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Kaye saw odd things sometimes. She’d learned to ignore them.
Gristle would have loved this. She had thought that many times since she had left the Shore, six years past. My imaginary friends would have loved this. She’d thought it the first time that she’d seen the city, lit up like never-ending Christmas. But they never came when she was in Philadelphia. And now she was sixteen and felt like she had no imagination left.
The white horse rose on unsteady legs in her mind. The great bulk of the animal was real and warm beneath her. She wove her hands in the mane and gripped hard, slightly aware of a prickling feeling all through her limbs. The horse whinnied softly beneath her, ready to leap out into the cold, black water. She threw back her head.
He saw her emerge from under the canopy of branches and smiled. His eyes seemed darker in the moonlight. “Were I you, I would stay clear of the Folk in the future. We are a capricious people, with little regard for mortals.”
But just for tonight, she allowed herself to think of him, to think of the solemn, formal way he had spoken to her, so unlike anyone else. She let herself think of his flashing eyes and crooked smile.
All day and all night my desire for you unwinds like a poisonous snake. —SAMAR SEN, “LOVE”
For a moment, she had thought that the face she saw in the mirror was pale green with ink-drop black eyes.
Roiben’s eyes darkened with fury. “Rath Roiben Rye, much may the knowledge please you.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a nice name.” “You are too clever by half. Too clever for your own good, I think.” “Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye.”
“Once, there were two nearby low courts, the bright and the dark, the Seelie and the Unseelie, the Folk of the air and the Folk of the earth. They fought like a serpent devouring its own tail, but we kept
from their affairs, kept to our hidden groves and underground streams, and they forgot us. Then they made truce and remembered that rulers must have subjects, especially if they wish to avoid the reach of the High Court of Elfhame. There is such a habit of service among us.”
“They brought back the Tithe, the sacrifice of a beautiful and talented mortal. In the Seelie Court they may steal away a poet to join their company, but the Unseelie Court requires blood. In exchange, those who dwell in Unseelie lands must bind themselves into service. Their service is hard, Kaye, and their...
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“The Unseelie Court is terrible, terrible and dangerous. And of the Unseelie Court, no knight is as feared as… the one you spoke with. When the truce was made, each of the Queens exchanged their best knights—he was the offering from the Seelie Court. The Queen sends him on the worst of her errands.”
“Let me just speak another secret then, child, since this one eludes you. If you think on it, I’m sure that you’ll admit there’s something passing strange about you. A strangeness, not just of manner, but of something else. The scent of it, the spoor of it, warns Ironsiders off, makes them wary and draws them in all the same.”
The kelpie circled the wooden thing, snuffling appraisingly. “More, I think. Crippled things are always more beautiful. It’s the flaw that brings out beauty.”
A clever girl and a kind one. Those simple words had sped her heart in a way she didn’t like at all.
Roiben stood on her left side, his clothes all of a dark silver fabric that managed to look like cloth and metal at the same time. Jagged freshwater pearls circled his collar and cuffs, reminding her of teeth. He looked magnificent, shining like the moon herself. He was as distant as the moon too, expressionless and grim.
What he remembered most now, however, were the treewoman’s last words to him, spoken as mossy fingers scraped his cheek and thick sap ran from the many cuts in her body. “Don’t envy the dying,” she had said. You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.
He thought absently that he would like to braid that hair the way he had once braided his sister’s.
The twilight holds as many truths as the dawn, perhaps more, since they are less easily perceived. No, I do not think that I would be welcomed back, now that I can see that.”
“Cut me and I weep tears as red as my flesh, yet my heart is made of stone. Pray tell, mortal girl, what am I?”
“I haven’t cut it since you left.” The woman turned to Kaye. “I heard my brother barely introduce you to the Queen. My question is—is Roiben trying to protect us from you or you from us?”
“I’m here because you are kind and lovely and terribly, terribly brave,” he said, voice pitched low. “And because I want to be.”
Roiben’s sister let herself be embraced and drawn away with the rest of the Seelie Court. She never saw the cruel smile that played on the lips of the Seelie Queen nor the way her eyes met Roiben’s over his sister’s bent head.
“I am your servant,” the King of the Unseelie Court said, his lips a moment from her own. “Consider it done.”
