One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

It was a lot lighter in the cave than I was used to, but that was due to the changes in me, not due to any change in the Queen’s décor. My night vision has improved with the rest of me. I gave Connor one last sidelong glance, wishing we could skip out and go to a movie or something instead, and pulled him through the cave’s rear wall.

The stone faded into cool mist, turning the world gray and sending electric tingles through my skin. We kept walking. The mist thinned and finally disappeared completely, leaving us standing in the Queen’s knowe . . . but not the part of it I was expecting. Connor dropped my hand.

“Whoa,” he said.

I silently shared the sentiment.

Normally, the beachside entrance to the Queen’s knowe leads to a vast, cavernous ballroom that seems to extend for the better part of forever. Not this time. Instead, we were standing in a large antechamber, clearly intended to control the flow of arrivals. It might have seemed imposing if I hadn’t been expecting the ballroom. Since I was, it just seemed ostentatious, like it was trying way too hard.

The walls were blue-white marble and pink coral, and the floor was pink-veined white marble. It was like we were standing inside a giant wedding cake. The room ended in set of ornately carved oak doors at least fifteen feet tall, flanked by a pair of Daoine Sidhe wearing the Queen’s colors. One had dark blue hair; the other’s hair was almost exactly the color of cotton candy.

“Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown? Jolly old town,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Ignore me.” I released my human disguise, leaving the smell of copper and fresh-cut grass hanging in the air. “So are you ready now?”

Connor’s disguise dissolved into the scent of kelp and seawater. “Still no.”

“Good answer. Come on.”

The blue-haired flunky stared straight ahead as we approached, his nose wrinkled slightly, like he smelled something bad. I grimaced as we got close enough for me to recognize him. Dugan Harrow, everybody’s favorite landless asshole.

“Who comes?” he demanded, once we were too close to be ignored without violating the rules of propriety.

Even I knew better than to be flippant with a member of the Queen’s retinue at a time like this. I straightened and said, “Countess October Christine Daye of Goldengreen, Knight of Lost Words, sworn to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills.”

“Connor O’Dell of Saltmist, current Undersea diplomatic emissary from Saltmist to Shadowed Hills,” said Connor.

Dugan scowled. “You may pass,” he said, not bothering to conceal his resentment. We—a changeling and a skinshifter—were invited guests, while he, a pureblood Daoine Sidhe, was stuck on door duty. He kept scowling as he turned in practiced tandem with the other footman to open the vast oak doors, revealing a long, dimly-lit hall that matched the entrance chamber’s design. I walked past them with my head held high, not making eye contact.

Connor walked beside me, waiting until the doors were closed behind us to grin and say, “You always say you hate your name. Why don’t you go by Christine?”

“Be quiet.”

“We could call you Chrissie.”

“Shut up.”

Connor snorted and stopped talking. He didn’t stop looking amused.

A series of diaphanous curtains the color of new-fallen snow billowed from the ceiling at the end of the hall, turning the ballroom beyond into a watercolor abstraction. Connor’s hand sought mine, gripping tightly. I shot him what I hoped was a reassuring look, and we stepped together through the layers of hanging fabric.

The curtains parted around us like a slightly more solid version of the wall we’d walked through to enter the knowe—and just like the wall, when the last of them fell away, it was to reveal a world transformed.