Ashes of Honor

“I wouldn’t concern myself if I were you.” Tybalt plucked the coffeepot from my hand, topping off my mug before half-filling his own. “I’ve had sufficient dealings with the Divided Courts to know there would be much more pointless discussion before we reached that point. Unless she has been found guilty of some dire crime and has neglected to tell the rest of us, you can no more be removed from her custody than I can sprout wings and fly off to take tea with the Swanmays.”

“Don’t say that where the Luidaeg can hear you, or she’ll take it as a challenge.” I got the milk out of the fridge. “Quentin, you have my word: I will be your knight until your fosterage ends or you’re ready to graduate to a knighthood of your own. And the only people who get to decide when that is are me, Sylvester, and whoever the hell your parents are.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, smiling.

I rolled my eyes as I dumped milk and sugar into my coffee. “Do the dishes,” I said and turned to leave the kitchen. Tybalt paused long enough to fill his mug the rest of the way with milk before following me, chuckling.

When I met Quentin, he was a fourteen-year-old courtier in service to the Duke of Shadowed Hills. Since then, his association with me has gotten him shot, nearly marooned him in Blind Michael’s lands, and made him an accessory to jailbreak from the Queen’s prison. Somehow, this all made me the best choice to stand as his knight. He’s pureblood Daoine Sidhe—a fact his teen-heartthrob looks, bronze hair, and sharply pointed ears makes difficult to disguise even with magic—and he’s been sent to the Bay Area on a blind fosterage. That means I don’t know who his parents are, and he doesn’t tell me. If a couple of unfamiliar Daoine Sidhe ever show up on my porch and start throwing punches, I think I’ll have a pretty good idea why.

May and Etienne were still at the dining room table when Tybalt and I returned with our coffee. “All right, then,” I said. “So what’s so important?”

This time Etienne did stand. “I need to speak with you alone.”

“Um, why?” I asked. “May lives with me. She’s going to hear whatever you say eventually.” Tybalt didn’t live with me, but I had cats, and that was almost the same thing, as far as gossip goes. Anything Cagney and Lacey overheard would be carried straight back to their King.

Etienne sighed. For the first time, I really looked at his face. I’d been right when I read his expression as discomfort, but I’d been wrong when I assumed he didn’t approve of our housekeeping. There was probably some of that in there, too, but it wasn’t everything. “I know you’ll tell your allies what we discuss,” he said. “Just, please. Let me tell you this alone.”

“Sure, Etienne. Sure.” I turned to Tybalt. “Can you wait here until we come back down? I’d like to catch up a little.”

“It would be my pleasure.” Tybalt smiled before taking Etienne’s vacated seat across from May. “I will remain as long as I must.”

“Cool. I’ll shout if we need anything.” With a final nod to May, I beckoned for Etienne to follow me as I turned and left the room.

Etienne remained silent as we walked up the stairs and down the hallway to the bedroom that served as my home office. I glanced back at him. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said, without hesitation. “I am a long way from ‘okay.’”

“Oh,” I said, opening the office door. “Sorry about the mess.” I clicked on the light before taking a seat at the card table I was using as a makeshift desk. “I promise the chairs are safe. I mean, they haven’t broken yet, and Danny sat in one of them.”

“Where did you find them?” asked Etienne, amazed disgust actually breaking through his shell of discomfort as he stared at the two rickety wooden camp chairs.

“Girl Scout yard sale,” I said. “I’m going to replace them, I just haven’t been able to get to Ikea yet.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway. Take a seat, and tell me what’s up.” I took a gulp of coffee. “You wouldn’t have come all the way out here if it weren’t major.”

“Yes. Major. Yes, I suppose it is, when you put it that way.” Etienne sat on the closer of the camp chairs, running a hand through his brown-black hair. “It’s not as if I drove.”

“Teleporting counts,” I said. Like all Tuatha de Dannan, Etienne could teleport short distances—longer if he was moving between knowes, the hollow hills that conceal the majority of Faerie’s incursions into the mortal world. Traveling from Pleasant Hill to San Francisco would have been a drain, even if it wasn’t a major one. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about whatever this is, that’s fine. I can wait until you do. But I’m going to want to go downstairs and make myself a sandwich.”

Etienne sighed deeply. “October, please. This is hard for me. I know it’s in your nature to needle, but please, just this once, can you try to restrain yourself?”

“I do better when I know what I’m restraining myself for, Etienne,” I said. “If you want me to help you, you need to talk to me.”