One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“Then he’ll die. Just like Oleander did.” The momentary vulnerability passed, replaced by a smug little smile. “I have to thank you, October.” She put a poisonous spin on the word “thank.” “You’ve collected everyone I need to kill in one place. It makes things so much more efficient.”


I was surprised enough that I laughed out loud before I thought better of it. Raysel’s eyes widened, making her look like a startled child. “Do you really think this is everyone you’ll have to kill? Seriously? Oak and ash, Raysel, stop posturing and think. If you want to make this go away, you’re going to have to kill a lot more than just us.”

“There’s my nephew,” said Tybalt calmly, “and a large percentage of my Court.”

“The Duke and Duchess of Saltmist,” said Connor.

“Danny and Walther,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure Danny knew about the dead Selkie. The look of alarm on Raysel’s face was promising; I just had to make it worse. “Oh, and most of Goldengreen.”

“Shut up,” said Raysel, without conviction. She licked her lips, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Her Goblins murmured behind her, starting to look concerned. Maybe they were realizing how unlikely their promised payday really was. “All of you, be quiet.”

“Your parents,” I said.

That was the wrong card to play. Raysel’s eyes narrowed this time, and her grip on her longbow steadied. “They already chose you over me,” she said, pulling the bowstring tight. “They can rot for all I care.”

I froze. I may be faster than I used to be, but I knew better than to believe I could outrun an arrow. If she let go, I was going down—and worse. Elf-shot is normally small, sized to fit in a handheld crossbow . . . but the tip of Raysel’s arrow glittered poisonously. Clearly, she’d been making some adjustments.

Raysel smiled at the terror on my face. “So maybe killing you won’t make this go away. So what? I’m going to be Queen when the war is over, and there’s plenty of space on the battlefield to arrange for an ‘accidental’ death or two. You’ve given me a list to work from. I’ll just think of it as a challenge before my coronation.”

Still not daring to move, I asked the only question I could think of that might buy us a little more time: “How were you planning to kill the Luidaeg? She’s Firstborn. I only know one person who knows how to kill a Firstborn, and you’re talking to her. If you kill me, the Luidaeg lives.”

“Even the Firstborn can be . . . incapacitated for a little while. I only need a hundred years or so. After that, she can say whatever she likes. I’ll have my throne. She won’t be able to hurt me.”

“Then there’s May, and the night-haunts—I mean, this is a lot of killing.”

Raysel scoffed. “The night-haunts are nothing. I own flyswatters.”

“The Court of Cats will hunt you to the farthest marches and beyond,” said Tybalt. He sounded almost bored. That was a dangerous tone coming from him. A cat that looks bored is a cat that’s getting ready to pounce.

Please, Tybalt, be careful, I prayed silently, unsure, as always, if anyone was listening. There’s no telling what she has on that arrow. Elf-shot, treated with a little something extra to make waking up impossible, if Walther was right.

“I don’t care,” said Raysel. She drew the bowstring back a little farther. Tybalt glanced at me, and nodded, almost imperceptibly. This standoff couldn’t last forever. Raysel’s attention was on me. All I had to do was keep it there.

I said the only thing I could think of that would guarantee I held her attention. “If you’re going to kill us anyway, you should know that Connor and I have been sleeping together since the day I came back from the pond.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Liar.”

“Oh, no. I called him from the motel. He came right over—said you wouldn’t notice, that you were too stupid to see that he was cheating on you.” I took a deliberate step forward, baiting her. “We laughed at you.”

“Liar!” shouted Raysel. Her fingers tensed as she swung her bow up, shifting her aim from my shoulder to my throat.