“It would have been easier if their magic had waited,” I said.
“It would, but I do not think our path was ever meant to be easy, my Merry; wondrous, beautiful, exciting, thrilling, even frightening, but not easy.”
I raised Bryluen to lay a kiss upon her cheek. I loved her already; she was mine, ours, but I was a little frightened now. If she could make humans like her, want to hold and rock her, what else could she make them do? Child psychologists say that children are born sociopaths and have to learn to have a conscience. It happens around the age of two, usually, but until then there’s no conscience to appeal to, no way to understand that something is wrong or right.
I held our beautiful little sociopath and prayed to the Goddess that she wouldn’t hurt anyone before we’d had time to teach her that it was wrong.
The scent of roses filled the room, and it wasn’t just the clean sweetness of the wild rose vine, but that richer musk that is more from cultivation than nature. It was a heady scent, and reassurance from the Goddess. Normally, it would have been enough to lay my fears to rest, but this time there was a kernel of unease that stayed inside my heart. How could I doubt her, after all she’d shown me, all she’d awakened around me? But it wasn’t the Goddess I doubted, it was more just worry. I was a new mother, and mothers worry.
CHAPTER
NINE
MAEVE REED, THE Golden Goddess of Hollywood since about 1950, came to the hospital to escort us home to her house. We’d lived in her guesthouse when we first moved in with her, but as more fey had flocked to us, Maeve had moved us into the main house with her and left the guesthouse to new exiles from faerie who weren’t as close to her. She was an exile herself, so she understood the confusion of being cast out from faerie and being thrust into the modern world.
Though very few exiles had succeeded as well as Maeve Reed at adapting to this brave, new world. The guard outside opened the door, and I heard Maeve’s voice. “So happy you loved my last movie. Congratulations on your baby, he is adorable.” Her voice was warm and utterly sincere, and in part it was the truth, but she had been a great actress for decades and could turn utter sincerity on and off like a well-oiled switch. I doubted I would ever be that skilled at being “on” for the public, and being merely mortal I wouldn’t live long enough for the centuries of practice that had helped her get so very good at it.
She came breezing into the room with a casual wave of her hand that was too big a gesture for the room but would have looked great in a photo, as would the brilliant smile on her face. She was dressed in an oyster-white pantsuit that flowed and moved with her; a silk shell in a deep but subdued blue helped her not look quite the six feet that she was, forcing the eye down once it had started up those long legs. She smiled at me and I had a moment of catching the edge of the smile she’d used on the fan outside. It was a good smile, and sincere in its way, because she was genuinely happy that the woman liked her film, and meant the congratulations, but … the moment the door closed behind her the smile vanished, and she had a moment where it was as if she laid down some invisible burden across her shoulders. Nothing could make her less than gorgeous with that perfect pale gold tan, the perfect blue eyes in subdued but equally perfect makeup, those cheekbones, those full, kissable lips, but she had a moment of looking tired. Then she straightened up and those high, tight breasts pressed against the blue shell, perky forever without any need for cosmetic surgery.
Her gaze went to the fruit tree that was shedding its blossoms like a pink snow, and the roses on the other side of the room. “Ah, the new wonders. The nurses asked me when the plants would be going away.”
“We aren’t sure,” Doyle said.
“Doyle, Frost, I stopped by the nursery first and the babies are beautiful.”
“They are,” Doyle said, as if to say, Of course.
“Welcome home, Maeve,” Frost said.
She wasted a few extra watts of smile on him, but she didn’t mean it. He wasn’t pure sidhe enough for her; most of my men weren’t. She’d made no secret about the fact that she’d have had sex with Rhys or Mistral, if they and I had been okay with it. Among humans it would have been an insult; among the fey if you found someone attractive and didn’t let them know, it was an insult. She was afraid of Doyle, not because he’d done anything to her, but because she’d spent too many centuries seeing him as my aunt’s assassin. She’d lost people she cared about to him long ago, so she never flirted with him. He was fine with that.
Then she turned to me, and the look on her face was suddenly cautious. She’d actually texted me before she came, asking if I was angry at her for neglecting me. I’d reassured her via text but realized I’d need to do more reassuring in person.
I held my hand out to her, and she came to me smiling, but it was a different smile, less perfect than on film, letting me see the uncertainty in her eyes. I valued that I got to see her when the cameras weren’t rolling and she let down her guard.
“I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come sooner. I saw the babies in the nursery and they are so beautiful.”
“You had to fly back from Europe just to see us.”
She took my hand in hers, studying my face. “How are you feeling, honestly?”
Her hand was warm, the bones long and delicate as I rubbed my fingers down them. “What’s wrong, Maeve?”
“The media circus is in full swing outside, Merry.” A frown showed between those perfect brows and those famous blue eyes. If only her legion of fans were ever allowed to see her eyes when they weren’t hidden by faerie glamour to appear more human; as beautiful as she was now, stripped of all illusions she was even more so.
“You say that like the media is entirely your fault. I’m the first American-born faerie princess; I’ve lived with cameras and reporters all my life.”
“That’s true, but combine your fame with mine and it’s worse than I’ve seen it, and Merry, I’ve seen it at its worst.” She squeezed my hand in hers. I wasn’t sure if it was to reassure me, or herself, or maybe neither; maybe it was just the comfort of another hand to hold.
People say they want to be famous, but there is a level of fame that becomes almost crippling. I’d had the literal weight of the press break a window from trying to get a better view of me with Doyle and Frost once. Some of them had been cut, nothing serious, but they had rained glass down on us and the other customers in the shop.
“You are actually frightened,” Doyle said.
She looked up at him and nodded.
Frost came forward to lay his hand on my shoulder. “Is Merry in danger?”
“Police have moved them all back enough that we can exit, and other patients can get into the hospital, but I have never seen so many reporters.”
“You have been the reigning Goddess of Hollywood for decades, and you have never seen so many of them.” Doyle made it a half-question.
“No, I have not,” she said.
“Then it will help boost the money that your newly released film makes, which is what your producers, and all of us, wanted,” I said. I raised my hand and laid it over Frost’s where he touched me.
“I don’t think our publicist could have envisioned this,” she said.
“We could send you home and sign the papers for the reality TV show. That would bring in more money,” I said.
“No, we don’t want cameras in our house, not like that.”
“Then you’re the major breadwinner for our court in exile, Maeve. It behooves us to do as much as possible to help promote your career. The rest of us couldn’t earn what’s needed, especially not to live in the style to which you’re spoiling us. We could say yes to the reality show and bring in more money than we can from being private detectives,” I said.
“I earned thirty million dollars for my last film, Merry; I think I can afford you all, though admittedly the Red Caps eat more than I thought possible,” she said with a smile.
Frost didn’t hear the joke in her words. “They range from s
even to thirteen feet tall and are big enough to fill out such frames. It takes fuel to make a warrior as big as an ogre run.”
She raised her smile and aimed it at him, but it wasn’t a flirting smile now, more the “isn’t he cute not understanding” smile. “I was making a slight joke, Frost.”
He frowned. “I did not think it was funny.”
“Nor I,” Doyle said.
She looked from one to the other of them, and then turned to me, laughing. “They can be so terribly serious sometimes.”
“If you want jokes, best turn to Rhys or Galen,” I said. I leaned my body back against Frost as I said it, letting him know I valued him, but it was true that humor was not the strong suit for my two main loves.
Frost wrapped his arm across the front of me, pulling me closer. I let Maeve’s hand go so that I could grip his arm with both of my hands, holding on and leaning hard against the solidness of him. It was as if the strength of him seeped into me just from him holding me this close. I loved him more and more every day, and took more comfort from his presence in my life. I’d lost him once, or thought I had, and it frightened me that I loved him even more now, because when I thought he was gone forever it had been a near-killing sorrow. I knew if I lost him now it would hurt even more, and that was frightening, but I couldn’t hold back from him either, because love can die from being withheld, like a flower that is so beautiful you hide it away from the sun trying to make it last longer; but every flower needs sun, and being in love requires risking yourself. It can require risking everything you are, not just in battle, but emotionally. Sometimes you have to risk it all to gain it all. I basked in the warmth of Frost’s love and let him feel mine.
He hugged me tighter and leaned down to place a gentle kiss on the top of my head, resting his cheek against me. “I love you, my Merry,” he whispered.
“And I love you, my Killing Frost.” I turned my head, rising so we could kiss. I’d purposefully waited to put on lipstick, because we all tended to kiss a lot, and we didn’t want to face the cameras with lipstick smeared across our faces like clown makeup.
“Seeing the two of you together makes me hope that I’ll find another love of my own life someday,” Maeve said.
Frost and I broke the kiss to look at Maeve. She had lost her human husband, the director who had discovered her back in the fifties, to cancer.
“I am sorry we could not save him, Maeve,” I said.
“Even the magic of faerie can’t heal a human that near death,” she said.
I started to go to her to hug her, but Doyle surprised us by moving toward her. He held out his hand. “I know what it is to lose someone you love, and all the magic in the world does not ease the loss.”
Maeve hesitated, then put her hand in his dark one. “All those years of seeing you stand beside the Queen of Air and Darkness, you were her Darkness, a bringer of blood and death; you gave no clue that you were actually a romantic.”
“And achingly lonely,” he said, “but neither was helpful as the right hand of the queen.”
“But you helped Merry give me a chance to have a child with my husband, and now I have Liam.”
“The magic that helped you grow fertile was Galen and Merry’s doing, none of mine.”
“You kept her alive long enough to do the spell, and that Galen could not have done,” Maeve said.
Doyle acknowledged it with a nod, and then Maeve moved slowly into him and put her arms around him. He was stiff and a little unsure, but he patted her as she hugged him almost as awkwardly.
There was a flash from the window behind us. Doyle moved so fast it was hard to follow, as if the gun had just appeared in his hand and was pointed at the window, as he moved toward it. Frost had shoved me behind him. He had a gun in one hand and a blade in the other.
Maeve yelled, “It’s a camera, Doyle; don’t shoot them.”
“Unless they can fly, it cannot be reporters,” he said. There was another flash of light. I couldn’t see past Frost’s body and knew better than to even peer around him. He was guarding me; I had to let him do his job, but I wanted to see, badly.
Doyle cursed. “Anu’s Breasts, they’re on window-washing equipment, two of them.”
“Well, someone has to work the controls while the other one takes pictures, or film,” Maeve said as if it were just an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was for the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, but we’d never had reporters climbing down the windows of a hospital before.
Doyle shut the curtains, cutting out the sunlight with them so the room was suddenly dim.
“Thus it begins,” Maeve said.
“I hate paparazzi,” Frost said.
We all agreed with him and then called hospital security to let them know they’d been breached.
CHAPTER
TEN
DOYLE HAD NEGOTIATED three days for me to recover my strength from giving birth, and then Aunt Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, got to speak to me directly. She wasn’t going to use the telephone, because she wanted to see me while we spoke. We weren’t going to use the computer for a Skype face-to-face either. Aunt Andais didn’t even own a cell phone, and computers were for her staff, but for her it was the old-fashioned way: a mirror. The sidhe could speak through reflective surfaces of more than one kind, but mirrors were the easiest and clearest view. We chose the antique mirror in the dining room. One, because it was large and had been as big as one wall of the room once, before wild magic had expanded the room to the size of a small football field. The French doors showed a forest that had never existed in California. The clearing and forest were new lands of faerie, or old lands returned. We’d been so happy when it had happened, and then Taranis had walked into that bit of fairyland, knocked me unconscious, and stolen me away. Now there were locks on the French doors, and two guards posted at all times. If Taranis kidnapped me again, it wouldn’t be through this opening.
The mirror was still large enough to act like a huge flat-screen TV, so that the queen would get a good view first of me, and then, if that went well, the babies, but since some of us could use mirrors to travel from one point to another we weren’t risking the babies until Aunt Andais had shown herself sane, or at least sane-ish. I’d take the “ish” because asking for more than that would mean I’d never speak with her.
I debated on what color maternity dress to wear. It wasn’t a casual concern. Andais was very into fashion, but more than that, she had taken insult from my choice of clothing in the past. Her feeling insulted had led to my being hurt, or even bleeding, so we put serious thought into what I would wear to sit before the queen. Shades of rich, dark green were some of my best colors. They brought out the green in my eyes, but Aunt Andais didn’t always like to be reminded that my eyes were the color of the Seelie Court, and not the Unseelie. So, no green, which took out several of my maternity dresses. The red one was almost the color of fresh blood, not something we wanted my torture-loving aunt to think of when looking at me. The purple dress was at the dry cleaner. That left us with a soft floral print, royal blue, or a rich, salmon pink. Pants were a no-go; I was still too sore to want to wear them. We finally decided on the pink, saving the blue in case we had to do television earlier than we’d planned.
I sat facing the mirror, in the same large thronelike chair that I’d used to do business with the goblins months ago, before I started showing. It was the closest thing we had to a throne. The only downside to it was that my feet couldn’t touch the floor, so I felt like a child. There was no footstool in the house that wasn’t hard plastic and cheap looking. No one made velvet and wood stools for the queen to put her feet on anymore. Funny how things like that had gone out of style.
It was Kitto who came up with a solution. “I’ll be your footstool.”
He stood there gazing up at me, the only man I’d ever been with who was significantly shorter than my five feet even. He had moonlight skin like mine, like Frost’s, white and pale and perfect as a winter’s morn. His hair was a blac
k almost as dark as Doyle’s, but as Kitto’s hair had grown out it had gotten wavy, so that it fell to his shoulders in an artful tangle of waves and curls as if it couldn’t quite decide. I’d taught him how to take care of his longer hair, so that it looked artfully tousled, not messy. If he’d been taller he could have passed for pure Unseelie sidhe, except for three things. His eyes were huge, dominating his face, almond-shaped and a wondrous bright blue that swallowed his entire eye, except for the black point of his pupil; the color was sidhe, the shape and form were not. But more than the eyes, the line of shining scaled skin that grew down his back along his entire spine showed him not pure sidhe. The scales were flat, smooth, in colors of pink, gold, ivory, and small flecks of black, but so bright in color that the line of it looked more like a purposeful decoration than the scales of a snake. It was his back scales that made me wonder if Bryluen’s wings might be partially from Kitto; goblins didn’t have wings, but her wings were almost the same color as his snake skin. We wouldn’t know until the tests came back. If Taranis hadn’t been pushing we wouldn’t have cared so much about who was the biological father or fathers of the babies, but to prove it wasn’t Taranis, we had to prove who it was. Kitto’s Cupid’s-bow mouth hid a forked tongue, and he had to work hard not to slur his s’s, and the last bit of difference was two long, retractable fangs that tucked up against the roof of his mouth unless he chose to bring them down. He was one lover that I could never allow to bite me, because snake goblins were venomous, and his father had been one. If Bryluen could possibly be his daughter, I’d want to watch for those when her teeth started coming in, because even baby vipers have venom.
“The queen may try to frighten you, Kitto,” I said.
“I am a stool for your feet, Merry. Footstools can’t hear, or talk, or interact with anyone. I can ignore her, because I can just be the object I’m acting as.”
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