Page 6 of Be the Serpent

We were moving into dangerous territory. I shot a helpless look at Arden. She met my eyes with a tiny shake of her head. No, this wasn’t normal. No, Courts weren’t supposed to begin with the presiding monarch having control wrested away from them. No, she wasn’t going to intercede. If the Luidaeg wanted to run this show, the only person in this room even remotely powerful enough to take it from her was Oberon, and as those of us who knew he was here had all seen, his hobby seemed to be standing back and watching as his descendants broke things. He wasn’t going to help.

Someone had to do something, or this was going to get real ugly. “I’d rather not legislate Raysel’s entire existence, if you’re cool with that,” I said. “She was hurt, very badly, and then she was misled. Her actions were still her own.”

“Yes!” said Luna, seizing on the part of that that I least wanted her to be seizing on. “She was damaged, and she was misled! And the one responsible is here, in this room, today!”

So Simon was at Court? It made sense, all things considered, but it probably hadn’t been his best decision ever. Since he wasn’t being charged with violation of the Law and was now technically resident of another Kingdom—Saltmist is a part of the Undersea Kingdom of Leucothea—he wasn’t required to attend.

But the crowd parted, and two men moved through it, both Daoine Sidhe, one redhaired, the other with hair the coppery color of bronze, covered in a light layer of verdigris. That’s not as odd as it might seem; the Daoine Sidhe never met a color they couldn’t incorporate into their ridiculously over-bright aesthetic. Their hands were locked together, and the redhead looked like he was going to be sick.

I shot him a reassuring smile. His expression softened, some of the fear slipping away. Simon still wasn’t used to people being kind to him when they didn’t want something, doubly so when that kindness came from me, the daughter he’d never asked for and really had nothing to do with.

They stopped with the other witnesses, Simon not letting go of Patrick’s hand as he faced Luna. “I’m here, sister,” he said.

“I’m not your sister,” she spat.

“Oh, did you and my brother divorce? I’m so sorry, we don’t always get the news down in the Undersea. Or is that the true purpose of waking dear Rayseline so early? So that she might approve your separation? I highly recommend it. Divorce is quite freeing, really.” He looked past her to Sylvester, still surrounded by the crowd on the other side of the room. “It allows one to pursue so many new opportunities in life, and a change might do you good.”

Sylvester flushed and looked away. Luna narrowed her eyes, watching her brother-in-law with a fierce hatred that was almost enough to startle even me. “Shut your mouth. I asked you to come forth to admit what you did to my daughter.”

“It ranks among my greatest shames, and since my senses have been returned to me, I’ve made no effort to conceal it.” Simon looked, not to Luna but to the Luidaeg, meeting her gaze without flinching. “Many years ago, to save the heart and hope of the man I loved best in all the world, I surrendered myself to your sister, Lady, whose name I dare not speak, lest it attract her attention even now. She was my Firstborn, and I was helpless before her desires. Whatever she asked of me, I would do. And still I fought, long and long, to remain my own man as best I could, until the day my daughter disappeared. That was when she owned me, utterly and without exception. I became her creature, and what she demanded, I did, without hesitation. I never killed for her. The woman to whom I was given did. My hands are not completely clean.”

“But you never broke the Law, failure,” said the Luidaeg. She somehow managed to make that cruel nickname sound almost kind, like she was reminding him that he had failed to fully become a monster. It was a nice trick. Tilting her head very slightly to the side, she asked, “What does this have to do with Rayseline Torquill?”

The Luidaeg can’t lie. A question, by definition, can be misleading, but it can’t be entirely false. I realized she was giving Simon the opportunity to tell his side of the story before the gathered Court, something he might otherwise never have had, since he hadn’t broken the Law; many of these people had been at his wedding to Dianda and Patrick but still considered him a monster.

His breath caught, gaze dipping toward the floor. “Must I?” he asked, in a defeated tone.

“Yes,” said the Luidaeg, much more gently. “You must. You live beneath my waters now, and I am one of the few threats your lady wife can’t fight on your behalf. Now answer me.”

“My . . . my keeper wanted to see my brother’s strength disrupted. He strayed too far from what she desired in the Daoine Sidhe, and he had married the child of one of her greatest enemies. She saw the opportunity to harm a wayward child of her own line and a descendant of Maeve at the same time, and she ordered me to dispose of my brother’s wife, to end her like the beast she presented herself to be. The child as well, if I could take them together without being seen.”

Sylvester gasped, the sound small but somehow huge at the same time, even beyond what the spell should have been able to amplify. Luna didn’t even blink.

Simon continued: “She intended their deaths, that was clear, but as she failed to directly and explicitly order them . . . I had little ability to twist my keeper’s orders, but I did what I could. Beasts, when disposed of, must be kept in cages, and that was what she had technically ordered me to do. I began spinning a spell to hold my target in a space as good as death. My keeper always liked it when I chose to be cruel for her. I thought . . . ” He paused, throat working as he swallowed. “I thought she would be proud of me for causing so much pain.”

The grief in his voice was raw and unmistakable. Luna’s expression didn’t soften. Sylvester looked away.

Simon kept talking. “I still had free passage of my then-wife’s land, and when next Luna stepped foot there, I was waiting. I would have preferred she not have the child in her company, but she did, and as Oleander was with me, if I stole away the woman and spared the girl, she would have killed her for the amusement of it. So I had to take them both.”

This was a part of the story I hadn’t heard before. I blinked, listening attentively.

“She and her daughter were picking wildflowers,” he said. “They wandered from the border of my brother’s land onto the edge of Amandine’s, and we were waiting for them. We hadn’t done anything to lure them. We couldn’t. Sylvester would have known in an instant if I tried anything, and I was not prepared to confront my brother. So we saw our chance, and grabbed them when they were vulnerable, and swept them away. I used Luna’s blood to open a channel to the Rose Road, and we walked it to the domain of Blind Michael, who had known Oleander once of old.”

That was news to me. Had she been one of his children? Had she fallen into that dark and corrupted forest and escaped it somehow, or had she come to him as a fellow monster, if a lesser one? The room was rapt, watching him, and Simon deflated slightly under the collective weight of the Court’s gaze.

“He granted us a vial of his blood, laughing at the request. I doubt he would have laughed if he’d known who we ultimately served, but in the moment, he seemed to find the idea of locking his runaway daughter in a prison he played a part in creating more than amusing enough. He asked . . . ” He stopped then, and swallowed. “He asked for his granddaughter, in compensation for the child he had lost. He said she would be happy in his halls, and I knew he lied, and so I lied in turn, and said that the girl’s imprisonment had been a part of our agreement with my mistress.”

So it could have been worse. Raysel could have grown up in Blind Michael’s hands. “Wait,” I blurted. “Acacia didn’t know Luna had a daughter.”

“We spoke to the monster, not the matron,” said Simon, sounding almost relieved to be talking about something other than his own misdeeds. “Oleander felt it best to avoid her eye, for fear of tipping off a war between the Firstborn, with us at the center.”

“Oh.” It made sense. I just didn’t like it.

“So we took the monster’s blood and followed the Rose Road into the dark, where I used what he had given us and the spell I had prepared together to weave a pocket realm capable of sustaining both itself and the lives of those inside it,” Simon continued. “Time would pass there. The realm would provide basic sustenance. But there would be no light, no variance, nothing to distract or allow for any form of escape. I believed my mistress would free them in short order, when she had wrung the concessions she desired from my brother. And in honesty, I had saved their lives. I was in her thrall. She didn’t leave me with much capacity to care.”

He was looking at the floor by this point, talking without pause or any real inflection. He sounded like a man defeated.

“My brother engaged my wife’s second daughter, who was legally my own but wanted none of me, and knew nothing of what I might be to her, to find his missing family. He tasked her to track me, and my mistress again saw an opportunity. She commanded us to remove October from the situation. Those were her exact words. ‘The girl troubles me. Remove her.’ ”