Rosemary and Rue

“She wants something,” said Raysel. “I can smell it on her.”


“Rayseline, that’s quite enough,” said Luna. The normal calm of her tone was gone, washed in worry and barely concealed irritation. Raysel’s unpleasantness wasn’t just an act for my benefit, then.

“She’s right,” I said. Sylvester and Luna both turned toward me. Raysel smirked, looking triumphant. “I’m afraid I am here because I want something. Or, well. Because I need to tell you something, and I need to ask for a favor.”

“Anything,” Sylvester said. “You know that.”

“I’m not so certain about that,” I said, glancing from him to Luna and back again.“Have you heard the news?” Please say yes, I prayed. Don’t make me be the one that tells you. If the Queen were reacting at all sanely, her heralds would already have been and gone . . . but everyone seemed much too calm for that, and the Queen had said no one would even speak Evening’s name. That would make it sort of hard for her to send out notices.

If Sylvester didn’t know, it was my duty to tell him. And I desperately didn’t want to.

“We heard there was going to be an end of winter ball at the Queen’s knowe in two weeks,” offered Connor, finally abandoning the dais and moving to stand next to Rayseline—next to his wife. Smirking at me, she transferred her hold from Sylvester’s arm to his. “Please tell me you didn’t finally decide to come visit cause you thought we’d missed the latest exciting issue of the Kingdom newsletter. Hey, Toby.”

“Hey, Connor,” I said, smiling despite the grimness of the news I was about to share. It’s hard not to smile when looking at Connor.

Take your standard California beach bum, give him spiky brown hair streaked with seal’s-fur gray, brown eyes so dark they verge on black, slightly webbed fingers and a baked-in tan, and you’ve got Connor O’Dell. He was the Undersea emissary to Sylvester’s Court when I was serving there. We were . . . friends. Good friends. We might have been more than just good friends, if his family hadn’t objected to the idea of him being involved with a changeling before Connor and I could move beyond a few sweet, fumbling encounters in the gardens that dotted the knowe. He said he was sorry; so did I. And then I let myself get swept off my feet by a human man who would never say he couldn’t love me because my blood wasn’t pure enough.

I never blamed Connor for the way things happened. That’s just the way it goes for a changeling in a pureblood’s world. Coming home to hear that he was married to Rayseline Torquill was a shock, but it didn’t decrease my fondness for the man. Just the likelihood that I was going to let his wife catch me checking out his ass.

Sylvester, meanwhile, was simply looking puzzled. “No,” he said. “There’s been no news—at least, not anything big enough to bring you back to us. What’s going on, Toby? It’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but . . . why are you here?”

I swallowed. “So you haven’t heard anything about the Countess of Goldengreen?”

Sylvester’s look of puzzlement increased. “Evening? No, nothing. Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” I bit back a near-hysterical giggle. “Yes. Something’s very wrong.”

“Is she hurt?”

“No. No, she’s . . . Your Grace, Evening was killed last night. She’s dead.”

Luna’s ears flattened against her head. “Dead?” she whispered.

Raysel’s sudden laughter cut off any answer I could have given. We all turned to stare at her as she released her husband’s arm, sweeping out of the room on the tide of her own merriment.

“What—” I said.

“Connor, go with her,” said Luna. It wasn’t a request.