Late Eclipses

EIGHT

THE DUCAL SEAT OF SHADOWED HILLS is anchored to the mortal world through Paso Nogal Park, located in the small, sleepy suburb of Pleasant Hill. It’s the sort of town where kids play in the streets, men mow lawns, and women walk dogs, content and happy. A nice place. I could never live there. I’d go nuts and start shooting people inside of a month, driven over the edge by picket fences.

The parking lot was packed when we arrived, holding everything from a small bus to a pair of motorcycles held together with duct tape and ropes of enchanted ivy. Fae magic doesn’t work on iron, but newer vehicles don’t have much iron in them. That can save a lot on repair bills, if you know the right sort of mechanic.

Spike jumped out of the car as soon as I opened the door, vanishing into the bushes. I sighed. “I’m starting to feel like a taxi.”

“Does that mean we should start tipping?” May asked. I glared. She laughed, putting up her hands in mock-surrender. “Kidding!”

“Liar. Now come on. I want to get in, see Sylvester and Luna, and get out. This is going to be a long night.” I paused. “Can you find your own way home?”

“Don’t worry about it.” She climbed out of the car, starting up the hill. I double-checked the locks, and followed.

May dropped our illusions as soon as we were out of view of the street. They might make me look and even feel like I was wearing jeans, but brambles without any senses to confuse would still tear my skirt if I didn’t keep it out of the way. Getting into Shadowed Hills through the front door requires executing an ornate series of maneuvers that wouldn’t look out of place in a gymnastics competition. May scrambled through them three yards ahead of me, pureblood grace combining with sensible clothes to let her beat me to the top by almost a minute.

The door into the knowe was open and May was gone when I finally got there. Quentin was standing in the doorway. “Took you long enough,” he said, and grinned.

I paused, studying him as I caught my breath. He was wearing a dark blue tunic over yellow linen trousers—the Ducal colors are blue and gold—and the crest of Shadowed Hills was embroidered above his heart. He’d grown over the summer. The dandelion-fluff of his hair was starting to darken, going from childhood’s blond to an almost metallic bronze. That happens with pureblood Daoine Sidhe kids. They’re born pale, and they darken into their adult coloring as they move through puberty. Quentin was growing up.

“Yeah, well, I’m old and slow,” I said. “You look spiffy. Something going on?”

“You mean besides the Beltane Ball?”

“Oh, right. I knew I was forgetting something.”

“Because you’d so be dressed that way if you didn’t have to be.” He rolled his eyes. “Get in here.”

“Your wish, my command.” I stepped past him into the knowe. The walls of the entry hall were draped with floral garlands, and the floor was polished to a mirror shine. “Aren’t you going to say something about my dress?”

“The fact that you’re wearing one without Her Grace needing to slap you is too weird to think about.” Quentin closed the door. It dissolved into the wall.

“Way to insult my fashion sense.” I’ve known Quentin almost two years, and I’ve never heard him call Sylvester or Luna by their proper names. “You on duty?”

Quentin nodded. “Care for an escort?”

“If you insist.” I hooked my arm through his, letting him lead me down the hall.

Shadowed Hills pays little attention to silly concepts like “linear floor plans.” The archway at the end of the hall showed a peaceful-looking library. Lies. Bracing myself, I closed my eyes and let Quentin tug me through. The world did a sickening dip-and-weave around us. I opened my eyes when the floor stopped moving, and found that we were standing in a vast ballroom, the walls decked with ropes of flowers and ribbons.

The band at one end of the room played a waltz with more enthusiasm than skill. Dancers of every shape and size packed the floor, ranging from a Centaur in a farthingale trying to tango with a Urisk to a Hob foxtrotting with a Glastig in widow’s weeds, while a pair of Cornish Pixies danced an aerial polka above them. Dancers shouted across the crowd, dignity and propriety abandoned for the duration of the party. Those were things for other nights. Tonight was for welcoming the summer home. It was a cross-section of Faerie, standing in perfect contrast to the cold perfection of the Queen’s Court.

“Can you find Sylvester for me?” I asked, letting go of Quentin’s hand before shrugging out of my leather jacket and handing it to him. He took it without comment or complaint. As a working courtier, taking my coat was part of his job. He’d have been a lot more likely to object if I’d tried to walk into the dance with the jacket still on.

Quentin nodded. “I should be able to.”

“Good. I’ll be over there.” I indicated a relatively clear stretch of wall, suitable for leaning against and waiting. Quentin nodded again and turned, vanishing into the crowd with admirable speed. I moved more cautiously, skirting the edge of the dance floor until I reached the wall. A Brownie passed with a tray of drinks. I snagged a glass of wine and settled in to watch the room.

Beltane is one of the fixed points of the fae year, when the Unseelie Court steps down in favor of the Seelie and everything starts over. It used to be celebrated only by Titania’s descendants, but it’s become more general since the King and Queens disappeared. Now even Maeve’s lines come to join in the fun. The fae equivalent of going secular, I suppose.

“Toby!” shouted May. I turned to see her bearing down on me, tugging a dark-haired woman along with her. “There you are!”

“Here I am,” I agreed.

My Fetch wore a subdued smoke-gray dress that complemented our mutual skin tone, accented with opal jewelry in tarnished silver settings. She looked fabulous. She also looked almost shy as she stopped in front of me, the dark-haired woman stopping next to her. “Toby, I want you to meet my date, Jasmine.”

I nearly choked on my wine. “Your what?”

“My date. Remember, I told you I had one?” She leaned over to pluck the glass from my hand. “Jasmine, this is my roommate, Toby Daye.”

“Most people call me Jazz,” said Jasmine, with a semiavian bob of her head. “May’s told me so much about you. It’s great to finally meet you.”

Still coughing from the wine I’d inhaled, I gave Jazz a quick once-over without even trying to be subtle. She was barefoot under her brown velvet gown, and barely topped five feet. Her skin was a rich medium-brown, and her hair was glossy black, filled with green-and-blue highlights. Her eyes were amber, rimmed with brown. Bird’s eyes. They confirmed her bloodline; Raven-dancer, skinshifter cousins of the Swanmays, probably from one of the flocks that originated in India.

Raven-dancers used to be considered death omens. Just like Fetches.

Catching my appraisal, Jasmine said, “I promise my intentions are good.”

May laughed. “Don’t mind Toby. She’s my parent and original.”

It takes more than an unexpected girlfriend to get me too flustered for Shakespeare. “Fairy, skip hence,” I replied. “I have forsworn your bed and company.”

“Haven’t,” she countered. “The rent would be awful, and you’d have no one to do the dishes.”

“Fair enough.” I turned to Jazz, offering her a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

“I know, right?” She grinned. I decided to like her. “I was starting to feel like May was hiding one of us away.”

“Toby’s been too busy inheriting a County to talk to us peons,” May said.

I groaned. “Oh, don’t start.”

Jazz cocked her head to the side. “You didn’t want it?”

“What gives you that idea?”

“The way you wrinkle your nose when May says ‘County.’ ” She laughed. “She wasn’t kidding when she said you looked alike.”

“There are reasons for that.” I gave May a sidelong look.

She shook her head. “It’s cool. She knows I’m your Fetch.”

“You do?” I looked back to Jazz, surprised. A lot of people won’t even talk to a Fetch. What sort of person dates one?

“I’m a raven.” She shrugged. “We’re psychopomps. If she wants to be an omen of death when we’re not hanging out, that’s cool.”

“So you’re saying you don’t mind if your girlfriend has a job?”

“Pretty much.”

“Congratulations, May,” I said, reclaiming my glass. “You found someone weirder than you are.”

“It took work, but it was worth it.” She winked at me. “And now we’re off.”

“To do what?”

“Dance!” She grabbed Jasmine’s hand, hauling her back into the crowd. I returned to my spot against the wall. That’s yet another thing we don’t have in common: I hate dancing.

So May was dating a girl. Huh. Faerie isn’t hung up on sexual orientation—experimentation is normal when you have forever—but I’m straight, and I expected May to be the same way. I kept telling people not to assume we were the same. Maybe it was time to start taking my own advice.

A petite Hob with pale eyes and honey-colored hair paused, offering her tray. “Fancy a drink, ma’am?” I didn’t recognize her, but that wasn’t unusual; the big knowes often borrow servers from one another for the big parties, just to take up the slack.

“Got one.” I raised my glass. “Are you new, or just guesting?”

“New, ma’am,” she said, and bobbed a curtsy. The contents of her tray remained miraculously unspilled. “Just hired from Wild Strawberries, ma’am.”

“Ah. Cool.” Wild Strawberries is the Tylwyth Teg Duchy up by Sacramento, which probably explained why she’d moved on. The Tylwyth are nice folks, but they’re hard on the staff. Hobs don’t usually settle long in their holdings. “Well, welcome. I’m one of Sylvester’s knights; my name’s—”

“Oh, I know you! ” she said. “We all know you, ma’am. You’re Toby Daye, the Duke’s favorite.”

“Uh … if you say so.” I blinked. His favorite? That was news to me.

“Don’t mind me, ma’am, I ramble.” She winked, moving the tray to her other hand. “My name’s Nerium, call me Neri, everyone does. I’d love to chat, but it’s my first party here; I need to make a good showing if I want them to keep me on.”

Her cheer was infectious. I smiled. “You’ll do fine.”

“I hope so, ma’am. If I see the Duke before he sees you, I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.” She curtsied again before vanishing into the crowd.

I settled against the wall, taking slow sips of my wine. The tempo of the music changed, sliding into a slower, statelier pattern. I felt a hand on my shoulder, accompanied by the faint scent of dogwood flowers. I turned, my instinctive smile tempering to something more solemn than the norm. “Your Grace.”

Sylvester nodded, his own smile as tempered as mine. “You made it.”

“I did. May wouldn’t let me skip out.”

“Remind me to give that girl a Barony. May I have this dance?”

If there’s anyone who can get me onto the dance floor, it’s him. I put my glass on the table. “We need to talk,” I said. “It’s about Lily.”

“That’s why we’re dancing,” he said, and took my hands, pulling me along. “Don’t look at your feet. Just trust me.”

I don’t take that sort of suggestion from most people. Sylvester’s special. I kept my chin up, letting him guide me into the dance. His steps were steady enough to make up for how unsure mine were. He was doing what a good liege is supposed to do: he was making me better than I would be on my own.

“Sylvester, I—”

“In a moment,” he said, and bore me along.

We circled twice before he spun me out, fingers circling my wrist, and pulled me back to the stability of his arms. I looked around. We had somehow managed to move to the center of the crowd, where the sheer volume of the bodies around us would keep even the most experienced eavesdropper from making sense of our conversation.

“Now,” said Sylvester, leaning toward me so that his words fell into the hollow space between our bodies. “Is Lily as bad as her handmaid seemed to fear?”

I nodded. “As bad, if not worse. She’s really, really sick.” I gave a quick run-down of her symptoms.

The muscles around his eyes tightened. “If the Queen—”

“She won’t. But I’m sure you understand why I can’t stay long.”

“I do. If there’s anything we can do, you need only ask. You know that.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it was one I needed to take. “Did Lily ever tell you where she hid her pearl?”

“No.” There was honest regret in his voice. “Your mother might have known, but I never did. Lily and I … respected each other for the shared elements of our past. That didn’t make us friends.”

“Damn,” I muttered. I looked past him, trying to figure out what else to ask, and caught a flash of gold from the other side of the crowd. I frowned. “Who’s that?”

Sylvester didn’t turn. “That would be Raysel.” His voice was flat and impassive.

“Raysel?” I looked closer. He was right; it was her. I guess a conveniently timed summer cold was just a little bit too much to ask.

Rayseline Torquill looked superficially like her father, but where he was understated and elegant, she was gaudy and overdone. The blue rosettes on her gold silk gown clashed with her hair. The bodice was cut too low and the skirt was cut too high, but no one was going to question the Duke’s daughter at her own family’s Beltane Ball. She looked like a tacky costume party rendition of a fairy-tale princess.

Her partner … wasn’t her husband. I stared. He was dressed entirely in blue, and the formal cut of his clothes echoed Quentin’s—but Quentin looked comfortable in his court clothes, and this boy looked like he was longing for jeans. His hair was a rich gold a few shades darker than Raysel’s gown. A pale track of pixie-sweat glimmered in the air behind them as he spun her around the dance floor, expression dour.

“Manuel.” I looked back to Sylvester. “How is he?”

“Doing better. Quentin tells me he was even seen smiling the other night.”

“Good.”

I was a petty criminal in the service of a man named Devin before I was a knight of Shadowed Hills. I went to Devin when Evening was murdered, and the help he gave me included two of the kids who’d replaced me in his entourage: Manuel and his sister Dare. Devin was always a bastard, but I thought he loved me, and I never dreamed he’d betray me. Even after I knew how wrong I’d been, I didn’t know the kids were involved. Not until Manuel pulled a gun.

Devin and Dare both died that night. I lived, and Manuel blamed me. That was okay; I blamed me, too. I should’ve seen the truth sooner, or reacted faster, or …

You can live your life in “should” and never change anything. What’s done is done. We buried our dead. I went home. Manuel went to Shadowed Hills to hate me in peace. We’d been avoiding each other since then, a practice Sylvester was wise enough not to object to. Some wounds only heal with time.

The dance was ending. Sylvester spun me one last time before leading me back to the wall, where he let go of my hands and bowed. I curtsied in return, putting every ounce of courtly courtesy I had into the gesture.

“I would stay,” he said, as he straightened. “But a host’s duties demand I go. Will you consult with Luna before you leave?”

“Absolutely. I’m hoping she might know … something.”

“No rest for the wicked, is there?” He smiled sadly before he turned, slipping into the crowd. The band was striking up a fresh waltz. The dancers swirled around him, and he was gone, leaving me to return to my original position alone.

Someone had shifted my wine to the side to make room for a tray of canapés. I gave it a dubious look, considering the wisdom of drinking something I’d left unattended, and settled for picking it up and putting it on the nearest tray of dishes to be returned to the kitchen. Better safe than really, really sorry. The stem of the glass was coated with powdered sugar from a stack of tea cakes. It came off on my fingers, leaving them gritty. I slipped my hand through one of the slits in my dress and wiped it surreptitiously against my underskirt as I returned my attention to the crowd, scanning for Luna.

May and Jazz flashed past, a streak of black and silver amidst the riot of color, and I smiled. My smile grew as I saw Connor O’Dell—the husband Raysel hadn’t been dancing with—moving toward me, skirting the edge of the crowd with exaggerated care. Selkies tend to be awkward on dry land, and Connor was no exception. He saw me watching, and flashed me a grin that made my knees go weak.

“Hey,” he said, once he was close enough to be heard without shouting. He didn’t bother concealing the worry in his seal-dark eyes. “Is there any news?”

“No,” I said. “I’m heading for the Tea Gardens as soon as I’m finished here. Have you seen Luna?”

“She was with the delegation from Roan Rathad a little while ago.” He grimaced, shoulders dipping upward in an involuntary semi-shrug. I understood the reaction. Roan Rathad was his original home, a mostly Selkie fiefdom that swears fealty to the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. It was Saltmist that decided he was expendable enough to be sold into marriage to a madwoman for political reasons, and Roan Rathad didn’t fight them. I’ve never asked whether it was our relationship that made them see him that way. After all, a man who was willing to sully himself by getting involved with a changeling would probably never marry expediently on his own.

If that’s why they did it, I genuinely don’t want to know.

“That explains the clothes.” I gave him a sympathetic once-over. He was wearing white linen trousers with a smoky blue tunic trimmed in silver; the colors of his particular Selkie clan. He looked like a ghost next to the vibrant colors of the rest of Shadowed Hills. The contrast was a visual reminder of his status in the Court: always an outsider, whether he was technically part of the ruling family or not.

It was also, if I was being entirely honest with myself, a damn good look for him, contrasting with his dark coloring and making him look like a movie star from a 1940s film noir mystery. Very few men can pull off white linen without looking like they’re about to hit the beach, but on Connor, it made him look like he was about to hit the dance floor at some nightclub in Monaco.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged for real this time. “I like your dress.”

“May helped me pick it out.” A new song was starting. “Can you point me in Luna’s general direction?”

“I can do you one better.” He offered his hand, coupling it with a slightly lopsided smile. “May I have this dance?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Fastest route across the floor?”

“You got it.”

“And so do you.” I slid my hand into his. Rayseline was perpetually jealous of my nonrelationship with Connor, but for once, I didn’t feel compelled to refuse the invitation. Turning down a dance on Beltane is an insult almost beyond measure, as is snubbing an old friend. Connor and I could waltz the night away if we wanted to, and Raysel couldn’t say a damn thing about it.

He tugged me onto the floor, still cautious. People parted around us, making room for us to move without knocking into anyone. It helped that he was recognizably a Selkie, with fingers webbed to the first knuckle and short brown hair stippled with gray like the blotches on a seal’s coat—even people who didn’t know that he was the husband of the current Ducal heir would move aside, out of politeness. No one wants to be responsible for causing one of the polite, slightly-awkward sea fae to go sprawling.

I was standing close enough to see the edge-to-edge darkness of his eyes, irises blending seamlessly into pupils. They were the color of the sea at midnight, and just as easy to drown in. I’ve been drowning in those eyes for years. Every time I thought I might be learning to swim, he just smiled at me, and I went under again.

“I know you hate to dance,” Connor murmured, beginning to waltz me in an almost straight line across the floor. “At least you might get the pleasure of seeing me fall on my ass.”

“Oh, right. I guess that’s a fair exchange.”

“Why else would they call us the Fair Folk?”

“Because we steal their kids and cows if they call us fairies?”

“I mean besides that,” he said, and smiled. The expression died quickly. “How bad is Lily really? Don’t lie to me. Please.”

“Bad.” I took a shaky breath, forcing my back to stay straight as I followed him mechanically through the motions of the dance. I could see flashes of night sky through the open doors on the far wall. We’d have a much easier time finding Luna once we reached the terrace outside. “Really bad.”

“Did you ask … ” He glanced around, lowering his voice before he asked, “The Luidaeg?”

“Yeah. She said she couldn’t help me. We’re on our own this time.”

He took an unsteady breath. “Root and branch.”

“My thought exactly. So I’m going to talk to Luna, see if she has any—” I stopped mid-sentence as the scent of familiar magic cut through the air, sharp enough to make my sinuses ache. It was a mix of sulfuric acid and crushed oleanders, as out of place among the delicate perfumes of the dancers as a fox in a henhouse.

Connor blinked as our unsteady waltz came stumbling to a halt. “Toby?”

“Hush,” I hissed, putting all my concentration into trying to follow the scent back to its source. I hadn’t smelled that combination in years, but I would’ve known it even without the immediate, visceral reminder of the dream Karen sent me. I’ll never forget Oleander de Merelands’ magic.

Especially not when it’s coming in with the wind off the terrace.

“What’s going—”

“Call the guards,” I said. “Call Sylvester. Now.” I pulled away without waiting for his reply, gathering my skirts and bolting for the door like Cinderella leaving the ball for the battlefield. Connor shouted something, the exclamations from the dancers I shoved out of my path rendering his words unintelligible. I didn’t stop. Oleander stole my life from me once already. I’d be damned before I let her do it to anyone else.