A Red-Rose Chain

“It hasn’t changed a bit,” said Walther happily. He walked over to the table that occupied one side of the room, pulling out a chair and dropping himself into it. There were three covered dishes on the table. After a moment’s consideration, he lifted the center lid to reveal a pile of pale purple cookies, dusted with sugar. “Lavender cookies. Ceres, you’re the best.”


“So you’ve been telling me since you sprouted, but that didn’t stop you from leaving me for a hundred years.” She carried the tea service over to the table and set it down, smiling indulgently as Walther snatched a handful of the purple cookies. He didn’t do anything to them before taking a bite of the first one. Either he trusted Ceres not to poison or bespell us, or she already had him ensnared.

The Blodynbryd didn’t have any sort of enthrallment or persuasion powers, at least not that I was aware of. If they had, Luna would probably have made sure her daughter’s marriage ended in something other than annulment and murder—the annulment on the part of Raysel’s ex-husband, Connor, who was also the one who wound up getting murdered. If Ceres had that sort of power, we were already screwed. I shrugged and walked over to join Walther.

Somehow, despite us both starting at the same time, Tybalt managed to beat me to the table. He pulled out a chair for me. I shot him an amused look and sat, only to find Ceres watching us approvingly.

“Manners are rare in this day and age, or perhaps only in this kingdom,” she said. “Too few people remember that they are the glue that binds our society together. Please, have some cookies. I have tea, or there is lemonade, if you would prefer.”

“Lemonade would be fantastic, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said. Tea was complicated for me. Lily—a friend of my mother’s who had become a friend of mine, in the fullness of time—had always insisted on preparing tea when I came to visit her. Sometimes she’d even been able to catch glimpses of my future in her tea leaves. I hadn’t really drunk tea since her death. It was too hard, and I wasn’t up for risking that sort of emotional trauma over a beverage.

Tybalt settled next to me and smiled lopsidedly, revealing the tip of one fang. “Tea would be lovely. I’ve had little enough since I came to the Colonies, lo these many years ago.”

“I always forget how many of the older among us came from somewhere else,” said Ceres. She turned to open a cupboard, and withdrew a pitcher of lemonade, condensation beading on its sides. It was a nice—and necessary—trick. The Summerlands aren’t usually good about being wired to the local electrical grid, which means the locals keep their food cold with either magic or old-fashioned icehouses. Both had their advantages.

“Didn’t you?” I asked.

Ceres smiled. “Yes and no. My father linked his skerry to this land long before anyone from Europe decided to ‘discover’ it. The humans who lived here then gave him a wide berth, and he gave them the same. I spent my childhood wandering these forests, as well as my mother’s. I was the third of their children, you see, and when I was a girl, they were still more open to the idea that someday we would grow up and leave them. Luna was the last of us. None of us realized how tightly Father would cleave to her, once all others were gone, or how far she would have to go to get away. I like to think we would have chosen differently, had we known what it would cost our little sister to choose as we did. But that was long ago, and no one knows for sure.”

“Right,” I said. Walther was still nibbling on his purple cookies. I reached out and took one, turning it between my fingers as I tried to figure out what to say next. Of all the ways I had expected my day to go, fleeing from a homicidal ex-Queen and then taking tea with the second Blodynbryd I’d ever met definitely hadn’t been near the top of the list. “So you were born here?”