There was a faint rushing sound, and the scent of blackberry flowers and redwood bark. I looked over my shoulder. There was Arden, dressed in a white velvet gown with a chain of silver blackberries wrapped around her waist, forming a low belt. Elliot was next to her, gazing at the blood-splattered room with an expression somewhere between horror and delight. And Li Qin was next to him, wearing a black dress stitched with green-and-silver circuitry. She looked thoughtful.
“You brought company,” I said, letting go of Tybalt and shifting so my back was to his chest. He put his arms around my waist, holding me there. I didn’t bow. Under the circumstances, it didn’t seem important.
“My daughter, Elliot’s liege, insisted I promise to keep an eye on her people while she could not,” said Li Qin. “I accompanied him because things have a tendency to become unnecessarily exciting in your presence.”
“And because you wanted to see what the big deal was,” I said.
Li Qin shrugged, expression unrepentant. “I’m curious. What can I say?”
“Nothing. I’d be curious, too.” I looked to Elliot. “Can you clean this up? I’m supposed to be coming to the conclave with the rest of you, and I can’t do it looking like an extra from Carrie.”
“Wow,” he said. “I thought there was a lot of blood the last time I saw you, but this is . . . wow. Do you bathe in the stuff? How often do you have to buy new clothes?”
“Not intentionally, and way too often, although in this case, the hole in the back of my bodice is going to be a much bigger problem than the blood,” I said. “Can you clean it up? Please? It’s drying, and that feels exactly as gross as you’d think.”
“I try not to think about how that sort of thing feels,” said Elliot. “Close your eyes and hold your breath.”
I closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath was easy, and I reveled in it, enjoying the feeling of my lungs inflating without any foreign bodies getting in the way. Then I braced myself, flashing Elliot a thumbs-up.
The smell of lye rose in the air a heartbeat before a hot, soapy wave hit me, washing over me like some sort of bizarre waterpark attraction. The pressure of it knocked me back against Tybalt, who was making a thin, angry noise deep in his chest. He didn’t mind showers, especially when I agreed to share them with him, but he was still a cat, and like most cats, he wasn’t a big fan of being doused. Then the wave broke, leaving us as dry as if it had never existed. I opened my eyes.
The room, which had always seemed clean, was now spotless. The glass glittered, the hardwood floors gleamed, and the blood was gone, leaving no trace that it had ever been there in the first place. I pushed myself back to my own feet, glancing back to check on Tybalt before I turned to Elliot, preparing to tell him what a good job he’d done. Then I stopped.
He was staring at the Luidaeg, eyes very wide and filled with tears. She was looking back at him, an expression of profound regret on her face. She looked so genuinely sad that it hurt to see her that way.
“I don’t . . .” he began. He stopped, took a breath, started again. “I don’t know the forms for this, but I know you’re a daughter of Maeve. Are you . . . ?”
“I’m sorry, but no,” she said. “You’re not mine.”
“Oh,” said Elliot, in a hushed voice.
“His name was Dobrinya. I haven’t seen him in centuries. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I hope he is. He was among the sweetest of my brothers. But you’re not mine.”
“Apologies, First,” said Elliot, turning his face resolutely away. He reached up to wipe his eyes, trying to make the motion seem unobtrusive. He failed, but it was a valiant attempt. “I just never expected to stand so close to you. To any one of you.”
“I know,” she said. “You did good.”
Elliot visibly swelled with pride, finally looking at me. “You need to stop doing this sort of thing,” he said.
I shook off my surprise. It had been so long since I’d seen someone dealing with their first Firstborn encounter that I’d almost forgotten what it looked like. “Why should I stop? You do such a good job of fixing it.” I glanced down at myself. The blood was gone. So were the holes in my clothing. Even my bodice had been relaced, although the laces weren’t pulled tight; that would have knocked the air out of me, and that’s never good when you’re surrounded by a giant wave of magical water. I looked up again. “The High King told me to change my clothes. You think he’ll be cool with me having them magically steam-cleaned instead?”
“No,” said Arden immediately. “You need to wear something they haven’t seen before. It’s the only way you’ll be taken seriously.”
“Oberon save me from the purebloods and their rules,” I muttered. “All right: I’m going to need an escort back to the room I’m supposed to be sleeping in, since all my clothes are there.”
“Actually, no—you won’t,” said the Luidaeg. She turned and took the brown case from Karen, who had observed everything in silence, eyes wide and face drawn. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be terrified or amazed. That was a combination I was very well-acquainted with.
Setting the case on the table, the Luidaeg opened it and began rooting through a welter of scraps. Finally, she pulled out a piece of coppery spider-silk. The edges were ragged, but the lightning jag remains of the embroidery that must have covered the entire piece of fabric were still visible. She walked over and held it out to me.
“Here,” she said. “Now strip.”
“Uh.” I glanced at Quentin. As I had expected, his cheeks were so red that he could have replaced Rudolph as the lead reindeer for Santa’s sleigh. “I’m going to go with ‘no.’”
The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “When you people learned all this modesty shit from the humans, I may never figure out. There’s a screen in the bathroom. Go get it, stand behind it, and strip.”
“Why am I stripping?” I asked. Quentin was blushing harder all the time. I was starting to wonder if the Luidaeg missed the sight of blood all over everything, and was trying to make my squire explode.
“Because you need to change your clothes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Unless you want to argue with the sea witch?”
I groaned, throwing my hands up in the air. “Sure, now you get all dire and terrifying, because you want something. Why can’t you be dire and terrifying when people are stabbing me? That’s when I need you to be dire and terrifying.”
“The bathroom’s over there,” she said, pointing.
I stopped complaining and went.
The bathroom, as she called it, was bigger than my living room, and contained a recessed tub that would have given me nightmares if it had been full. If the Luidaeg hadn’t been attending the conclave, this would probably have been the room assigned to Patrick and Dianda; she could have gone swimming in that tub. The promised screen was propped against the wall next to a large rack of soaps, bath oils, and baskets full of bath salts. I grabbed it, hoisted it up onto my shoulder, and returned to the main room, where the others were waiting.
“That is the biggest bathtub I’ve ever seen,” I said, putting the screen down.