“I know you’re awake, little fish,” said Tybalt softly. “Would you like to discuss what’s troubling you, or would you prefer to play at slumber?”
I winced. “How long have you been awake?”
“Not long,” said Tybalt. He ran a hand across my hair. The cats made small grumbling noises and got up, prowling down to settle at the foot of the bed, well away from any potential activity.
“Are you lying?” I rolled onto my side, so we were almost nose-to-nose.
Tybalt smiled. “Small untruths between lovers are not necessarily lies; sometimes they can be considered a form of kindness.”
I considered this and sighed. “Right. Kindness. I’m . . . I’m all right, I think. This is a good thing. We’re bringing back the Roane. We could use a little prophecy in our lives right now. Maybe if we hadn’t lost them, we wouldn’t have been caught flat-footed when Janet broke Maeve’s last Ride, and things wouldn’t be so messed up.”
“Ah, but if not for Janet, your mother would never have been born, and if not for your mother, you would never have been born, and perhaps I am a selfish man, but I prefer a world that has you in it.” He leaned closer, until his nose actually touched mine. “Must I begin quoting sweet William before you’ll believe me?”
“How did I wind up falling in love with such a nerd?” I asked.
He smirked. “Luck.”
I laughed. “Right. Luck. Luck, and bleeding all over you way too many times for comfort, and a lot of other unpleasantness, but we’ll roll with the one that doesn’t ruin the upholstery.” I sobered, looking at him. “Don’t you wonder, sometimes, what it would have been like if we hadn’t lost them? If, I don’t know, Janet had broken the Ride but not so badly that Maeve . . . well, that whatever happened to Maeve happened? Maybe things would be better.”
“Or perhaps you would never have been born because your mother would have been treated as a proper Firstborn princess, regardless of her maternity, and never encountered a human man, nor deigned to let him touch her.” Tybalt ran a hand almost reverently down my cheek. “I am younger than the loss of the Three, but older than you.”
“Very aware, and just human enough that it sort of creeps me out if I think about it too hard, so if we could not talk about your age in bed, that would be awesome,” I muttered.
Tybalt laughed, once, sharply. “Oh, October, I look forward to the day when there are so many centuries between us that the existence of the years I spent without you is no longer of any importance or concern.”
“That day is not today,” I said.
“Indeed.” He stroked my cheek again. “When I was a boy, quests to find our missing King and Queens were common. A good way of burning off extra, unwanted heirs, on the chance that your bed was blessed enough to get them. Too many good fae were lost, and not only from the Divided Courts, for with the loss of the Three, the surviving Firstborn began to go as well, and we were not as settled in the idea of ruling ourselves then as we are now.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there has never been a High King of Cats, but once, men such as my father would have been unable to run their Courts as petty dictatorships. Malvic himself would have stepped in and stopped the cruelties, and he would have been allowed to do so, because we were in the habit of obedience. Our Firstborn, when they walked the world, did so as judge and jury—and while they may have kept us kinder with one another, they also kept us as children. We never learned the ways of self-control, for there was no need to do so.”
“Huh,” I said. “Evening must have loved that.”
“Given her descendants, I’d suppose she still does.” He offered a small smile as he sat up. “Now that you’re well and truly distracted, are you prepared to tell me what’s actually bothering you, or shall I dredge up more ancient history and pretend it passes for pillow talk?”
“Bastard.” I swatted him in the arm as I sat up.
His laughter was sincere, and enough to melt away a bit more of the tension in my shoulders and back. If Tybalt was laughing, the world couldn’t be that bad. “My father took no wife, and I never met my mother. He bought me from her when I was but a kitten, and my eyes not yet opened. My sister went back when she was older, after I was King in my own right, but it was too late; the woman who bore us had already stopped her dancing.”
Meaning, in the often complicated parlance of the pureblooded fae, that she’d died. I blinked once, trying to decide whether saying I was sorry would be appropriate. He didn’t seem upset, and there was no way of knowing how many centuries ago this had happened. Not without asking, and that would take us even farther down the path of “things I really would prefer not to discuss in the bedroom, thanks” than we’d already gone.
Pushing the covers back, I swung my feet to the floor and looked at my knees as I said, “I’m out of time. I have to go see Gilly today, and I’m not ready. I was . . .” I hesitated. Admitting this felt like cowardice; lying to Tybalt after everything he’d been through at my mother’s hands felt even worse. “I know she’s been going to see Elizabeth Ryan to learn how to be a better Selkie, and I guess I was hoping Liz would let something slip about what was coming. I mean, it would make sense, right? For her teacher to be the one who told her.”
“And not her still semi-estranged mother. I can understand that.” Tybalt shifted positions, settling next to me and rubbing my back with one hand, forming small, concentric circles. I was never going to get tired of the way he wanted to be always touching me, taking the social grooming of cats and extending it in a form my bipedal mind could easily comprehend. “But you are her mother, October. Whether she’s mortal, fae, or in the middle, you’re the one who bore her, and you never intended to give her up. That means something. That means you have a responsibility to her, and she a responsibility to you. If you come to her with information, she should listen.”
I took a deep, shaky breath, leaning into his hand. “Will you go with me?” I asked. “To tell her she’s going to have to choose whether she wants to die or lose her humanity forever?”
“Certainly, I will.” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “But you’re better equipped for this conversation than you think you are, my love. You’ve faced this choice, and you chose survival. She’ll choose the same. She may not care much for your company at the moment. She’s still your daughter, and that makes her a fighter.”
“I hope so.” I got up. “No time like the present, I guess.”
Selkies, like seals, are largely diurnal. It was a problem back when Connor and I were dating. Connor O’Dell had been a Selkie diplomat, assigned to the Court of Shadowed Hills back when assigning diplomats to the Queen’s Court had been a waste of time and resources. He’d been good at his job, so good that he’d eventually wound up married to Sylvester’s daughter as part of a carefully orchestrated political alliance. We’d become lovers after the marriage ended—and very nearly before, a fact that I wasn’t entirely proud of.