaeg’s apprentice, and her gifts had been well established to the quorum before the dust had settled. Everyone who cared to know knew there was an oneiromancer in the Mists. She was publicly under the Luidaeg’s protection, and most people wouldn’t be willing to risk offending the sea witch even to get themselves a Seer . . . but did the nobility of the inland Kingdoms understand the threat the Luidaeg represented? Or the threat she could represent if she ever decided to stop dealing with the descendants of her siblings like we were equals and unleash the full potential of an elder Firstborn?

Proximity to the ocean doesn’t define her power. It just makes her happy. There’s water everywhere, and they used to call her the Lady of the Lake. If someone had hurt Jessica to get to Karen, the Luidaeg was going to make them sorry, and as a Firstborn, she was functionally above the Law. Maybe she could be charged with a violation and maybe she couldn’t, but unless her father wanted to get involved, she wasn’t going to be punished for anything she did.

“Not in my presence,” said Arden. “People know Karen can see the future in dreams, but I don’t think they realize how much she sees, and it’s not like she usually volunteers the information. I think she’s less of a Seer and more of a messenger in some ways.”

That fit with what I knew of Karen’s capabilities. She could enter the dreams of anyone sleeping—including the increasingly rarer victims of elf-shot, the ones who, like Raysel, had been left asleep even after the cure became available. So while she could see the future, she only seemed to bother when it was immediately important to someone she cared about, or when it impacted her directly—like, say, someone killing her baby sister. She wasn’t a useful all-purpose Seer. She was useful in other ways, and it was absolutely believable that someone might attack her family to get to her, which was part of why the Luidaeg had been so public about staking her claim after Karen’s abilities became more widely known. Mess with the oneiromancer, mess with the sea witch.

“So this probably wasn’t an attack on her family to get to her,” I said. “Simon, I know your old employer wasn’t big on Seers.”

“That’s a mild expression of her hatred of them,” he said. “According to her, oracles betray Faerie with every breath, because when they lay down a prophecy, they strip away the freedom of anyone who hears it. I always found her fondness for Oleander mystifying, given that the Peri Oleander was descended from carry some small gift for prophecy themselves.”

“Yeah, got that firsthand.” Oleander had spouted a bunch of prophetic nonsense at me before she died, and my life being what it is, I was sure it was all going to matter eventually. I pushed that thought aside, watching him. I had to ask. “Did she tell you why she did what she did to the Roane?”

“Tell me? Sweet girl, she gloated about it. Any time she could turn the conversation’s tide to her past crimes, she did, and gleefully. Taking the Roane from her sister was a point of very greatest pride to her. She did what she did to take the prophets from the sea and the children from their mother’s arms, and near as ever I could tell, those reasons were equal in her eyes. She was nothing if not efficient.” He shook his head. “But if your question is whether she wanted the oracles destroyed, the answer is yes. She very much did. She also claimed responsibility for the reduced numbers among the Lamia, for the isolation of the Peri, and for orchestrating the destruction of the Ysengrimus.”

“The who?”

“Exactly.” He shook his head a second time, like a horse trying to dislodge a fly. “The fact that you smelled roses concerns me—but there was no trace of snow, and she’s never been able to conceal the winter’s touch upon her workings. What’s more, she slumbers still.”

“Are we sure?”

“I am.” He looked at me, unblinking. “If she were awake, she would have come for me. I have stronger claims on me than I did when first she took me, but I don’t know that they would be strong enough to stop her. All the ocean might not be enough to stop her. And if she comes for me again, if she threatens my family again, I’ll go with her willingly rather than risk harm coming to them. There’s little enough I can give in payment for the grace they’ve given me. Not being placed into harm’s way by my presence may be the whole of what I have to offer.”

“Wow,” said Quentin, before I could say anything. We both turned to look at him. “Can I be there when you tell Dianda that? Because I really want to watch her beat your ass. And I know you haven’t told her yet, because if you had, there’s no way you’d be walking around under your own power.”

“My lady wife would never strike a partner in anger,” said Simon, sounding less horrified than offended on her behalf.

“No, she wouldn’t,” said Quentin. “Dean’s had to relearn a lot of rules about when you should and shouldn’t hit people since he moved to the land; they’re way fonder of punching in the Undersea. But he’s never hit me, not once, and he says that’s not a thing they do down there. If Dianda hits you, it’s because you’ve earned it by being an asshole, not because you’re a misbehaving husband.”