Page 42 of The Unkindest Tide

She caught my hand. Effortlessly, stopping me in mid-motion, sending a bone-jarring shock up my arm and into my shoulder.

“What,” she said flatly. It wasn’t a question. I would have liked it better if it had been a question. Irritable, artificially annoyed Luidaeg was something I knew how to deal with. This . . .

She looked exhausted. She looked resigned. Worst of all, she looked sad, like she’d already considered all the ways this might play out, and had found absolutely no happy endings.

Screw that. She was bound not to act against the children of Titania. I had no such restrictions. The Lordens weren’t mine the way Tybalt and Quentin and even Marcia were, but they were my friends. They had put themselves at risk for me before, and I’d be damned before I failed to do the same for them.

“You said we had two days before the Convocation would conclude and the Selkies would be bound to their skins,” I said. “Is there anything else you’re going to need me to do between now and then, or am I free to wander around as I like?”

She blinked once before saying warily, “You’re free to wander, although with Pete gone, there’s not a ferry back to the Mists. And that’s not an invitation to steal a ship and go by yourself. I don’t want to answer to Pete when she demands to know why you’re commandeering her ships.”

“No, that’s going to be you.”

“What?”

I took a deep breath. “We pass debts back and forth between us like some kind of toy. Now I owe you, now you owe me. This, helping you bring back the Roane, it clears the debts I incurred from you when you helped me to save Tybalt’s life. We’re square. Right?”

“Right,” she said, sounding even warier.

She was probably right to be suspicious. What I was about to ask for existed somewhere in the strange hinterland between ridiculous and suicidal, and honestly, it wouldn’t even have been that reasonable if I hadn’t been so difficult to kill.

“Luidaeg, I need your help.”

“What happened to leaving me alone because I was here to bury my children?” she asked.

“If I leave you alone, he buries his son.” I gestured behind me, toward Patrick. “That changes things. Please, Luidaeg. We’re both parents. We can’t let someone else lose a child.”

She started to answer me. Then she stopped, sighed, and asked, “What are you planning to do?”

“Do you remember the time you turned me into a Merrow so I could go to Saltmist? I need you to do it again, so I can go save Peter Lorden. And while I’m doing that, I need you to commandeer a ship and go find your sister.”

The Luidaeg cocked her head hard to one side, a genuinely baffled expression on her face. “Why the fuck would you want me to do that? Self-sacrificing behavior from you, sure, I expect that, and we’ll loop back in a second, but why are you sending me after Pete? So we can drink mimosas and talk about how annoying our father’s other kids are? And his grandkids? Because believe me, you’re annoying on a level I doubt Oberon ever conceived.”

“Patrick says the Merrow have their own interpretations of the Law,” I said. “He says they don’t require a formally declared war to kill each other.”

She nodded. “That’s right. They worked that out with Dad and Pete a long time ago, back when everybody was still in play. The Merrow are . . . volatile. I think it’s because Titania’s brand of magic doesn’t like to be submerged, and they’re inherently damp people. So they got the rules changed for them. Why?”

“Peter Lorden,” I said again, with as much patience as I could muster. We were wasting time. I needed to be gone. But I needed the Luidaeg to help me—willingly—and that meant making sure she understood what I was asking her to do. “He’s just a kid, but he’s Merrow.”

“Ah.” She looked at me gravely. “He’s worse than Merrow in their eyes. He’s a Merrow who can’t completely transform. He always has scales, like a common Suire—you’ve never met one,” she added, seeing my confusion. “They’re not shapeshifters. They don’t come to the surface much anymore. Peter is weak as far as the Merrow are concerned. He shows them in a poor light. Normally, I’d expect a conqueror to keep him alive to show they aren’t monsters, just people who have a better claim to ruling the local demesne than the old rulers did. Given Peter’s limitations, however . . .” She hesitated, eyes flicking past me.

She was looking at Patrick. I knew she was. And that was part of how I knew that the Luidaeg was not and could never be the monster some people believed her to be. She was a parent. She cared enough not to say certain things where another parent could hear them.

“Right now, Torin’s forces have Saltmist, but they haven’t had it long; there’s still a chance,” I said, dragging the Luidaeg’s attention back to me. “I’m a hero of the realm, Dianda and Patrick Lorden are friends of mine, and the charges Torin is levying against his sister are trumped-up at best, completely false at worst.”

“If he wins, you’re committing an act of war against the Undersea,” said the Luidaeg.

“If he wins, I’m pretty sure he’s committing an act of war against the Mists, since Patrick and Dean are considered nobles on the land.” Patrick had given up his title when he married Dianda, but that didn’t matter. If Torin messed with his family, Arden would find a way to justify striking back.

That would be bad. That would be really, really bad. I needed to fix this as soon as possible, and not just for Peter’s sake. For everyone’s.

The Luidaeg pinched the bridge of her nose. “And so you want me to turn you into a mermaid, while I leave the Duchy of Ships to convince my sister to do what none of us has done in centuries, and actually command a member of her descendant race to do something. Specifically, ‘stop bullying your sister.’”

“Right.”

“Even for you, this is ridiculous.”

“Again, right.”