Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(43)

My heart sank. Antonio had been Candela. The night-haunts hadn’t taken everything for a change; not everything had been food to them. “Merry Dancers don’t transition that way, I guess. I’m sorry. They broke when you died.”

“Ah.” His eyes closed. He made no effort to conceal his pain. I was almost grateful for that. If he could hurt that badly over a pair of dancing lights, he truly was King Antonio, if only until the first rush of blood memories began to fade.

He opened his eyes again, and looked at me. “Why are you speaking to me, changeling knight? I was above you when I lived, and am below you now that I do not. Shouldn’t you shun me, refuse to acknowledge the reality of me, leave me for ballad and for bone?”

“There’s a phrasing I haven’t heard in years,” murmured the Luidaeg.

I ignored her. It was a specialized skill, and one I had better control of than most. “I rode your blood before the night-haunts came,” I said. “I didn’t see what killed you. I thought you might have picked up on something I wouldn’t realize was important.” I had been a voyeur in his life. He had lived it. “Please, can you tell me what happened?”

Antonio looked at me for a moment before he said, “You’ll need to do something for me.”

Of course a pureblood king who couldn’t think of me as his equal would have demands, apart from the natural “avenge me.” I should have known. “What do you want?”

“My wife has never been my queen. I wanted her to have safety and the freedom to move through the world as she liked. She never desired the pleasures of a throne. I want you to go to her. I want you to tell her, ‘you are a widow now.’ I want you to tell her that our son will rule in my stead. He’s young, yet. Too young for such a burden. My seneschal will help him. My seneschal will probably also try to assassinate him.” He smirked, looking more at ease now that he was talking about backstabbing and betrayal. “My boy is quick and clever. He’ll learn. He’ll adapt. And he’ll be a better king than I ever was.”

“Where can I find her?” I asked.

He gave me the address: a street in Anaheim, far from the bustle and decay of Hollywood, close to Disneyland. Arden’s parents had had a similar arrangement, with her mother raising her and her brother in the shadows of her father’s court, never admitting that they were his heirs, for fear they would be harmed. I had to wonder how many hidden princes and princesses we had scattered around the Westlands, tucked away by parents who’d learned the hard way that accepting a crown was a good way to limit your life expectancy.

When this was over, I was going to have a long talk with High King Sollys about the way the nobility took care of their children.

“I’ll find her,” I said. “Now please. What do you remember?”

“I was angry. That woman from the water—a Merrow, married to a Daoine Sidhe. Can you imagine? Their children must be so confused.” He shook his head, disgust written across his features. “She said her eldest son was a Count upon the land, and that one day her youngest would be a Duke beneath the waves. As if that were something to be proud of. When they tear themselves apart trying to be one thing or another, they’ll drown the world.”

“I was there when you started yelling at Dianda,” I said, voice carefully neutral. “Where did you go after that?”

“Just down the hall. I wanted to clear my head. I wasn’t gone for long—minutes, only—I planned to come back, make my apologies, even if I didn’t mean them, and maintain my standing within the conclave. But when I returned to the dining hall, there was no one there. It was like I’d been gone for hours.”

The sound. “I heard something, when I rode your blood.”

“My wife doesn’t believe in using magic to preserve food.”

The statement was odd enough that for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Um, okay,” I offered finally.

Antonio looked at me like I was beneath contempt. “It would be a waste of her skills. She uses a mortal invention instead. Tin foil. Have you heard of it?”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing as I nodded. “Yes. I’ve encountered the stuff.”

“There’s this sound when she tears off a sheet . . . I heard it. From this room. And then the shadows jumped.”

Wait. “What?”

“My Merry Dancers were never still, and their light meant the shadows were never solid. They didn’t have the opportunity to freeze.” He looked at the shadows around him, expression growing grim. “The world flickered like a candle. I never knew how much I would miss it until it was over.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But what do you mean, the shadows jumped? Did they actually come for you?” I hadn’t noticed anything like that. I had been hoping Antonio could reveal some motive or facet of the situation that his blood hadn’t given me, but moving shadows seemed a bit big for me to have missed.

“No, you stupid girl,” he said. “They shifted, as if my Merry Dancers had been moved. Which is quite impossible.”

But it wasn’t impossible for something else to have moved. “I heard the sound twice when I rode your blood,” I said. “Once here, once in the hall. Does that match with what you remember?”

The night-haunt who had been King Antonio nodded.