A Red-Rose Chain

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.”

I blinked at him for the second time in almost as many minutes, trying to figure out what he was trying to say. Finally, I asked, “What, do you mean we shouldn’t listen to changelings because they’re mortal?”

“Precisely so.” Rhys beamed at me like I was a child who had just managed to solve a particularly difficult math problem. “Changelings are temporary creatures, here to go. Fae are permanent. We live forever, and we should plan accordingly.”

“So where do the prohibitions against crossbreeding come from?” My stomach was a solid knot, which solved my worries about the food nicely. I didn’t think I could eat if I wanted to. “If fae are permanent, shouldn’t you just be happy that they’re choosing to have children at all?”

“My lady, beautiful as she is, should answer that question for you,” said Rhys. “Had her mother been Tuatha de Dannan, there would have been no way to steal her heritage from her. Anyone who looked upon her face should have known her for Gilad’s daughter, and known her claim to the throne for the valid thing that it was. Instead, her blood was such a jumble that a deceitful soul was able to pretend she had no claim to her own throne. Can you imagine how much easier Faerie would be if we didn’t blend and blur the forms we were intended to have? It would be the shining beacon it was meant to be, and not this . . . hodge-podge.”

“Is that why there are no fae here with animal parts? Humans are animals, too, you know, and a lot of us sure do look human.” I pulled the pouch of powder Walther had given me out of the bodice of my dress and began sprinkling it over the contents of my plate. Maybe I wasn’t going to be able to choke anything down, but again, it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Humanity is a mask that we are particularly well-suited to wearing,” said Rhys. “Wings and hooves and tails are untidy. They mark their owners as bestial, and while they may find a place in some Courts, they have no place in mine. It’s our duty to stay within the lines drawn by our lost lord and ladies.”

“Really? Because it was good enough for Oberon, you know. He had Cait Sidhe in his Court.” And Roane, and Swanmays. “Pretty sure he banged a cat, even, since that’s where the Cait Sidhe came from.”

Rhys made an expression of distaste. “There’s no need to be vulgar.”

I glanced to the table where Quentin and Tybalt sat. They were pushing food around their half-empty plates in a way that I recognized from my time with Gillian. She’d been a toddler when we lived together, and she had been an expert at moving food around her plate without letting it get anywhere near her mouth. I looked back to Rhys.