Series: October Daye # 15
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: September 14, 2021
Publisher: DAW
Source: Publisher
Genre: Fantasy / Urban Toby’s getting married! Now in hardcover, the fifteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.
It’s
hard to be a hero. There’s always something needing October “Toby”
Daye’s attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in
favor of solving the Kingdom’s problems. That includes the desire to
marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco’s
King of Cats. She doesn’t mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just
sort of…happens. And that’s why her closest friends have taken the
choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High
Court in Toronto. Once the High King gets involved, there’s not much
even Toby can do to delay things…
…except for getting involved in
stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself, destabilizing the
Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting married through nothing
more than the sheer volume of chaos it would cause. Can Toby save the
Westlands and make it to her own wedding on time? Or is she going to
have to choose one over the other?
Includes an all-new bonus novella!
"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions - William Shakespeare, Hamlet"
When Sorrows Come is the Fifteenth installment in author Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. If you told October "Toby" Daye 6 months ago that she would find Oberon, King of all Faerie, and bring him home, she would have likely laughed in your face. If you told her she was going to emancipate herself from her own mother, and stand with Simon Torquill who once turned her into a fish that lasted 14 years, well, she would have stabbed you. If you told her that she was going to marry Rand Stratford aka Tybalt, King of Dreaming Cats, aka the man who she's fallen in love with in Toronto, well, I can't even tell you what she would say.
Needless to say everything I just said, happened. That's why the choice of who is going to control her wedding has been taken completely out of her hands for the sake of everyone. She's not allowed to see her dress thanks to Tybalt. She has no choice in what kind of cake will be baked, or flowers that will be present, all she can do it sit back and let everyone, Tybalt, May, Kerry, and Stacey control every aspect of the wedding including the day she is supposed to get married. Because, come on folks, you know damn well that Toby would likely just run off and get herself into danger or try to remove another King or Queen from power.
One could say that Toby has had a twisted life. She's a changeling who managed to get Knighted. She was then made Countess for like a day or two before giving it up, no, I'm not kidding. She's been named Hero of the Realm which comes with no benefits whatsoever. She's deposed of despots in several realms, including her own which comes with the nickname of king-breaker. She's one of only two Dochas Sidhe in existence which we haven't even talked about what that means in the long term except for annoying people asking for access to her mother.
Thanks to High King of the Westlands, Aethlin Sollys, aka Quentin's father, the right to hold the wedding and wedding party will take place in Toronto. That means crossing dozens of new realms, some of which are hostile to Toby, and finding a way for Toby's closest friends to make their way to the wedding. Once the High King gets involved, there’s not much
even Toby can do to delay things even though she tries to remain confident that the wedding will take place.
Except for the whole assassination attempts on the High Throne itself which were to be blamed on Toby since she's the king breaker, therefore destabilizing the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting
married in one of the craziest weddings you will ever read about. Well, there's the whole Games of Thrones Red Wedding episode..... Holy cats, what a ride. I would go as far as encouraging you to keep reading the the novella called And With Reveling.
There is so much that could happen next. Will Toby finally make up with her wayward daughter Gillian who can't stand the sight of her? Will Toby and August be civil towards each other now that they are standing with Simon? Will Toby and Tybalt ever visit Disneyland? And, can she do it without bringing all the teenagers with her? Lastly, what the hell is going on with Oberon?
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Two
WITH THE DOOR SHUT and them safely trapped
inside with me, the boys seemed to lose a little of their previous
bravado. The one I suspected of being Quentin, despite being the wrong
height, build, and bloodline, turned to look at me. He was still
clinging to Dean’s hand like a lifeline, and for the first time, he
looked genuinely concerned.
Dean, on the other hand, looked like he
was going to lose his most recent meal all over my kitchen floor. I
favored him with a brief smile as I walked past them to the pile of
baked goods May had left on the counter.
“I think these are scones,” I
said. “Anyone care to guess the flavor? May’s been getting experimental
recently. So it could be blueberry or plum or apple, but it could also
be ham and raspberry or ginger and whatever the hell she’s decided is a
complementary flavor this week.”
“Toby…” began the boy who might be Quentin.
“Nope,”
I said, with all the good cheer I could muster. It was a surprising
amount. This was too ridiculous to be anything but abstractly funny.
Either my squire had made an ill-advised deal with the sea witch for
reasons I did not yet fully understand, or his boyfriend had discovered
the single stupidest possible way to try to get out of the consequences
of his own actions. And it didn’t matter which was true because I was
going to have a thrice-cursed scone before I dealt with it. “I just got
up. Breakfast, then horrifying drama.”
Always horrifying drama. In this house, horrifying drama is never a sometimes food.
I
whisked the cloth off the pile of scones, revealing them to the rest of
the kitchen. Even that seemed more dramatic than it necessarily had to
be. The boys’ impending revelation was infecting breakfast. The scones
were pale pink, glittering with yellow sugar, and smelled like one of
Luna’s gardens. I picked one up and sniffed. It smelled sugary, tart,
and floral all at once. I laughed.
“She made rose lemonade scones,” I
reported to the two boys. “Leave it to May to find a way to make even
breakfast seem ominous. Either of you want a scone?”
“I’m good,” said Dean.
“I’d love one,” said the other boy.
“Here
you go.” I dropped the scone onto a plate and passed it to him before
serving myself. May has long since figured out that the best way to get
me to reliably eat is to keep food around the house, already cooked and
ready to be shoved into my face. Scrambled eggs and bacon may be
enjoyable, but they’re not likely—that takes effort. Fresh-baked scones
that someone else did all the work of preparing? I’ll eat those. Same
with coffee that someone else brewed. I may not get the pharmaceutical
benefits of caffeine, but hydration is a good thing.
“October…” began Dean.
“Nope. Still fixing breakfast.”
Both
boys watched helplessly, the one who might be Quentin clutching his
plate, as I prepared my coffee and carried it to the breakfast table,
along with my own scones. I had taken two. Maybe that was greedy of me,
but it’s my house, and I was getting the distinct feeling this was going
to be one of those nights where I didn’t have a lot of time to sit down
and eat.
The boy who was probably Quentin sat across from me,
watching warily as I picked up a scone and took the first bite. He held
his head like Quentin did, a little off-center, like he was expecting
to need to tilt it in disapproval at my antics at any moment. And he had
that Quentin‑y look in his eyes, the one that implied I was about to do
something absolutely appalling that would probably violate about a
dozen rules of hospitality and nearly as many laws of Faerie, either
written or unwritten.
The scone tasted like summertime perfume. I
swallowed thoughtfully, and took a sip of coffee, lingering over the
action. Let them squirm. If they’d done what they were claiming to have
done, they deserved it.
Finally, I put my cup down and focused on the Banshee boy. “Prove you’re my squire,” I said.
“By
the rose and the thorn, the root and the branch, I would need to have a
death wish to pretend to be your squire when I’m not,” he said. “I
swear it on my magic, may it wither in my veins and stop my dancing if I
lie.”
“Nice, and suitably dire,” I said approvingly. “But it proves nothing, especially since my squire, who is smarter than an unnecessary bargain with the sea witch implies,
has magic that smells of steel and heather, while yours…” I breathed in
deeply. “Yours smells of common gorse and vetiver. It’s not even
related.”
He flinched a little. Apparently, that was more of a
transformation than he’d been expecting. But this was the Luidaeg we
were talking about here, and her magic is never just skin-deep. I took
the opportunity to lean forward, breaking off another bite of scone. “So
convince me,” I said, popping it into my mouth.
“Your fiancé is a
total nerd who tried to convince me you’d be fine with him dragging me
to Silences for the weekend to watch a production of Much Ado About Nothing,
and then he said that since back in Shakespeare’s day ‘nothing’ was
slang for female genitalia, it was the most appropriate play for a King
of Cats on the verge of matrimony, since the title is actually Making a Fuss About—”
“Okay,
you’ve met Tybalt,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “And if you are
Quentin Sollys, I have officially ruined the next King of the Westlands.
Prove you know me.”
He looked at me gravely, and said, “The
first time I met you, I had been sent to carry a message from Duke
Sylvester Torquill, which you summarily refused to hear, chiding me for
my attempts to deliver it in the middle of a human neighborhood. I
didn’t know much about humans back then, so I believed you when you
implied that someone might come along and…and overhear something that
would betray the existence of Faerie to the mortal world. I was so
worried I’d fail if I forced you to listen to me, by breaking one of the
oldest rules, and that I’d fail if I didn’t force you, because I’d be
letting a Ducal message go unanswered.” A note of frustrated misery
crept into his tone. “I’d been in Shadowed Hills for almost a year.
Everyone said the Duke was mad, but he’d been better since his wife and
daughter came back, and then they all said it was only you who could
move him to one of those black tempers, where he threw things and
screamed, or tried to read secret messages in the cobwebs, or…”
His
voice trailed off. I fought the urge to prod him to keep going. I’d been
back for six years, and I still knew almost nothing of what it had been
like to live with Sylvester while Luna, Rayseline, and I were all
missing, presumed lost forever. People would only ever tell me that the
Duke had lost his mind, or perhaps lost himself, in the tangled maze of
bereavement and betrayal where he’d been abandoned. Etienne had been
with him the whole time, and still couldn’t speak of those years without
paling and looking away. The general consensus seemed to be that I was
better off for having been somewhere else.
And yet, Sylvester’s
temper and sense of right and wrong had been skewed enough these last
few years that I sometimes felt like I needed to understand the man at
his worst in order to figure out how to live with the person he was now.
The
boy—Quentin, I couldn’t pretend any longer that it wasn’t Quentin—was
looking down at the table, silent. I tapped the edge of my plate with
one fingernail, filling the room with a sharp chime. He glanced up.
“Hey,” I said. “I believe you.”
Some of the tension left his shoulders.
I
wasn’t done. “I believe you have done something very stupid and very
ill-considered, and I’m trying to decide how angry at you I am right
now, so if you would please take a deep breath, tighten any necessary
sphincters, and explain exactly what the fuck it is you were thinking, I might
be less inclined to ground you until your own coronation!” My voice
rose steadily throughout my little rant, until I was almost shouting by
the end.
Quentin flinched again. “Um,” he said.
“Um? That’s what you have to say for yourself? Um? Oh, well, let’s pack in it, folks, everything’s fine, your parents aren’t going to have me tried for treason after all!”
“Treason?” asked Dean.
I turned and glared at him. He quailed, apparently realizing that attracting my attention right now was a bad idea.
“Yes,
Dean, treason,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level. “I don’t know
how you do things in the Undersea, but here on the land, bargaining with
one of the Firstborn to transform the Crown Prince into someone new,
someone who has no blood relation to either the High King or the
High Queen, who cannot possibly inherit the throne that is his by right
of birth, is considered a little bit, I don’t know, treasonous. Since I
already have a reputation for king-breaking, which is entirely unfair
and unearned—”
Quentin made a choked sound that might have been laughter. I shifted my glare briefly to him, and he quieted again.
“—but
is definitely a factor of my life, I need to consider what it looks
like when my squire goes off and pulls this sort of ridiculous stunt for
no good reason whatsoever.”
“But I have a good reason!” protested Quentin.
I
narrowed my eyes at him. “And what could that good reason possibly be?
And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you still haven’t told me the terms
of your bargain with the Luidaeg. I’m about thirty seconds away from
calling her and demanding she transfer your debts to me.”
He blinked. “I don’t really know how that would work…”
I put a hand over my face. “By Oberon’s balls, I need you to tell me that you did not trade your firstborn child to the Luidaeg in exchange for the ability to attend my wedding.”
“I
didn’t. And it’s really weird hearing you swear by someone we’ve met.
Even if he still hasn’t really acknowledged that I exist, or talked to
me, or anything like that.”
I lowered my hand. “Noted. Tell me what
you paid first, and then tell me why you thought this was a good idea.”
Dean made a sound of protest. I held up one finger, signaling him to
silence, while continuing to glower at Quentin. “Now, please.”
“I,
um, I traded her my identity for a new one, and I get the
counter-draught that gives my real face and everything else back after I
see you get married. Which means I have to attend the wedding, and we
both have to be alive when you take your vows. And it seemed like a good
idea because…” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “Because you’re my mom,
Toby. I have a mother, I love her, but she stopped being there for me
seven years ago, and it’s been you almost the whole time since then.
You’re my knight and my responsible adult and my mom. I know someone’s going to try to kill you at your own wedding! I’ve met you, I know how your life works, and you’re my mom. I have to be there. I’m your squire. I’d be failing you completely if I wasn’t there.”
I
stared at him, barely aware that my eyes had started to burn with
unshed tears. Then I blinked and they were rolling down my cheeks, salt
painting my lips and overwhelming the taste of lemon sugar. I put my
coffee cup down again and leaned back in my chair, opening my arms.
That
was all the invitation Quentin needed. He flung himself out of his own
chair and into mine, sending me rocking back, although the counter was
close enough that we didn’t—quite—topple to the ground. He pressed his
face into my shoulder as he slung his arms around my neck, and I closed
my own arms around him, and held that boy as tight as I dared. I was
still crying, a slow leak that felt almost insufficient for the moment.
This should have been a huge, dramatic thing, all racking sobs and
blood.
Maybe my standards are skewed.
