Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(36)
“The nobles are growing restless,” he said. “Queen Windermere left to find their missing colleague, and I have been dispatched to find Queen Windermere. I would take offense, had I not so dearly wished to escape that room. Raj wished to escape as well; I have no doubt he’s halfway home by now. And I find you standing over a dead body. Some things, it seems, are incapable of changing.” He finally allowed himself to look directly at the shape under the table, and wrinkled his nose. “King Robinson. How predictable. If anyone was going to get themselves murdered to guarantee they would remain the center of attention, it would be him.”
“You don’t sound upset,” said Arden. For the first time, I heard the quaver in her voice, and realized she wasn’t calm, no matter how she might seem: she was frozen, gripped by the sort of shock I hadn’t been able to feel for years.
“Oh, oak and ash,” I said. “Is this your first dead body?”
To my surprise, Arden laughed. It was a low, bitter sound, viscous and cloying. “No,” she said. “That was my mother, when I found her with her throat slit in this very knowe. But it’s my first in over a century, and it’s a goddamn King dead under my fucking roof, so you’ll forgive me if I’m a little on edge!”
“My apologies, Your Highness,” said Tybalt, moving to stand next to me. He wasn’t as close as he normally was—he was still holding himself that little bit apart, on ceremony, reminding the world of his dignity—but he was there, close enough for me to smell the faint pennyroyal warmth of his magic. That helped more than I could say. “When one spends as much time in October’s company as I have, one grows more accustomed to the dead than is perhaps ideal. I’m sorry I can’t be distressed over the death of a petty man who invited assassination with his every act and word. I wish I could. It would make the pleas of my innocence easier to accept.”
“This is awful.” Arden shoved her hair back from her forehead, dislodging several feathers. On cue, pixies appeared from somewhere in the folds of her skirt and began restyling her hair, chiming angrily. Arden ignored them. “How can he be dead? He was under the hospitality of my house, for Titania’s sake!”
Her switching between mortal and fae profanity was starting to become jarring. “We can fix this,” I said. “We can find out who killed him. We can keep this from getting any worse than it’s already going to be. Just get me the Luidaeg.”
“Why, so you can cover up another murder?” The voice was unfamiliar. I turned. There, in the doorway of the room, stood Kabos and Verona, the King and Queen of Highmountain. Kabos looked furious. Verona looked like she was about to be sick.
Kabos left his wife behind as he advanced on me, expression filled with surprising anger. I resisted the urge to fall back, away from the accusation in his eyes. Mortals often have trouble standing up to purebloods. Old survival instincts and the memory of a time when a human fighting with the fae always ended badly keep humanity from crossing certain lines. The more fae I’ve become, the easier it’s become for me to stand my ground. Still, a part of me knew that I should be terrified. The distance between me and Tybalt seemed suddenly very great.
“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.”