“How could you?” demanded Kabos. He was close enough that I could see the silver specks in his eyes, like someone had attacked him with a bucket of glitter.
The image was surreal enough to let me shake off the stillness that had fallen over me, and say, “I didn’t do anything. I found the body. That’s all. You’ve never even met me. How is it that you’re first in line to accuse me?”
“We drew numbers back in the gallery,” said Tybalt mildly, earning himself a poisonous look from Verona and a confused blink from Kabos.
The distraction only lasted for a moment. Kabos’ gaze swung back to me as he said, “You’re a changeling. Your presence here is an honor you should be laboring with every instant to earn, to prove that you deserve the things you’ve been given. Things that might have been better given to someone more deserving—someone who would truly appreciate them.”
I blinked slowly, trying to reconcile the corpse on the floor with the sudden lecture about my place in the political structure of Faerie. I couldn’t do it. I could do a lot of things, but that? That was a thing I couldn’t do. It was too nonsensical. “The hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Did someone walk around hitting you every time you made sense when you were a kid, and when that worked they decided to give you a crown? A man is dead. I’m going to focus on that, rather than focusing on whether or not I’m somehow letting down the side.”
Kabos looked startled. All things considered, I was willing to bet it had been a long time since anyone had talked to him like that.
If Kabos had been stunned into silence, his wife sadly hadn’t. Verona stepped up next to him, eyes narrowed, shoulders tight. I knew righteous fury when I saw it. I didn’t have time for it—not unless we wanted every royal in the place to find their way, one by one, to the dining hall and the corpse of King Antonio—but it was still pretty impressive.
“You do not have the rank, the standing, or quite frankly, the breeding to speak to my husband in that manner,” she said. “You will apologize immediately.”
“Nope,” I said. “But thanks for playing.” She recoiled at the word “thanks.” I hadn’t used the direct, forbidden form. I’d come close enough to be rude. That was good. That was what I’d been shooting for. “Also, if it’s breeding you’re looking for, yeah, my dad was human. He was a good man, and I’m proud to be his daughter. My mother, on the other hand, was Firstborn. So unless you call the First of your race Mommy or Daddy, I think my breeding is better than yours.”
Verona glared. I gazed coolly back. And the sound of someone slowly clapping filtered into the silence between us, causing us both to turn and look at Tybalt.
“Brava,” he said. “Encore. Or, perhaps, consider this: instead of an encore, we could move on to the meat of the matter, and consult with the dead man as to what happened to him?”
I didn’t know whether I wanted to kiss or kill Tybalt. I settled for rolling my eyes, looking at Arden, and asking, “Well? Are you going to let me deal with this?”
“I don’t think we have any choice,” she said. Turning to Kabos and Verona, she bowed shallowly, and said, “If you’ll come with me back to the gallery, I will inform the others as to what has happened. Sir Daye has volunteered to endure the supervision of the sea witch as she attempts to determine the cause of King Robinson’s demise. This should be enough to satisfy even the most traditional among us.”
“And I will stay to watch her until the sea witch comes,” said Tybalt. It was a nice move. If anyone said he couldn’t, they’d be questioning his standing as a king, and he would be within his rights to claim insult against them. I had no idea what that would look like when it was a King of Cats claiming insult against a monarch who wasn’t even in their own demesne, but I had no doubt that it would derail the conclave for longer than anyone wanted. Dead body or not, everyone else still needed to conduct their business and get back home before anyone decided that their thrones had been abandoned.
There are days when I am very, very glad that I will never be a queen.
Kabos and Verona glared at me in unison before they turned to Arden. “Highmountain has been insulted on this day, and we will not forget it,” said Kabos. The phrasing was deliberate: he wasn’t claiming personal insult, which was sort of the pureblood equivalent of saying “make it up to me, or you’re going to be sorry,” but he was making sure Arden knew it was time to start sucking up.
Arden, for her part, clearly understood the situation. She inclined her head and said, “We will find a way to repair the friendship between our peoples. Lowri, please remain here and offer Sir Daye any assistance she needs while she is under the eye of King Tybalt.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Lowri.
“Good.” Arden turned and walked for the door, leaving Kabos and Verona with no choice but to follow, if they didn’t want to look like they were slighting her authority. In short order, I was alone again—except for my fiancé, Lowri and the other two guards, my squire, my niece, and—oh, right—the dead body.
“I did not sign up for this,” I muttered, and knelt, looking critically at King Antonio’s corpse. It was always jarring to see a dead pureblood. The night-haunts would come for him as soon as we left his body alone.
“What are you doing?” asked Lowri suspiciously.
“Nothing, yet,” I said. “Once the Luidaeg gets here, I’m going to ride his blood, see if he saw his killer. That could wrap this up in a nice little bow and let me get home before the sun comes up. But until then, if you could back up and permit me to work, that would be swell.” I was annoyed and I was taking it out on her, maybe unfairly, maybe not.
Then again, she had basically accused me of murder. Although . . .
“Why did you come in here?” I looked over my shoulder, assessing Lowri’s stance and expression. Quentin and Karen were still in the far corner of the room, having gone unnoticed during the chaos. Good. This was going to be educational enough without them getting dragged into the conversation. “I mean, Arden came looking for the missing members of her conclave, and the monarchs of Highmountain came looking for Arden, but why did you come in here?”
“Note how easily I am cut from her narrative,” said Tybalt, with pointed mildness. He sounded like a sarcastic accountant. It worked surprisingly well for him. “I am injured. I am slain.”
“You’re going to be, if you don’t shut up and let Lowri answer.”
He snorted his amusement.
Lowri hesitated before she said, “One of the servers claimed to have heard a strange noise from the dining hall. We went to investigate. When there are this many strangers in the knowe, anything that seems out of place must be investigated. I thought we’d find a scullery maid stealing silver, or a group of changelings scavenging for leftover food. Instead, we found you, standing over the dead body of a king.”
“And I’m the one who’s deposed two monarchs, so naturally, the first question is not ‘did you see anyone else when you came in here,’ but ‘what did you do.’” I resisted the urge to groan. It wouldn’t do me any good. It certainly wouldn’t make Lowri more inclined to keep talking to me. “There’s so much wrong with what you just said that I’m having trouble figuring out where to begin.” Maybe she was going to stop talking to me anyway. “Did anyone bother to hang on to the server who said that they’d heard something strange? I’d like to talk to them.”