A ripple moved through the gathered court, subtle but unmistakable. Tate felt every eye on him as the crowd parted before them, watched heads come together, elbows finding inattentive neighbors, ensuring that every member of Her Majesty’s retinue was alert and ready for the spectacle to come.
“Straighten up.Walk. Don’t sulk.”
The voice at his shoulder was low, for his ear only. It was very nearly paternal. Tate might have snorted if his face were not already schooled into the impassive mask he wore on this side of existence.
It was strange, this dance they did. This paradox into which they’d been thrust, unwillingly together. They both knew what was happening, after all, how this was being directed. For all his cruelty and power, Cadoc was bound to his queen, as Tate was bound to him. Puppets, both of them, their strings being pulled by the capricious, childish monarch on the throne ahead, and there was only one way this could end. Tate knew it, as did the consort.
Everyone in the crowd knew it as well.
“You look absolutely wretched. Have I mentioned that yet? You wear this mortal skin poorly. The other side does not agree with you, sweetling, no matter how enamoured you are of it.”
Tate wanted to answer. He wanted to respond that this bit of age he’d accumulated actually suited himquitewell, that it gave him substance and a center. The tiny lines that had begun to settle around his tapered eyes and wide mouth were proof that he had survived this long, that he’d very nearly lived an actual life on the other side. The furrow between his brows was a symbol of the tight management he kept on everything, even when the pull of this place threatened to make him spin wildly out of control. He’d very nearly combusted the day he thought he’d found a silver hair lurking at his temple, but it had only been a bit of flour. A disappointment, in all honesty.
But he didn’t say any of the things he was thinking, didn’t say anything at all. His voice wouldn’t have carried back to Cadoc’s ear, not with the din of music and chatter throughout the hall, and besides. That part of Tate’s existence wasn’t forhim.
They did not begin moving until the crowd had nearly parted entirely, the raised platform where she sat just ahead. Cadoc’s presence beside him altered the attention from the crowd, refracting it into something more than the idle curiosity Tate might have garnered on his own.
If Cadoc had been literallyanyone else, anyone but the fucking villain who’d molested his grandmother and stolen him away from his family, and now the cunt who’d threatened his Silva, Tate might have found the power his grandsire wielded over the frenzy of Autumn admirable.
The fae who lived in this realm had been spoiled by abundance and made cruel from the lack of wanting and the unceasing hunt. They were all likely suffering a debilitating vitamin D deficiency, and Tate wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the entire kingdom of Autumn had rickets, but they were kept well in line. Cadoc wore his authority the way he wore his blade — openly and without apology. Even as they walked now, his hand rested at his hip, fingers relaxed over the hilt, a tacit reminder of the constant threat provided by his mere existence.
All along the great hall, tables were piled with the spoils of that abundance. There was a veritable mountain of vegetables, whole pompions, roasted meat glistening with fat, a swan roasted in its plumage here, a suckling pig there. Apples split and glazed with honey, wine so dark it was nearly black.
Tate pursed his lips. He would let his tongue desiccate and wither away before he sampled a single drop or crumb of any of it. The peanut butter had served a purpose.
The rest of the crowd parted, hastily moving out of their way, and there she was. She was unchanged from the last time Tate had been here.
Wild red hair, the color of a sunset, spilling over her shoulders in a tumultuous tangle, intricate braids keeping it off her doll-like face, its length grazing the floor around her throne. Amidst the puddle of her curls around her feet sat a fox of the same color, watching them unblinking with golden eyes. On her head sat the crown of autumn, towering antlers set with twisting branches and blood red leaves, one branch heavy with apples, a bird’s nest cradled in moss, the eggs within it long since opened, their inhabitants gone.
Her eyes were like emeralds, heterochromia splitting them in a golden starburst, her lips full and stained red from the wine she drank. One half of her porcelain-like face was painted in gold, the whisper-thin outline of a skull, a reminder to all of what they were. Her smile split wide, long canines glinting in the lamplight, practically bouncing in her seat as they approached.
This was it, Tate thought. The moment of truth. He couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t execute him right here and now.
“Beloved,” she called out, voice ringing. She did not rise, letting the mere act of speaking do the work for her. Predictably, the hall went silent.
Tate stopped at the foot of the dais and bowed without flourish or humility. “My Queen.”
Her eyes traced him openly. “You’ve returned to us at last.” Her eyes were bright and her smile still stretched, but Tate heard the reproach for what it was. “You’ve changed. This mortal world dulls your shine.”
He could be careful and obsequious, and would have done so anywhere else. That wasn’t whatthisqueen liked, though. “I’m sure the moonlight will have me back to normal in short order.”
She hummed her laughter, still looking him over carefully. Her eyes were bright, but that couldn’t be trusted, he knew.
“Did you enjoy your time away, sweetling? You’ve been misplaced for so very long.”
“Have I?” Tate shrugged noncommittally. “It’s hard to gauge what constitutes along timehere. And I never leave without permission, my Lady. If I was misplaced, it was someone else who did the misplacing.”
He could feel Cadoc’s glare without needing to see it. For the first time since he’d arrived in Autumn, Tate smiled an actual smile, glinting and malicious.
The Queen laughed again, delighted. “See?” she said, gesturing at Tate as though he were a particularly clever squirrel. “Headstrong. This is why Iadorehim.”
She rose, kicking the fox lightly until it moved with her, tossing a cascade of tangled curls over her shoulder. Cadoc had already ascended the dais, but now he stopped, hovering between his seat and the staircase, nearly faltering. Not quite . . . but nearly. Tate didn’t miss it.
“You were bored, weren’t you, sweetling?” Her voice resembled a pouting child, or, as ifhewere the child, Tate realized, speaking as if she were eliciting from him a confession of bad behavior. She had drifted to the front of the dais, right before him, and they were nearly nose-to-nose. “And you thought freedom lived on the other side. Is that it?”
The hall leaned in, the court hungry for a confession.
“I thought it might.”
