A Red-Rose Chain

All of the people in silk and velvet were purebloods. Daoine Sidhe, Tuatha de Dannan, Tylwyth Teg, and Ellyllon. All of the staff were changelings.

There was a smaller table positioned on a low dais at the head of the room, presumably for the king and his companions. There were two chairs there, and an assortment of foodstuffs had already been set out, waiting for Rhys to arrive. I narrowed my eyes, glancing back to the banquet tables. The nobles already seated there were watching us, expressions calculating, taking our measure. None of them had touched their food. This was a “no one eats before the king does” court, then; good to know.

There was a space open at the end of one bench on the banquet table nearest the dais. Tybalt and I walked over and sat, with Quentin and Walther waiting to see that we were settled. Walther leaned forward, in the guise of straightening my skirt, and pressed a small vial of silver-blue powder into my hand.

“Everything you eat or drink,” he murmured. “Don’t forget.”

I nodded. He retreated, along with Quentin, to a table at the back of the room.

We had barely settled ourselves when the herald posted by the door announced, in that same loud, ringing tone, “His Majesty, by Grace of Oberon, King Rhys of Silences, and his honored guest, the rightful Queen of the Mists.”

The nobles around us stood. Tybalt stood, the narrowing of his pupils betraying his unhappiness. A heartbeat later, I followed the rest to my feet, gathering my skirts in my hands in an effort to keep myself from shaking. I didn’t expect it to work, but at least it was something I could do, however small, however useless.

A door I hadn’t seen before opened in the wall at the back of the dais, and King Rhys appeared. He had his arm held out at his side, just the way Tybalt always held his when he was escorting me. And there, walking next to him, calm and cool and serene as ever, was the former Queen of the Mists.

She was a mixed-blood, part Sea Wight and part Banshee, and her heritage showed in everything she was. Her skin was the color of a dead, waterlogged sailor’s flesh, and her hair was the color of sea foam, long and fine and perfectly straight, even as it fell past her feet to trail along the floor. Her eyes were like moonlight shining off the sea, blank and cold and halfway mad. She was smaller than she used to be, thin and frail and fragile-looking. That was my fault. She’d been part Siren, once, and when I’d taken that part of her heritage away from her, I had taken more than a foot of height and all the color she had once possessed.

I should have felt bad about that. I had changed her body without her consent, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be taken back: so far as I knew, not even my mother could have restored the old Queen’s Siren blood. I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything more than faintly triumphant. She had tried to kill me. She had tried to destroy the people I loved. All I’d done was what I’d had to do.

King Rhys looked across the assemblage with a mild, content smile on his face, like this was exactly the way the world ought to be. The false Queen looked at me, and only me, and her eyes burned with hatred. She’d destroy me, if she could, and nothing I or anyone else could say was going to make her stop wanting my head on a platter.

On the plus side, I could probably make her want it more, if I was willing to really work. It’s always nice to have goals.