Page 16 of The Unkindest Tide

Dean nodded. “She says it’s important to make a good entrance.”

“She would.” Dean’s mother, Dianda Lorden, was the Duchess of Saltmist, the nearest and largest Undersea demesne. It made sense for her to be present. It also made sense for Dean, as someone raised in the Undersea and now holding a title on the land, to be there.

I gave Quentin a sidelong look. His cheeks flushed red.

“I’m still your squire,” he said. “I don’t stop doing my job just because my boyfriend’s here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your boyfriend is always around, and you do your job!”

“She also puts herself constantly into mortal danger, which is why I need to be ‘always around,’ as you so quaintly put it,” said Tybalt. “Do you intend to distress your knight, your parents, and now your swain by putting yourself constantly into mortal danger?”

Quentin swallowed hard. “No, sir.”

“Good.”

I elbowed Tybalt lightly in the arm. “Don’t scare my squire.”

He grinned, showing far too many teeth, and said nothing.

“You’re a little more of a surprise,” I said, turning to Marcia.

She tossed her hair, which was long, blonde, and perpetually tangled, like it was considering an uprising against the tyranny of hairbrushes. “I’m always surprising.”

Marcia was Dean’s seneschal, which was part of my surprise. Normally, if he wasn’t in the knowe, she was, keeping things functioning in the absence of her liege. The rest of my surprise had more to do with what Marcia was than who. She was a changeling, but only technically, and needed faerie ointment to see our world properly. Under normal circumstances, she would never even have been offered the Changeling’s Choice.

I honestly had no idea how Marcia’s past had led her here, to a moon-washed pier at midnight, preparing to sail for a place that technically shouldn’t exist. We’d met when she was serving as a handmaid in the Japanese Tea Gardens, sworn to an Undine named Lily. After Oleander de Merelands arranged Lily’s death, Marcia had switched her fealty to me and Goldengreen. I’d given my title to Dean, and she’d stayed with him, making sure he was prepared for the challenges of leadership on land.

“There is that,” I agreed.

She smiled, bright and blithe and unconcerned, moonlight glinting off the rings of faerie ointment around her eyes. “I like adventures,” she said. “This is going to be an adventure. Besides, Count Clueless here,” she indicated Dean, who wrinkled his nose at her, “needs someone to make sure he wears the right things and uses the right fork. He’s come a long way, but he’s not attending this soiree as a member of the Undersea, he’s doing it as the Count of Goldengreen. That makes a difference.”

“I do much the same for my knight,” said Quentin. Marcia and Tybalt both laughed, and we were fine. This was a good group of people. Together, we could handle whatever the Luidaeg—and the Undersea—wanted to throw our way.

A brief, companionable silence fell, finally broken by the sound of footsteps from the street. Tybalt and I exchanged a glance before the whole group turned, silently waiting to see whether it was something we’d need to worry about.

In a way, it both was and wasn’t. The Luidaeg stepped out of the fog, followed by a woman whose orange hair and eyes could never have let her pass for human, even without the wings. They were large and filmy, colored like stained glass windows bent on representing the whole of the harvest. Her face lit up when she saw us—not as literally as it would have when we’d first met—and she ran over, bare feet slapping against the wood of the pier, to throw her arms around my neck and spin me around.

“We’re having an adventure, aren’t we?” she asked. The question was clearly rhetorical, since she was cutting off most of my air supply. “Out to sea! Out to see the mermaids and the mermans and all the rest! Oh, this is an adventure bigger than any I thought I’d be having, and that’s for certain!”

“Hi, Poppy,” I wheezed, and patted her on the shoulder in the vain hope that it would be enough to make her let go. “What are you doing here?”

“Right now, she’s acting as my apprentice. If she ever wants to have a way to pay me to send her home, she’ll need to make herself useful. This seemed like the sort of place where she could find useful things to do.” The Luidaeg shrugged. “And I didn’t want to leave her in my apartment. She has a nasty tendency to touch things, and she could get seriously hurt.”

“What about Officer Thornton?” asked Quentin.

Officer Thornton was a human policeman who had been accidentally swept into Annwn for a while, and was currently recovering at the Luidaeg’s place. Mortal minds aren’t meant for the deeper realms of Faerie. It was anybody’s guess whether he was ever going to wake up, and what condition his mind would be in if and when it finally happened.

The Luidaeg shrugged again. “He’s not going to wake up while we’re gone.”

Poppy loosened her grip on me, pulling back and beaming. “It’s going to be grand.”

“Sure,” I said, stepping away before she could grab me again.

Poppy is Aes Sidhe—as far as I know, the only Aes Sidhe left. They died out centuries ago. Turns out, they don’t have a Firstborn: they’re made when pixies give up their inherent magic in exchange for something bigger and more complicated. Poppy gave her magic so the Luidaeg could wake Simon Torquill from an enchanted sleep. Now Simon was out there somewhere, doing Maeve-knows-what, while Poppy was stuck in a size that wasn’t natural for her, living with the Luidaeg because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

No matter how good your intentions are, there’s always the possibility that someone is going to get hurt. Someone innocent, who didn’t do anything to deserve it. Poppy was a clear illustration of that unfortunate reality.