One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“Then stand to the side and hold your tongue. This is not your business anymore.” Raysel lifted her chin, jerking it imperiously toward the wall. Silently snarling, the Luidaeg moved as she was ordered, glaring daggers all the way.

“Rayseline.” I tried to put my body between her and my daughter without it being too obvious that I was doing it. If I’d had any doubts about her willingness to kill Gillian before, her own words had destroyed them. “Shut up or the girl dies” didn’t leave much room for argument. “We just want to talk.”

“Talk? You want to talk, so you come skulking through my new home in the dark, carrying weapons, damaging my things? I don’t know what kind of fool you think I am, October, but no one brings the sea witch and the King of Cats when they just want to ‘talk.’ ” Rayseline’s smile slipped, revealing the fury behind it. “You never had any intention of talking. You came to steal, and I don’t take kindly to thieves.”

It took a moment for me to realize that “damaging my things” meant freeing the captive pixies. My stomach rolled. The pixies had vanished the moment Raysel came into the room, diving for whatever cover they could find. One of them was hiding in my hair. Its body was plastered against my neck, wings vibrating with every anxious breath. As for the rest of them . . . I just hoped they could escape before Raysel bottled them up again.

“I don’t think we have the same definition of theft,” I said, struggling to keep my voice as level as possible. “Gillian’s my daughter.”

“She’s your daughter, and my honored guest.” Raysel took another deliberate step forward. “We have so much to talk about, after all. You failed us both. Why, we’re practically sisters, aren’t we?”

Gillian whimpered.

“Shut your mouth,” I snapped, all attempts at reason forgotten in the face of the sudden, fierce need to protect my little girl. “Don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be. Put down the bow, call off your Goblins, and come quietly. I’ll ask the Queen to go easy on you.”

“That’s not an option. You know that, or you’d never have made the offer.” Raysel shook her head. I thought I saw a flash of regret in her eyes, there and gone in an instant. “Not even the High King could go easy on me now. Could he?” None of us said anything. Fury contorted her face as she turned to aim her bow at Quentin, shouting, “Could he?!”

“No,” Quentin said. I shifted to get a look at him. He was standing with his chin up and his shoulders squared, staring down the length of his nose at Raysel. “But he could show clemency. You didn’t mean to kill the Selkie. You could be granted a sentence other than death.”

“A century decorating some garden as a marble statue doesn’t appeal to me,” she spat. “I chose this. I’ll see it through.”

“Did you choose it, Raysel?” I asked, shifting my weight to put myself a bit more solidly between her and Gillian. “Or did someone offer it to you? We know you didn’t do this alone. What did Dugan promise you? Did he tell you this would make everything better? It won’t.”

Raysel’s fury slipped as she turned back to me, and for a moment, I saw the little girl I used to know in her face, a child trapped within the prison of her own induced madness. “Whether this plan was wise or not, it’s mine now,” she said. “Something had to be. This will be enough.”

“Will it? Or is he just using you to get what he wants?” I shook my head. “No honor between thieves, remember? He’s going to clean up his loose ends, just like Oleander tried to do.”