A moment passed, and then Walther asked, slowly, “What do you mean?”
“Eira Rosynhwyr is the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn, and she was the first person to make elf-shot. The Luidaeg said so.” She hadn’t mentioned Eira—better known as “Evening”—by name. I’d been forced to put the pieces together myself, a little bit at a time, due to the geas the Luidaeg was laboring under. She couldn’t tell lies, but there were things she couldn’t say out loud. “She’s the reason the stuff’s fatal to changelings. According to the Luidaeg, it didn’t have to be. Eira’s just a bitch.”
“You . . . I . . .” Walther stopped. Then he started to laugh, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Of course you know who created elf-shot. Of course. And why would you have told me? It’s not like I ever asked.”
“You didn’t,” I said.
“I don’t suppose the Luidaeg also told you what Eira’s magic consisted of, did she? What the elements of it were?”
It had taken me years to realize that most people in Faerie weren’t as sensitive to the distinct elements of a person’s magic as I was. Knowing someone’s magic was part and parcel of knowing their bloodlines, which made it as easy as breathing for me. “She didn’t, but I’ve met the woman. Her magic smelled of roses and snow.”
“What kind of roses?” Walther leaned forward, expression eager.
“Red ones,” I said. “Not wild roses—cultivated ones, although they don’t smell like the kind of hothouse roses you can get today. It’s like they’re an early kind of garden rose? Walled gardens. Ones where people could breed and breed their flowers, and not worry about how they would thrive in the outside world.” I stopped, unsure how much further I could go—and how much further I would want to.
Tybalt had put down his tea and was looking at me, eyebrows raised. “I’d always wondered how it was that you could insist that everyone’s magic was so different, when you said the same words over and over again. Roses and pine trees and all the flowers of the forest. But if you know them that intimately, then there really is no wonder.”
“I don’t know them all that intimately,” I protested. “I have to think about it to start getting details like that.” Tasting Evening’s blood had probably also helped, but I didn’t need to bring that up. It wasn’t something I was proud of.
“Still, that should be more than sufficient detail to let me find the roses in question,” said Ceres. I gave her a blank look, and she smiled. “All the world’s roses are brought to Portland. Didn’t you know? We have a thing the mortals call a ‘test garden,’ where the new cultivars are coaxed to open for the sun and show their secrets clearly as a morning breeze. They grow the new, but they treasure also the old—and there are roses none of them can explain, roses that seem to have arisen naturally around the corners of their carefully planned plots, their delicately designed gardens. My siblings and I, we have played at curators in a great museum, coaxing long-past roses from our bodies and planting them where they have the chance to flourish.”
It took me a moment to realize what she was saying. Finally, I ventured, “So you’re saying my old red rose might be growing somewhere in the gardens?”
“I would stake my eye on it.”
The phrase was unnerving, and not just because of who her father was. Some of the old pureblood oaths involved staking an eye, a hand, even a heart—and when the oaths were broken, it was generally expected that the person who made them would actually give up those body parts. There’s a reason swearing on the physical has fallen out of favor, replaced by the cleaner, safer swearing on the abstract. “Okay,” I said. “What good would that do us?”
“If Ceres can find the right kind of rose—the kind of rose you say this Eira woman’s magic smelled like—then I can use that, and I can figure out the counterformula for elf-shot.” Walther put down his last cookie, leaning forward. There was an unfamiliar intensity in his eyes. “I can do it. I can wake them up.”
I blinked before looking to Tybalt, only to find that he was blinking, too, looking as nonplussed as I was. Elf-shot was . . . elf-shot wasn’t supposed to be forever. It was the holding pattern of the fae world, the injury that took enemies out of the fight for a long time without actually breaking the Law and killing them. It wasn’t something that could be undone by one alchemist with access to the proper rose garden. That wasn’t possible.
But then, when has Faerie ever settled for the possible? “I’ll do my best to make sure you have the right rose, but I can’t promise anything,” I said, looking back to Walther. “This isn’t something I’ve done before.”
“Narrow it down to ten and I can take it from there,” he said. “I—”
The cottage door slammed open, and Marlis stormed into the room, half-drawing her sword. “Get away from my aunt!” she shouted.
Well, hell. And things had been going so well.
TWELVE
“MARLIS, DEAR HEART, PLEASE don’t threaten my guests: it’s neither proper nor polite, and I raised you better than that,” said Ceres. She picked up her tea and took a dainty sip, as if to emphasize how calm she was. She wasn’t being attacked: she was having some people over for tea. I admired her serenity, even as I tried to decide whether she’d be pissed off if I hit Marlis with a teapot. I didn’t have any better weapons at hand, except for Tybalt, and I didn’t want to kill the girl.
“They shouldn’t be here,” snarled Marlis, glaring daggers at the rest of us. “They’re here on the King’s sufferance, and that sufferance does not extend to troubling you!”
“How’d you know we were here, Marley?” asked Walther, reaching for another lavender cookie. The pink ones and the yellow ones were still relatively untouched, but he’d eaten nearly a dozen of the purple cookies. “All the rose goblins are either here with us, or they’re off telling the King all about how Ceres is leading us astray and shouldn’t be interrupted. You shouldn’t have been able to find us.”
Marlis’ head snapped around, eyes narrowing as she focused on him. “My name is Marlis,” she spat. “As for King Rhys, he is preoccupied with the preparations for war, and as he had no need for me, he generously allowed me to come and see my old nursemaid. Now rise, and answer for your trespasses!”
“No,” said Walther mildly. “Eat a cookie. We saved the saffron ones for you. I know those were always your favorite. Here.” He reached for the tray of yellow cookies. It was only because I was so close to him that I saw the light dusting of powder fall from his hand to mingle with the thin layer of powdered sugar atop the cookies as he picked up the tray and held it out toward his sister. He was using the countercharm.
Ceres was as close to him as I was: she must have known what he was doing. She didn’t say anything about the powder. She just took another sip of her tea and said, “You’re too tense, my darling. Have a cookie. Stop threatening my guests, who are here by my invitation, and not for any other reasons.”
Marlis hesitated. At least she took her hand off the hilt of her sword. I appreciated that.
But Ceres wasn’t done. “If you do not have a cookie, I’ll have to assume that you don’t respect my hospitality, and remember that slight when next you seek solace in my chambers. I love you, Marlis, but you’re not the girl I raised. You haven’t been since that outland King came and took your open eyes away.”
“I don’t believe this,” muttered Marlis. She strode across the room and snatched two cookies from the tray—one in each hand. Taking a large bite of the first, she chewed with an exaggerated motion meant purely to make sure we all knew that she was eating the cookie. Ceres watched without comment.
Marlis swallowed.
“See? You always feel better when you have a cookie.” Walther picked up one of the purple cookies. Following his lead, I snagged a pink one and took a bite. Candied rose. Naturally.