Technically, you didn’t.

Croi doesn’t dignify the comment with an answer.

The Tine servant kin unload carts full of gifts brought for the Talamh court; Croi wonders what Aodh feels for the Robber Queen. More importantly, where is Irial? Croi cranes her neck, looking at the many faces present, wondering if there are any among them that she recognizes.

“The ceremonial Welcome of the Three. Remember I told you about them?” Tinder replies to Croi’s previous question. “Who are you looking for?”

“I’m trying to see if there’s a familiar face in the crowd,” Croi replies, her attention caught by a kin wearing a dress made of peacock feathers. His hair, too, is in the same shades as his dress. Another kin is dressed in a sheet made of tiny gold stones linked together by some kind of filigree. Her headpiece is made of emeralds.

“Look, they’re here!” Tinder says, hopping up and down on Croi’s shoulder.

Three fae women, wreathed in garlands made of small red flowers, approach the fire king and princess, who stand at the head of the procession. The fae women are dressed in gowns made of scraps of trees: twigs, leaves, vines, and bark. Their skins are dark brown with a filigree of gold that Croi recognizes as their magick. Their eyes are the same gold ringed by a thick green. They stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the king and the princess, their backs straight and their eyes downcast. They have delicate, slightly avian features, and their hair is a speckled nimbus, with patterns that resemble the feathers on sparrows.

“Who are they?” Croi whispers.

“Half-kin. One of their parents is from the Aer kingdom. They’re enacting what the Guardian dryads used to do in the ancient times.”

The fae women start singing, taking care of the whispers that buzzed like bees and were just as annoying. They sing pure, crystalline notes, coaxing up the magick from the earth. Croi watches with some fascination as the women try, and fail, to manipulate the earth magick into the shape of a physical key. Though their song is more beautiful than any Croi has ever heard before, their magick is weak. Finally, the women cast a tenuous Glamour on a pair of pebbles that were concealed in the hands of the one in the middle, making the stones look like ornate keys. The last notes of the welcome song tremble as the fae women finish their singing. Many of the gathered kin, Tine and Talamh alike, dab at their eyes. Even Tinder’s voice is thick as she waxes poetic about the magickery of the singing fae. The singers hand a Glamoured pebble each, with great solemnity and ceremony, to the Tine King and the Fire Princess, and depart the courtyard with small, unhurried steps.

“What’s the point of the keys?” Croi asks Tinder. She had been expecting a truly sacred ceremony, not the pretense of one.

“It’s symbolic of the Caisleán’s welcome to allies,” Tinder replies. “The real keys used to open all the doors in the Caisleán that visitors are allowed to go to.”