Page 63 of Be the Serpent

“No. I just thought you might like to know where the spotted dogs got their name.”

I smiled at him, a little sideways. “Thank you for being a giant nerd.”

“And thank you for being willing to recognize that nerdhood is more than merely skin-deep,” he said, smiling back.

Thanks are generally verboten in Faerie, to the point where we’ll dance around gratitude like it’s a venomous snake and we’re afraid of being bitten. This is partially because thanking someone implies a debt—and in Faerie, it’s not as easy to discharge a debt as just saying “It was nothing” or “Don’t worry about it.” And it’s partially because we’re all ill-mannered assholes playing at civility. Doesn’t really matter, though, since thanks are technically allowed between immediate family members. Spouses or long-time lovers, children, parents, and siblings.

Dean thanked me for bringing him a sandwich about a week ago, and I damn near dropped the plate. Getting two unexpected stepbrothers as an adult is second in strangeness only to the fact that the elder of those two stepbrothers was already dating my squire when our parents got hitched, and while he and Quentin are eventually going to need to break up, neither of them is anticipating doing it any time soon.

Even if they viewed Quentin’s majority and subsequent return to Toronto as a hard stop, that still gave them nine years to spend together. That was longer than any of my early relationships had managed to last.

Thanking Tybalt still felt weird and a little subversive, and from the look he was giving me, he felt the same way. I reached over, letting him take my hand, and we walked that way down the remainder of the hallway—sorry, loggia.

It ended in a wide, trellis-bounded veranda, mainly lit by large glowing beehives that buzzed with pixies coming and going in an endless chiming of wings. Small round café-style tables filled the area, each of them seating four people, save for a spot near the front where someone had pulled two of the tables together to form a space big enough for Mitch, all four Brown children, and the Luidaeg. Mitch didn’t look thrilled to be eating with the sea witch. The Luidaeg didn’t look like she cared whether or not he was happy. She was talking quietly to Karen, her arm around the girl’s shoulders, her posture curved to comfort.

Servers moved between the tables, refreshing drinks and family-style platters of what looked like a reasonably straightforward seafood-focused menu.

Simon was the member of my party nearest to the entrance, sharing a table with Patrick, Dean, and an anxious-looking Rayseline, who seemed incapable of looking at Dean directly. He was taking a malicious glee in this, and kept nudging her and pointing to things on the other side of the table, clearly asking her to pass them.

I stepped up behind him. “Can we not break my cousin?” I asked, in as academic a tone as I could manage. “It’s only that I just got her, and I want to wait at least a week before I void the warranty.”

“Toby.” Dean turned to face me, everyone else at the table doing much the same. “Is everything okay? The Queen wouldn’t tell us where you’d gone, just that it was hero business, and she took Quentin to her table with her, so we can’t even grill him for details.”

“Interesting that you’d target Quentin, since Simon was there when I left,” I said, gleefully ignoring the frantic “stop” gestures Simon was making. He glared at me. I smiled in response. “No, everything is not okay, but I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say right now, or how much it would be smart to say.”

“Since when have you been overly concerned with what is or is not a smart thing to say?” asked Patrick, but from the sidelong look he was giving Simon, I could take a guess at how much had been omitted when he was explaining things to his husband.

“I need to go talk to the Queen, but Raysel, are you okay?” I looked at her closely. “Are they being nice to you?”

“Queen Windermere made my parents leave when they refused to stop trying to convince me to go with them,” she said, looking down at the table. “She says it would be an additional insult for me to go to Shadowed Hills after she’s said that I’m not allowed.”

“It would be,” I said. “I’m sorry if this isn’t actually what you wanted when you asked me to take you for a year’s service.” There was also the possibility that she had forgotten doing that in the first place, since she’d been asleep at the time. Dreams are weird.

Raysel looked up sharply, golden eyes wide with alarm. “You’re not going to release me, are you?” she demanded. Her voice was loud enough that several people at neighboring tables turned to look in our direction. So much for making a quiet entrance. “You promised.”

“I did,” I agreed. “I promised when you were elf-shot, asleep, and still trying to adjust to your new normal, and then there wasn’t any way to discuss it with you between waking you up and needing to make the claim of offense. So if you’ve changed your mind, you only need to say.”

“I haven’t,” she said firmly. “I didn’t want to go with them, and then, the way Mom kept looking at me, it was like I was a total stranger, and not just a Daoine Sidhe. I can’t . . . I can’t do that. I can’t spend every night with someone who wants me to be somebody I don’t know how to be.”

“I understand better than I wish I did,” I said. “No one’s going to make you go to Shadowed Hills. If we don’t finish dealing with the current situation soon, I’ll ask Quentin and May to take you home. We have a room all ready for you.”

Raysel looked at me warily, as if she was trying to find the falsehood in my words. When she didn’t find it, mostly because it wasn’t there, she relaxed slightly, looking so much like a dog that had been beaten every day for years that it made me want to put my current crisis on hold, walk over to Shadowed Hills, and slap Luna myself.

“Really?” she asked, voice small.

“Really,” I assured her. “Quentin says he’s not going to let you have the Wi-Fi password until you’ve been there for three days without stabbing anyone, but since you haven’t had time to get addicted to phone games yet, that should be fine.”

“I . . . ” She sagged. “Good. Three days is good.”

I wasn’t sure how to extricate myself from the conversation. Fortunately, I didn’t have to be. The smell of blackberry flowers and redwood sap rose behind me a beat before a hand landed on my shoulder and Arden’s voice said, in my ear, “Great, you’re back. Now you can report to your Queen. Oh, and kitty, you can come too.”

SIXTEEN

Arden pulled me through the portal she had created, holding it open long enough for Tybalt to step through after us, looking entirely unruffled by this disruption. We were back in the empty receiving room. Oberon’s throne was still there, although the leaves were brown and curling around the edges. It wasn’t going to last forever. The damage to the floor was probably going to be another story.

Another portal flickered into being a moment after Arden’s closed, and Nolan stepped through with a platter of finger sandwiches in his hand and Cassandra close behind him.

“She insisted,” he said, looking to Arden. “I told her she should be staying with her family, and she reminded me, with inappropriate vigor, that as she is the chatelaine and this business impacts the knowe, she has every right to attend upon you if she so desires.”