A Shiver of Light

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I heard one of the sidhe closest to me say, “She’s not our queen yet.”

  I turned and found one of the very newest refugees from faerie. Our policy had been to take in any fey who wanted to leave faerie and come to the Western Lands, but a few of the recent sidhe were making me doubt the wisdom of that.

  Fenella was just a fraction under six feet tall, with hair that fell like a gold and yellow cloak to her ankles when it was unbound; now it was in two long braids that had been looped back in upon themselves so they glittered as she moved, one moment more gold, the next like sunshine spun into rope, with the beauty of her face shining through the light and jewel-bright glory of her hair. She wasn’t called Fenella of the Shining Hair for nothing. She blinked her tricolored eyes at me. At first you thought her eyes were white with two circles of yellow shades, until you realized that the white around her pupil was actually an incredibly light yellow like winter sunlight, then butter, and the brighter yellow autumn leaves. I’d always thought that her eyes would have looked better with less spectacular hair, or that she needed eyes that were as amazing as the hair.

  “Do you have something to say to me, Fenella?” I asked.

  “No, Princess, I do not.”

  “If you will not say it to my face, then please refrain from saying it behind my back.”

  She startled, as if too caught off guard to hide it under centuries of courtly manners, or maybe I wasn’t worth the effort.

  “Will you not allow us any privacy, even to our own thoughts?”

  “Your thoughts are your own, but when they spill out your lips and I can hear, they are no longer private.”

  “Very well, Princess Meredith. I find it disquieting that the goblins bow to you and call you queen when you are not a queen … yet.”

  “I am not the official goblin queen, that is true, but I am Queen of the Sluagh.”

  A look of distaste flitted across her face. “There was a rumor that you were Shadowspawn’s queen, but those of us in the Seelie Court had not believed it.”

  “First, never call King Sholto by that name again; you know it is an insult. Second, why not believe it?”

  “You are of the same bloodline as our king. It is a pure sidhe line, and even your mother’s lineage speaks to the light, but I suppose you cannot help the corruption of your father’s blood.”

  “Are you trying to be insulting?” I asked.

  She looked surprised, and I was almost certain it was genuine. She just didn’t understand the insult. “I have given offense; I am sorry, Princess, but your mother speaks endlessly of the corruption and vileness of your father, so I assumed that you felt the same.”

  “And if I did, then why would I have stayed at my father’s vile and corrupt court, when I could have been with my mother at the Seelie Court?”

  Fenella seemed to think about that, and watching her eyes while she did it, I realized something I hadn’t before. She wasn’t that bright, not stupid by any means, but not a deep thinker. Sometimes I thought that Taranis wasn’t that deep a thinker either; maybe his court reflected that?

  Then a smooth voice came from the other side of the tall machine. “Most of us never blamed you for preferring to rule in hell, rather than serve in heaven, Princess.”

  Trancer was inches above six feet, maybe six-five, and thin, even by sidhe standards, as if he’d been stretched just a little too much. His arms looked firm, but not muscled. If he’d been human you could have taken it to mean he wasn’t very strong, but among the fey, even the sidhe, what you saw was not what you got.

  “My father loved me, my mother didn’t; a child goes where she’s loved,” I said.

  “Love. What do the Unseelie know about love?” Fenella said.

  Trancer touched her arm, and I watched her think about why he’d just cautioned her with that touch. I looked up into his tri-blue eyes. His hair was a more ordinary golden brown, waving just below his shoulders. The Seelie men let the women have the longer hair.

  How many times had Trancer had to save his wife from speaking out of turn, or too boldly? How many centuries had he minded her, protected her from herself? I spoke to him, as I said, “Love is very important to most of us, don’t you agree, Lord Trancer?”

  He gave me a long look. “Yes, Princess Meredith, we do.”

  “I just don’t see why we have to exercise,” Fenella said, and there was a childish whine to her voice that went along with the lack of understanding I’d seen in her eyes.

  Rhys said, “Because all of the guards exercise, that’s the rule.”

  “But we were never guards,” she protested.

  “Now, dearest,” Trancer said, “you know that we have to find a way to be useful.”

  “I can set a fine table, and host a banquet, but I don’t think I will be very good at guarding anyone with strength of arms. Magic has always been enough in the past.”

  Secretly I agreed with her, but I was letting Rhys and Doyle handle what to do with the fey who were seeking refuge with us. We had so many now that we did need them to pull their weight, but I doubted sincerely if I would ever trust Fenella to guard me or mine from anything. I would reserve judgment on Trancer, but … I wondered how well Fenella had done at weapons practice. What do you do with immortal beings whose major talents were being beautiful courtiers and toadies? What use were they in modern Los Angeles? I suppose that there were Hollywood equivalents of the job description, but Lady Fenella and Lord Trancer wouldn’t know the modern world enough to adapt, and I wasn’t a big one for sycophants, maybe because I’d never been powerful enough to have any, and now I didn’t trust them.

  “Then think of it as getting into practice for losing the baby weight.”

  “I won’t need that,” Fenella said.

  “I thought you came into exile in the Western Lands so that you could get pregnant,” Rhys said. He put an arm across my shoulders, drawing me in against his body. I slid my arm around his waist automatically, and just holding and being held helped me feel less short, less round, less bad about the changes in my body since the babies. The circle of Rhys’s arms eased most of the anxiety that had started. Was it baby hormones still? It wasn’t like me to allow anyone to make me feel that unhappy with myself.

  “We did,” Trancer said, beginning to rub his hand in small circles on his wife’s back.

  “Then getting a habit of exercise will help her get her girlish figure back afterward,” Rhys said, smiling.

  “But I will not need to exercise to lose my weight. It will just go.”

  “I may have lost my weight faster than most human women, but I’ll still have to exercise when the doctor clears me for it.”

  “But you’re much shorter than me, and I’m told that makes it much harder to lose weight.”

  “I don’t think it’s just about height,” a voice said. It was Biddy just coming into the gym. She was six feet of broad shoulders and muscles, even after having her baby only two months ahead of my triplets. She was built more like a very tall human, and she put on muscle better than most of the sidhe, even the men, but then she was half human. Her hair was cut very short in a mass of brown curls. She’d chosen to cut it when she refused the late Prince Cel, and had been warrior enough and willing to do enough damage to make her no stick. She’d told me she’d keep her hair short to remind herself that she was stronger than she knew, and that no one would ever hurt her again.

  “I’m having to work to get back to my fighting weight. I guess after three hundred years the metabolism slows down,” she said with a grin.

  “You’re half human; I’m not,” Fenella said.

  “You know, Fenella, I’m beginning to wonder why you left faerie,” I said.

  Those yellow eyes narrowed. “I came here to get with child, not to sweat and guard … you.”

  Trancer’s hand stopped moving in those small useless circles on her back. His smile looked frozen. “Now, dearest …”

  “Merry had triplets. The last set of triplets among
the sidhe was at least eight hundred years ago,” Biddy said. Her solid brown eyes, so very human, were darkening with the beginnings of anger. She would get angry for me.

  “Yes, triplets, like a litter of dogs,” Fenella said.

  Biddy said, “Bitch.”

  “Exactly,” Fenella said.

  Rhys made a small movement forward, but I held him tighter around the waist.

  I didn’t need to be protected; I had the power to do it myself now. “You know, Fenella, if you don’t want to be one of my guard, that’s fine; I don’t think you’re suited to the position.”

  “I can stop lifting these things?” She motioned at the weights.

  “Yes, and in fact pack your bags and go back to the beach house.”

  “There is no fairyland at the beach house. It’s just ordinary land.”

  “Princess Meredith, my wife didn’t mean …” Trancer began.

  I held up a hand and stopped him midsentence. “The beach house is lovely all year round, and maybe going back there will remind your wife that all the fairyland around this house is here because of me.”

  “The Goddess returned Her blessing to us,” Fenella said.

  “No,” Biddy said, “the Goddess returned Her blessing to Merry, and Merry shares it with the rest of us.” She stood very tall, looking down at the other woman from where she still sat on the front of the weight machine.

  Fenella opened her mouth again, but Trancer actually put a fingertip against her lower lip. “My love, we will go to the beach house, as the princess bids. She is, after all, the ruler here in the Western Lands.”

  Fenella pouted with her lips still against his finger, but she didn’t try to talk again, which was a relief at this point. She was the perfect example of exactly why I hadn’t tried to stay at the Seelie Court. Yes, she was less astute than some of the nobles, but her attitude was about average. I wasn’t pure enough, sidhe enough, and more than the Unseelie, the Seelie put great stock in physical purity.

  “Pack and go, now,” Rhys said, voice low. His skin began to hum with power, and about the time I noticed that, I could see the white glow of his power sliding almost cloudlike under his skin. I glanced upward and saw that the three circles of blue had begun to swirl, as his magic began to unsheathe itself.

  “We will, my lord,” Trancer said. He got his wife to her feet and began to ease out from among the machines and us. I realized that “us” didn’t just include Biddy. The three Red Caps were looming behind us like the mountains were on our side, my side. I reached my free hand out and touched the closest Red Cap, who happened to be Clesek. I wanted them to know how much I valued them, and had since the night they risked themselves in battle to help me save the men I loved.

  Clesek’s cap was suddenly a bright scarlet instead of the dried brown it had been. The first thin trickle of blood began to drip down the side of his face from his round skullcap. The Red Caps had once dipped their caps in fresh blood often enough to keep them scarlet, but random slaughter for dipping purposes had been forbidden since the fey immigrated to America. I’d known that to be a war leader among them you had to have enough magic to cause your cap to bleed on its own, but what I hadn’t known was that a sidhe with the hand of blood could give them back that ability and make all their caps bleed. That was why they called me their queen, and why they bowed, and why they had risked everything to help me, and had joined me in exile here.

  Fenella hissed, “Unclean, Unseelie magic that.”

  I stopped touching Clesek, because I didn’t want him to bleed enough to get the new padded floor bloody, but I’d had enough of the Seelie for today. “Yes, yes it is Unseelie magic, Fenella, and you might want to remember that the next time you insult me.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  Trancer tried to pull her toward the door, saying, “Hush, my dearest.”

  “Yes, yes, I think I am. I can come to you as a goddess of fertility and joy, or I can come as the dark goddess who brings the winter and kills the crops. That was the face of the goddess that the Seelie brought down upon themselves, centuries ago. You have learned nothing.” And that last sentence echoed in the room in a way that human voices did not. Pink and white rose petals began to fall from thin air around me, Rhys, Biddy, and the Red Caps, but the fall of flowers stopped short of the two Seelie nobles.

  Their eyes went wide and I saw fear on their faces. “She meant nothing by it, Princess, please.”

  “She meant everything by it, Trancer.” My voice was almost mine, just the faintest echo of the Goddess around the edges of my words.

  “We will pack and we will go to the edge of the sea, and await your pleasure to bid us return to this new bit of faerie,” he said, pulling his wife backward toward the doorway.

  “You do that,” I said. The petals were thick as a snowstorm, but spring warm, so that I watched their frightened faces leave through a pink snowfall.

  “It is not our place to say so, but they do not deserve your blessing,” Clesek said.

  Rhys hugged me. “I love you, our Merry, just as you are.” And just like that, I started to cry again; stupid baby hormones. The rose petals fell so fast it was like being inside some magical snow globe that had been shaken by a giant. What did the Christians say—if God be with me, then who can be against me? That was true, but it still hurt to know that no matter how many wonders I performed, I would always and forever be too short, too human, too Unseelie for the most of the Golden Court to ever accept me. But then hadn’t six out of sixteen of the Unseelie noble houses been against me the last time I stood in open court there, too? If the Goddess herself could not make them see their own bigotry, then there was no cure for it.

  There was a soft kiss on my cheek. I looked up and found that Rhys’s face was pressed to the top of my hair, and no one else was close. The Goddess had kissed my tears like my own mother never had. I whispered my thanks, and the petals began to slow. I was almost ankle deep in petals now; that was enough.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  RHYS AND BIDDY both offered to escort me to the outdoor area where Doyle was conducting the hand-to-hand training, but I told Rhys to stay and supervise the weight training. Biddy wasn’t on full duty yet, and she helped run the household along with her husband, Nicca. I didn’t want to put her back on guard duty; it wasn’t where she was best used. Both of them were content when they realized Saraid and Dogmaela were just outside the door.

  Rhys kissed me good-bye and gave me over to the two female guards. I’d already asked him my question, and he’d had no problem with Bryluen, and the two human nannies weren’t needed when he, Galen, and Kitto were on duty, so he hadn’t seen them with the littlest of our babes. It was interesting that Maeve and I both felt Bryluen’s magic, but Rhys didn’t. He was a death deity, and Maeve and I were both fertility, sex, and love. If that made us more susceptible to my daughter’s glamour, then Galen would also have an issue, but Doyle and Frost might not. Come to think of it, Galen was the only one of the fathers who was spring and fertility, though he wasn’t as close to Maeve’s and my magic as a couple of the other guards. Adair and Amatheon weren’t fathers, or my lovers anymore, but their magic was closest; I might see how they fared babysitting if Galen had more issues than the other fathers. If he didn’t, then I might ask one of the female sidhe and see if Bryluen had more power over women, though I couldn’t think why she should.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Princess Meredith, you seem unusually solemn,” Saraid said.

  I glanced at her and smiled. “I don’t mind, Saraid.”

  “You have everything any woman could want, and more; what do you have to be so sad about?” Dogmaela said.

  “Dogmaela,” Saraid said, making a caution of the other woman’s name.

  “No, it’s all right, Saraid, truly. I may not answer the question, but you can all ask me anything.”

  “That is a most democratic attitude, Princess,” Saraid said.

  “I may
be a faerie princess, but I’m also American. We tend to like democracy.”

  “I’ve been following your politicians in the media,” Dogmaela said, “and I do not find all of them very democratic. In fact, many of them seem as if they would be happy to have a dictatorship if they could be in charge.”

  I laughed. “Very accurate of some of them, I grant you that.”

  “Well, you laughed, so that’s a good thing,” Dogmaela said, and she smiled. She was one of the guards who had gone to therapy with the same work ethic she’d applied to learning to shoot modern firearms.

  Saraid had been one of the women who stopped going to therapy when she found out it wasn’t mandatory.

  “Is Uther coming over this week for movie night?” I asked.

  Saraid ducked her head and grinned, that special stupid-faced, almost drunkenly happy grin. I loved seeing it on that angelically beautiful face, because Uther had been my friend back in the days when I’d been hiding as just plain Merry Gentry, a human with some fey ancestry. He’d been one of my coworkers at the Grey Detective Agency for three lonely years while I hid in L. A. on the shores of the Western Sea to keep my cousin, Cel, and his friends from killing me. Uther Squarefoot was the legal name on his license, and he was thirteen feet tall, with magnificent curling tusks, and a face that was almost more wild boar than human. He was a Jack-in-Irons, one of the solitary faeries, but still of the Unseelie Court, because the Seelie Court wouldn’t touch any fey who was ugly. But Saraid had found in Uther the first gentleness she’d known in a man for centuries. He had found in her the wonderment of being loved by a truly beautiful woman. There were only two Jacks-in-Irons in the entire United States, and no one had ever seen a female one, so Uther had been lonely in a way that mere friendship couldn’t fix. When he’d found out I was sidhe, he’d very politely asked me to help him break his fast for female companionship, but I was mortal and not sure I could survive his attentions. I wasn’t sure what Saraid and he did together on their dates, but whatever it was satisfied them both, and they’d been a couple for almost six months.