Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Sorcha
Washington was hot, humid, and generally miserable.
But at least the accommodations were good.
Ansel had sent word ahead to three Elven brothers who did occasional intelligence work for the Outer Court.
And so instead of trying to find a room or negotiating with innkeepers, we found ourselves readily welcomed into a warm, prettily furnished bookbinding and printshop.
Etienne, Claude, and Henri had been working with the Outer Court longer than I had been alive.
All three had pale skin, dark hair, and light brown eyes the color of cut citrine.
Etienne was the shortest by a significant margin, and Claude and Henri were nearly indistinguishable but for Claude’s seeming preference for brighter-colored suits.
And they were elated to play host for the next two nights while Neal arranged transit north and rooms in New York and I got some much-needed time to sleep.
“Ansel,” Claude said when they arrived, pulling the other man into a quick embrace. “You’ve brought royalty to us!”
“Lady Sorcha!” Etienne exclaimed, dipping his head and kissing my hand. I froze.
I’d been through a lot in the last six months—accepting honors and courtesies hadn’t been part of it.
“We are so happy to have you here,” Henri said. “Let me show you upstairs. And then just let us know anything you need and we can run out to fetch it.”
I shot a glance at Neal, utterly shocked. “They want us here.”
“They work for you, love,” Neal murmured, a hand on my back as he ushered me inside.
The brothers’ storefront was relatively small, but the workshop behind and living quarters above were expansive, spanning nearly a quarter block. The entire place smelled like leather and ink and paper. I fell in love with it instantly.
And they had dogs, three of them, basset hounds with giant ears and wrinkly faces and loving eyes who took to shadowing me the moment I walked in.
“She needs new clothes,” Ansel told Etienne and Claude as we made our way through the space.
“We all do. But her most of all. One dress will get us to New York and a corset better suited for this weather, linen for the dress. Please? I’m tired of this shit they pass for cotton west of the Mississippi. ”
“We’ll take care of it,” Etienne assured him.
“She’s ill,” Ansel said. “Goes without saying given the baby.”
He dug in his pockets and found the list Neal had made of the food I’d had successfully kept down in the last few weeks.
“If you can manage,” Ansel said, “I’d rather she rest properly before we get on the ship up in New York.”
“It’d be an honor, Ansel,” Claude said. “We were devastated to hear about Cormac. And we’re more than happy to host his successor. Successors, I suppose.”
“Once they head to bed tonight I’ve plenty of news,” Ansel said. “Portals. Demons. Lots for you to keep an eye out for.”
“At your service as always, Ansel,” Etienne said.
“This is Etienne’s room,” Henri said when he showed us upstairs, “but it’s for you two until you leave.
I’ll let you get settled. Someone will call you when dinner is ready.
And if you’d like anything to read I can go down and fetch it.
There’s water in the bath through there and a stove to heat it if you’d like. Just shout if you need me.”
And with that, he ducked out the door.
I looked around, taking in what was undoubtedly the nicest room I’d ever stayed in—including my own home back in Santa Fe.
The walls were papered in pale blue with a faint iridescent stripe.
There were thick, heavy wool rugs—clearly imported—a proper four-post bed piled with pillows, vanity with a mirror, and framed watercolor paintings on the walls—cliffs, lighthouses, one of a big English country estate.
“Neal.” My voice had a hazy quality to it and his head snapped up immediately.
“You alright?” he asked, dropping our bags and instantly bringing his hands up to cup my face.
“We’re okay?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s going to be fine.”
“I mean right now though . . .” I trailed off. “It’s all actually okay. We’re dry and safe and warm and someone’s cooking dinner and . . .”
“You’ve more than earned it,” Neal said, pulling me into his chest and kissing my head. “I’ll go heat water and you can get a bath.”
“You think I can really ask for books?” I asked as he pulled away.
“I think you’re their sovereign,” Neal chuckled. “Go ask. Relax. Have fun. Ansel and I have everything in hand.”
I woke the next morning feeling truly rested for the first time in months. The bed was comfortable. The house felt safe. All three dogs lay flopped at my and Neal’s feet, snoring gently. I could faintly smell tea and blueberries from downstairs.
Neal was still fast asleep beside me, curled up at my back with an arm draped over my waist to cradle my belly. And I was so incredibly grateful. The dark circles under his eyes had been worsening by the day. I knew he didn’t sleep well if he worried I wasn’t safe.
So I shifted, quiet and careful not to wake him, grabbed one of the books off the pile Henri had brought up the night before and settled in to read until someone came and told us it was time for breakfast.
Someone knocked on the door half an hour later. Neal startled awake, looking stunned that he’d slept later than me.
“You deserved it,” I murmured, settling beside him in bed again and running a hand through his hair. “You’ve barely slept.”
“Thank you,” Neal said gently. The knock on the door sounded again.
“Can you get it?”
Neal nodded and stumbled out of bed, the dogs trailing on his heels. Henri stood smiling on the other side of the door. He had a big mug of tea in one hand and a dressmaker’s box in the other.
“Ansel said she’d want these before she came down,” he said. “Does she like the books?”
“She does,” Neal assured him. “We’ll be down in another half an hour.”
“Would you like me to take the dogs?” Henri asked. “They didn’t bother you?”
“Not at all,” Neal said. “I promise.”
He closed the door behind him and handed me the mug of tea.
“How sick are you this morning?” he asked as he set the box on our bed and opened it.
“Not very,” I said. “I think the travel and sleep deprivation are at least half of it.”
“Duly noted,” Neal said as he unwrapped the dress Henri brought.
He held it up—plain-weave linen in a burnt orange and ivory stripe.
It’d be easy for travel and would comfortably get me up to New York.
Once we were there and knew what absurd social calendar the local aristocracy had put together, I could find others to augment it.
“That look like it fits?” Neal asked.
I nodded.
“The color is good too,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s cotton?”
“Linen,” Neal agreed.
“Oh thank goodness,” I laughed.
“Want me to help you get dressed?” Neal asked as he helped me back out of bed, pressing a kiss to my forehead, then my lips.
“I’ve got it,” I assured him. “Go get changed. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
I slipped downstairs and into the kitchen, in a properly good mood for the first time since we’d left Santa Fe, definitely since Ansel had arrived, maybe since my father died.
Neal was still getting dressed in our room and preparing a long list of telegrams to send out to New York ahead of our arrival.
But the smile evaporated off my face when I saw the tall, unfamiliar, dark-haired Elven man standing in the kitchen.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
Etienne wrung his hands and glanced over at me apologetically.
Ansel pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed before replying, “He is from the Inner Court. And he has come bearing letters from Iksura—yes plural, four of them—still encouraging annulment and remarriage, still encouraging doing away with your baby, and strongly suggesting you accept either a marriage proposal or a regency with vague but clearly threatening consequences.”
The envoy stepped forward. His hair was starting to grey at his temples, showing wrinkles on his forehead—likely past five hundred.
“We’d deeply appreciate your compliance,” he said, voice eerily smooth and even.
“I’m a surgeon and a healer. I can take care of the little .
. . indiscretion with your servant boy .
. . and then bring you back to Europe to select a more suitable partner.
We’d like to avoid any continued . . . corrupting influence from MacCairn and O’Faelen.
Or, of course, I can write back to find a suitable regent.
Though that is not our most esteemed High Lady Iksura’s preference, it does remain an option if you insist on continuing in your current domestic affairs. ”
Anger swept through me like a physical force. Warmth blossomed in my belly and spread up to my chest, my cheeks. Not flush from upset or embarrassment—magic—summoned without any conscious thought.
I fought down the urge to scream. Then I felt something soft and strange pull at the edge of my power.
I latched onto it, and suddenly a wolf spider the size of my hand tumbled out of the kitchen rafters onto the man’s head.
The shriek he emitted bordered on inhuman, and I suppressed a chuckle at his distress.
Neal sprinted down from our bedroom, drawn by the scream, and stopped dead.
“I didn’t think we’d have a visitor,” he said from the bottom of the stairs.
“We don’t,” I replied. “He’s just leaving.”
The surgeon brushed frantically at the spider on his face. It didn’t move.
“Unless you’d like me to see what else I can summon from the rafters?” I suggested.
The surgeon frantically shook his head, bobbed a bow, and immediately stammered, “I w-will be g-going n-now. Right now. No need for escalation, Lady Sorcha. None at all.”
Ansel spent the better part of that day sending telegrams back and forth to our base in New York, telling them what Iksura had done—here, on the boat in the Gulf, in Houston, at the mission out in the Texas desert—and to start searching legal precedent ahead of our arrival.
I sent notes checking in with our field operatives that morning, asking after any complex supernatural upset that needed my input and then took the afternoon to sit in the quiet yard behind the printshop with the basset hounds and a stack of books.
The next morning Neal was up before me, and I balked when I got downstairs and saw what Ansel had laid out on the breakfast table.
“I said no.”
“And here we go,” Neal muttered, rubbing his temples.
Six pistols lay on the table. And none of them was Neal’s or Ansel’s. They had to be for me.
“I said no.”
“And it’s my literal job to make sure you don’t die,” Neal said. “So I overruled that decision.”
“Excuse me?”
Henri, Claude, and Etienne ducked out, muttering something about ink and a new customer.
“I’m not doing this,” I said.
“You are, lass,” Ansel insisted. “We’ve even brought options.”
“No,” I snapped.
“Iksura is not playing games,” Ansel said sharply. “You don’t get to put yourself and the Court at risk out of petty disagreement, lass.”
“It’s not petty disagreement,” I protested, hands starting to shake now. “I won’t do it.”
“Yes you will,” Neal said, tone gentler now, catching my wrists. “You’re going to eat breakfast. And then we’re going out back and we’re finding one of these that you don’t hate. Because you are not dying out of spite. Understood?”
I shook him off.
“Fine,” I muttered, sitting down and shoving the guns out of the way, “but do not mistake my compliance for genuine agreement.”