Page 63 of The Unkindest Tide

Liz cast one last, longing look at her bottle of purple liquid. Then she sighed and started for the door. We followed.

The beach outside was as empty and silent as it had been when we approached. Even our footprints were gone, stolen by the wind blowing off the sea. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the place had been deserted for years—as it would be, after the time of the Selkies ended. Their human children would grow old and die even if they stayed here in the Summerlands, unable to ever truly touch the sea, and the strange, liminal culture the Selkies had crafted for themselves in the gap between humanity and the fae would be lost forever.

Had the Luidaeg known this was going to happen when she’d chosen to preserve the last pieces of her lost children by binding them to living bodies? Had she even suspected she was going to create a population in exile, not quite human, not entirely fae? She was a monster, by her own admission and by her sister’s design. I’d never really considered her cruel. If she hadn’t known, if she hadn’t been able to wrap her immortal mind about the fast, impatient way that mortal beings lived their lives, that was one thing. But if she had done this on purpose . . .

If she had done this on purpose, she was more of a monster than I ever could have believed she’d be.

Liz led us down the row of houses to one identical to her own, raised her hand, and knocked. A long moment passed before the door was cracked open, just wide enough for a man to peer suspiciously out at us.

“It’s Elizabeth Ryan, René,” she said—snapped, really, with a hectic, impatient air that wasn’t going to make this any easier. “I need to talk to your husband. Let me in.”

“There’s a war on, in case you missed the news,” said the man—René—in a mild voice. He had a French accent, as maritime as the winter is long, and a wary air about him, like he expected Liz to shove her way inside. Which maybe he did. I had no idea how she ranked among the Selkie clan leaders, whether she was considered one of the stable ones or whether she was the one the rest of them warned their children about. She was the unfriendly drunk who had mourned for Connor, who had loved the Luidaeg, who had gone to sea to get herself a daughter with eyes as green as an untouched forest. Everything else had been someone else’s problem.

“It’s not a war so much as it’s a series of uncoordinated assassinations, and people are mostly being polite about it,” said Liz. “This is Sir October Daye from Shadowed Hills. She’s a hero of the realm back in the Mists, where my clan is unfortunate enough to rest our rookery, and she has something she wants to say to Mathias. Now are you going to let us in, or are we going to stand out here and make a scene until someone decides they can use the distraction to sneak through your window and steal a few skins?”

Quentin leaned closer to me. “She makes you look like you have manners,” he murmured.

“Quiet, you,” I said.

The door opened wider, revealing a stocky man with blond hair streaked in Selkie gray, and the deep sea eyes characteristic of his kind. The sealskin around his shoulders was almost an afterthought. He could never have been anything but a Selkie.

“You’re Toby Daye?” he asked, focusing on me. His eyes seemed to skip over Quentin, like he didn’t dare look directly at my squire. I swore inwardly. Beacon’s Home was in Halifax. I didn’t know enough about Canadian geography to say for sure how close that was to Toronto, but from the way René was trying not to admit he could see Quentin, I was willing to bet it was close enough that he’d seen the High King and his family at least a time or two. He knew what the Crown Prince looked like.

If this was how Quentin’s blind fosterage was finally spoiled, I was going to laugh until I cried.

“I am,” I said. “Hi.”

“My name is René Lefebvre, but I was born René O’Dell,” he said. “Connor was my cousin. Second cousin, on my father’s side. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

He sounded so sincere, and so genuinely sad about the man I’d mourned and moved on from, that I felt unexpected tears spring to the corners of my eyes. I swallowed my grief, taking what comfort I could from Tybalt’s proximity. Connor was gone. Connor was never coming back. But that didn’t mean I was alone, or that I was ever going to be alone again.

“I appreciate that,” I said. My voice hardly shook at all. Something else to be grateful for, under the circumstances. “Is Mathias home?”

“As if I’d allow him to be anywhere else, or he’d allow the same for me, given the circumstances?” His sadness faded, replaced by exhaustion. “Neither of us is leaving this house for any reason short of danger to the clan itself, and even then, we’ll go together. Why should we let you inside? Connor was a Ryan, by the end. You could be here because you want them to be the last clan standing, and help their leader strip the skins from our bodies.”

“Okay, first, I’m not loyal to any specific Selkie clan; it’s not like Connor and I ever reached the stage of visiting his family for the holidays. Which is almost a pity, because Selkies throw amazing parties, but that’s neither here nor there. Second, I’m engaged, and my fiancé would be cranky if I let the memory of a man he wasn’t exactly friends with muddle my actions.”

“Hello,” said Tybalt.

René blinked. “The rumors are true? You’re really marrying a King of Cats?”

“I’m going to ignore the part where they’re apparently gossiping about me in Halifax, of all places, and move on to my third point. Namely, it doesn’t matter if Liz is trying to trick her way into your house, because I’m not. I’m a knight sworn to the service of Duke Sylvester Torquill and a hero in the service of Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, and neither one of them would put up with me lying my way into a private home.”

Well. Sylvester wouldn’t, anyway. Sylvester had always been very clear on the need for his knights to be honest, chivalrous, and true, and maybe if he’d done a little better of a job at living up to those standards himself—at least the “honest” part—we wouldn’t be functionally estranged. His lies weren’t the only things that complicated our relationship, but wow, had they been enough to do a lot of damage.

Arden had spent over a century hiding in the mortal world, pretending to be a human woman, selling books and sitting for children and generally lying to everyone around her for the sake of staying alive. Her approach to the truth was probably a little more flexible than Sylvester’s, and for good reason.

“Let them in, René,” called a voice from deeper inside. “It’s not as if I wasn’t expecting a challenge.” Mathias sounded . . . smaller, somehow, almost deflated, like all the fight had gone out of him.

René’s fingers tightened on the edge of the door. But he nodded, and said, “Of course, darling,” as he pulled it wider open, and let us step inside.

The front of the little Cape Cod was almost identical to the one where we’d spoken to Liz, which made sense: these weren’t their personal homes. These were temporary quarters maintained by the Duchy of Ships for the comfort of their Selkie guests and the human family members who traveled with them. Mathias and René probably shared a home that was filled with things only they would have chosen, touches and traces of the men they were, the life they shared with one another. This was . . . a motel, practically, a way station between home and harbor.

Mathias was sitting on the couch, a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. It could have been part of the same set Liz was using, and her eyes locked on it almost instantly. His chuckle was both dark and bitter, like strong coffee served on a winter morning.

“Don’t get too excited, Lizzy,” he said, and took a sip. “It’s apple cider. I prefer to keep a clear head when people are trying to do me ill. Although if you’d like something stronger, I can have René fetch it for you. A drunk enemy is a sloppy enemy, and I need all the advantages I can get.”

“Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” Liz spat. “This is your fault.”