Somehow, despite us both starting at the same time, Tybalt managed to beat me to the table. He pulled out a chair for me. I shot him an amused look and sat, only to find Ceres watching us approvingly.
“Manners are rare in this day and age, or perhaps only in this kingdom,” she said. “Too few people remember that they are the glue that binds our society together. Please, have some cookies. I have tea, or there is lemonade, if you would prefer.”
“Lemonade would be fantastic, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said. Tea was complicated for me. Lily—a friend of my mother’s who had become a friend of mine, in the fullness of time—had always insisted on preparing tea when I came to visit her. Sometimes she’d even been able to catch glimpses of my future in her tea leaves. I hadn’t really drunk tea since her death. It was too hard, and I wasn’t up for risking that sort of emotional trauma over a beverage.
Tybalt settled next to me and smiled lopsidedly, revealing the tip of one fang. “Tea would be lovely. I’ve had little enough since I came to the Colonies, lo these many years ago.”
“I always forget how many of the older among us came from somewhere else,” said Ceres. She turned to open a cupboard, and withdrew a pitcher of lemonade, condensation beading on its sides. It was a nice—and necessary—trick. The Summerlands aren’t usually good about being wired to the local electrical grid, which means the locals keep their food cold with either magic or old-fashioned icehouses. Both had their advantages.
“Didn’t you?” I asked.
Ceres smiled. “Yes and no. My father linked his skerry to this land long before anyone from Europe decided to ‘discover’ it. The humans who lived here then gave him a wide berth, and he gave them the same. I spent my childhood wandering these forests, as well as my mother’s. I was the third of their children, you see, and when I was a girl, they were still more open to the idea that someday we would grow up and leave them. Luna was the last of us. None of us realized how tightly Father would cleave to her, once all others were gone, or how far she would have to go to get away. I like to think we would have chosen differently, had we known what it would cost our little sister to choose as we did. But that was long ago, and no one knows for sure.”
“Right,” I said. Walther was still nibbling on his purple cookies. I reached out and took one, turning it between my fingers as I tried to figure out what to say next. Of all the ways I had expected my day to go, fleeing from a homicidal ex-Queen and then taking tea with the second Blodynbryd I’d ever met definitely hadn’t been near the top of the list. “So you were born here?”
“Farther down the coast. I moved here because it was good for my roses, and because I could no longer bear the company of my parents. Even once Silences was settled, Father let me be for centuries. He thought he was punishing me by refusing to let me see his face. He forgot that I did not want to.”
Briefly, I wondered whether we could chart the world’s Blodynbryd by looking for the places where Blind Michael had chosen not to go hunting. I dismissed the thought. It wasn’t my job to organize a family reunion for Acacia, and if the other Blodynbryd were living quiet, untroubled lives, I should leave them alone. Instead, I ate a cookie.
Walther was right. They were excellent.
Ceres finally took a seat at the table, placing a glass of lemonade in front of me, and teacups in front of Walther and Tybalt. There were flecks of mint all through the lemonade, deep green and inviting. I watched as she poured tea for the two men, and then for herself. Sugar and cream had already been placed at the center of the table: she took her tea plain, Walther took his with sugar, and Tybalt, who had once chided me for doctoring my coffee, added enough milk that his tea turned a pale shade of brown.
“So, how is it that you know my dear Walther?” asked Ceres.
“He came to live in the Mists a few years ago, and his first stop was at a knowe that belonged to a good friend of mine,” I said. “She died not long afterward. We sort of bonded over the whole situation. It was nice to have someone who could understand just how much I missed her.” Lily had even suggested that Walther and I would be a good match at one point—that my mother would approve. We’d never pursued that, for a lot of reasons, but she’d been right about how well we got along. As friends, nothing more.
“As for me, I know who October knows, or else ask the reason why she’s hiding such charming and diverse people from my eyes,” said Tybalt. He took a sip of his tea, bobbing his head in apparent satisfaction, before asking, “And what of you, milady? This is your home, there can be no doubt, but I would have expected a woman of your breeding and manners to have chosen a new home when the government was overthrown.”
“I would have, believe me, but I have been here a very long time, and my children thrive in this climate.” Ceres glanced to an ottoman on the other side of the room. I followed her gaze, and found a pile of rose goblins the size of kittens all mounded up, sleeping peacefully. Ceres continued, “Transplanting all the bushes would require an army of gardeners. To leave, I would have to leave the little ones, and I can’t quite bring myself to do it.”
“Not all your little ones are rose goblins,” said Walther quietly.
Ceres looked to him and smiled. “No. Not all of them. I was tutor to the children of the Davies and Yates lines—heirs to the throne and born stewards, the lot of them. I expected young Walther here to be a court alchemist by now, brewing love tinctures and potions to clear up the complexion.”
“Love tinctures are unethical, and the mortals make this stuff called ‘Proactiv’ these days. It does a decent job with the pimples,” said Walther, sounding amused. “I teach chemistry to human kids, and I do alchemy for the people who need it. It’s a good life, Aunt Ceres. I like it. Promise.”
“As you say,” said Ceres. She was smiling as she turned her attention back around to me. “The rose goblins would have been difficult, even impossible, to transplant in their current numbers, and I would have needed to find a place where the ground was fertile and the climate was kind. And as Walther reminds, not all my charges were so easy to move. Some still slumber in the castle deeps, waiting for the day they are released from durance vile.”
“Not so vile,” said Tybalt. “Elf-shot does not dictate dreams.”
“No?” Ceres raised an eyebrow, looking at him. “Can we be so sure of that? Many are the methods to force sleep, and I would not be surprised if at least one came complete with unquiet dreams.”
“My niece is an oneiromancer, and she hasn’t said anything about people who’ve been elf-shot having nightmares,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Nightmares are ordinary things that can happen to anyone, and I guess you could make a type of elf-shot that forced them.” It seemed like a form of torture to me—and it was, really. There was no other word that described being trapped in a realm of unending nightmares, with no way of waking up.
“I haven’t forgotten them,” said Walther quietly. “I’ve never forgotten them. I’m keeping my word, Aunt Ceres.”
“Good,” said Ceres.
I looked between the two of them, frowning. “Somebody want to fill the rest of us in? Because I have no idea what’s going on right now.”
“When I left, I promised Aunt Ceres that I’d find the counteragent to elf-shot,” said Walther. “There’s always a counteragent. It’s just a matter of figuring out what it is. I’ve been working for the last hundred years on a way to wake the sleepers up. I’m almost there, I am. If I could just find someone who knew who brewed the original tincture—”
“Eira Rosynhwyr,” I said, without thinking. Walther and Ceres turned to stare at me.
Tybalt took another sip of tea.