Fine. If someone had to start the cascade, it might as well be us. I marched to the table closest to the dais, bowed deeply to King Rhys, and plopped my butt into the first open chair I saw, which just so happened to put me where I could keep an eye on our host and his companion. Smirking, Tybalt settled on my right, while Quentin took the seat to my left. King Rhys raised an eyebrow as he watched me sit. I smiled sweetly back at him, and waited to see what would happen next.
I didn’t have to wait long. Rhys raised a hand in a seemingly casual gesture, and one of his servants all but materialized next to him, stepping out of the shadows behind the throne so quickly that if I hadn’t known better, I would have taken the girl for one of the Cait Sidhe. King Rhys murmured something to her, glancing meaningfully to me. The serving girl nodded, bobbing a curtsy at the same time, and stepped down from the dais.
I didn’t say anything as she approached, but I sat up a little straighter, watching her approach. For what, I wasn’t sure, but when she finally reached me and spoke—in the small, trembling voice of a child who had been beaten too many times to ever truly believe in the absence of pain—I knew that I wasn’t ready.
“The King requests the pleasure of your company at his table.”
Oh, oak and ash. I glanced to Tybalt and Quentin. Both of them looked back at me, their expressions as close to blank as they could get them. If I didn’t know them as well as I did, I would have missed the tightness around Quentin’s lip and the fractional narrowing of Tybalt’s pupils. They knew this was a trap, even if none of us quite knew what sort of trap. And they knew, just as well as I did, that there was no way for me to avoid it.
“I would be delighted,” I said solemnly, and rose, gathering my skirt in both hands to keep my fingers from shaking. The servant girl smiled in relief before turning to escort me to the dais.
We were almost there when I realized the true nature of the trap. I couldn’t refuse to eat while I was in the King’s presence; it would be a grave insult to his hospitality, and the sort of thing that was just rude enough to be unforgiveable. At the same time, I couldn’t season my own food while I was sitting at the King’s table. It would be an insult to the King’s kitchens, and while that wasn’t quite as bad as insulting his hospitality, it sure as hell wasn’t good. I was stuck.
Walther can make a counteragent, I thought, and stepped up onto the dais, where King Rhys’ smile was waiting to greet me.
“Hello, Sir Daye,” he said. “I thought we could use this opportunity to talk—in full sight of your friends, naturally, since I doubt they would trust me to speak with you alone. I wanted to apologize again for the error involving your friend. I understand now that she wasn’t acting against the throne, but these are dangerous times.”
“Yes,” I agreed, as neutrally as I could manage. “Dangerous times, indeed.” I sank into the seat at the end of the table, my mind racing as I tried to calculate doses and safe margins. Some potions were so potent that a single drop could be enough—like goblin fruit, where the smallest taste was enough to addict a changeling. Others required a higher dose. If I ate only sparingly, and restricted myself to things that I saw Rhys and the former Queen putting in their mouths, I might be okay.
“You look nervous, October.” The former Queen leaned forward to smile at me around the King of Silences, her eyes narrowing in a way that was anything but friendly. “Is there something you had wanted to say to the King, perhaps? It’s never good to keep secrets from royalty. They always find out, in the end.”
“Funny, that’s almost exactly what High King Sollys said when we presented Queen Windermere before him,” I said mildly. “He was really surprised to learn that King Gilad had had children before he died, and that we had plenty of proof those children existed. I guess he figured someone should have told him.”
The former Queen’s eyes narrowed further. “I am a guest in these halls.”
“Yes, and I’m a diplomat—which I’m sure you can agree is pretty ridiculous, since I’m about as diplomatic as a kick to the face, so hey. We’re all learning how to do new things.” I looked to King Rhys. “Of course I’m nervous, Your Majesty. This is a Kingdom of alchemists, and I’ve left my personal alchemist in our rooms to avoid offending you, after the little dustup we had earlier today. I didn’t want him getting arrested again. I’m sure you understand.”
“I do, indeed,” said Rhys. “It seems you are lacking in certain defenses that one might have expected you to bring to such a formal and important meal.”
“If you mean I can’t counter anything you decide to put into my food, you’re right.” I was tired. I was angry. I was done candy-coating things for this man, who seemed more amused by my attempts to be diplomatic than anything else. “I’m starving, and I’m afraid to eat.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” he said. “It speaks poorly to my hospitality, and I’ll not have your mistress, however illegitimate her claims to my lady’s throne, say that we treated you poorly. May I assume your alchemist has provided you with a counter to anything I might have put in your meal?”
“You can assume,” I said cagily.
“Excellent. In that case please, feel free to use it however you like. Coat your cutlery in whatever powder or potion you have with you, and I will pledge, on my honor, not to slip anything into your meal that would be too powerful for a little country alchemist to overcome. I want to you to come around to my way of thinking fairly, Sir Daye, and not through the application of magics.”
I blinked at him. I’d been expecting a lot of reactions to my sudden bluntness, but “okay, I promise not to drug you” hadn’t been on the list. “I . . . see,” I said finally.
Rhys looked at me with something that might have been pity. “You don’t. You’re willfully blind, because you do not like my lady, and because you are accustomed to a Kingdom where things are done differently. You judge me by the standards of something I have never been. I’m sure you think me a despot, an uncaring tyrant who refuses to let his people have a voice of their own. You aren’t wrong. But you should also see me as a caring patriarch, someone who understands that he is in a delicate position. The old rulers, the ones who held this Kingdom before they were legitimately overthrown in a just war, they ruled carelessly. Few pureblood children were born, because they made no effort to keep the bloodlines clean. They allowed cavorting between fae of different races, ignoring what this would mean for the powers and stability of the children born to such unions. And changelings! They allowed their mortal-born children to aspire to places far beyond their station—no offense meant, of course, Sir Daye. Your case is somewhat different from the norm.”
“Yeah, I guess Mom being Firstborn buys me a little bit of leniency,” I said.
Rhys snapped his fingers. Servants began to approach the table, dishing delicacies onto his plate before serving me from the same dishes. The false Queen got a different assortment, but Rhys was apparently planning to keep his word to me: whatever I ate, he was also eating. I was still going to douse every bite with Walther’s counterpotion. There’s safe, and then there’s sorry. I prefer it when the two don’t meet.
“You have been allowed to form some inaccurate ideas about the makeup of our world,” said Rhys. “My lady has always been generous to a fault when dealing with those who are of less power and importance than she is, and so she may have allowed you to dream above your station out of kindness, not malice. I can’t say either way. But you need to understand that changelings are, by nature, transitory; they are here for the blink of an eye and no longer, and their wishes and desires cannot be allowed to shift Faerie away from its true course. Humanity is a disease. It thinks in hot, fast moments—too hot and too fast for Faerie, which requires cool languor to thrive. We can’t make decisions based on an uncertain future. We make them based on a present that will never end.”